July 7, 2020

There is a growing support for some form of regulation, alongside antitrust, in digital markets. The European Commission is consulting on a prospective market investigation tool and ex ante regulation. The CMA’s digital advertising study will inform the UK’s own thinking. But while there are economic similarities between the major platforms, there are also major differences, in business models, in the role played by data (and relevant privacy considerations), in the extent to which platforms are open or closed, and in their roles as rule-setters for their users. What would all this mean for regulation, and indeed what would regulation mean for antitrust? This panel of distinguished speakers brought together several different perspectives for a well-informed and timely discussion of this complex area.