Page 37 - July 2018 Disruption Report

AMAZON EATS EVERYTHING JANJULAYRY20210818
essential infrastructure on which their rivals depend. This dual role also enables a platform to exploit information collected on companies using its services to undermine them as competitors.
This Note maps out facets of Amazon’s dominance. Doing so enables us to make sense
of its business strategy, illuminates anticompetitive aspects of Amazon’s structure and conduct, and underscores deficiencies in current doctrine. The Note closes by considering two potential regimes for addressing Amazon’s power: restoring traditional antitrust and competition policy principles or applying common carrier obligations and duties.
... As Amazon continues both to deepen its existing control over key infrastructure and
to reach into new lines of business, its dominance demands the same scrutiny. To revise antitrust law and competition policy for platform markets, we should be guided by two questions. First, does our legal framework capture the realities of how dominant firms acquire and exercise power in the Internet economy? And second, what forms and degrees of power should the law identify as a threat to competition? Without considering these questions, we risk permitting the growth of powers that we oppose but fail to recognize. (The Yale Law Journal, Lina M. Khan, January 2017)
In July, Federal Trade Commission Democratic Commissioner Rohit Chopra hired Lina Khan as
a legal fellow in his office. Previously, Khan worked at the Washington, DC think thank, Open Marks, which is know for its critical positions of the size and power of big tech companies, such as Amazon. FTC chairm Joe Simons said he wnts to re-examine how his agency polices big tech firms and has promised “vigorous enforcement” of Silicon Valley tech companies. (The Hill, Ali Breland, 07/09/18)
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