Taming digital monopolies: A comparative account of the evolution of antitrust and regulation in the European Union and the United States

This paper offers a comparative account of how the European Union and the United States surveil dominant internet players in light of recent enforcement efforts by U.S. antitrust agencies and ongoing discussions about regulating digital giants in both jurisdictions. After setting out themes for comparative analysis, the paper turns to the two actions initiated in the United States against Google: the one filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) is similar in focus to the European Commission’s Android decision and the one led by the State of Texas focuses on advertising markets in a manner similar to the European Commission’s AdSense decision. We observe that while there are similar intuitions about anticompetitive conduct in the manner both jurisdictions address the issues, the framing of the competition problem by the U.S. agencies is more sophisticated in relation to the understanding of the markets, the theories of harm, and the design of forward-looking remedies. The paper then compares the Commission’s proposal for a Digital Markets Act with several Bills proposing platform regulation presently discussed in the United States, examining what the two systems have in common, what they may learn from each other, and what regulatory gaps remain.