Dismembering Producers from Customers: The Google/Sanofi Joint Venture

By Rupprecht Podszun

In merger cases involving the big platform operators, the EU Commission has difficulties to analyze markets properly. The joint venture of Sanofi and Google illustrates the shifts taking place in the economy. In particular, producing companies lose the customer interface where a platform squeezes in. Traditional competition law tools do not get the gist of such cases. The integration of markets through digitalization cannot be analyzed with a narrow market definition approa