OMI director of enforcement strategy Sally Hubbard published an article on ProMarket, deconstructing the manner in which Tech Giants utilize their “platform privilege” to give preferential treatment to their own products and services.

The act of self-preferencing, by which digital platforms give preferential treatment to their own services over the services of other companies, is fundamentally about the American Dream.

The American Dream, as defined by Wikipedia, is the set of ideals—democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality—in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, as well as an upward mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers.

Ours is not a society with few barriers when digital platforms pick the winners and losers of our economy—particularly when they pick themselves as the winners.

Antitrust law aims to stop established companies from shutting out competitors. If entrepreneurs and businesspeople bring their hard work and the best products and services forward, an open and freely competitive market rewards them with prosperity and success.

To their credit, the Big Tech platforms started on their paths to dominance with innovation. But they’re each more than 20 years old and have dominated their arenas for more than a decade.⁠ Their enduring and expanding monopoly power has less and less to do with competition based on merit.

Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook have reached their controlling positions in large part through hundreds of acquisitions, many of which were illegal under the Clayton Act.

Read the full article on ProMarket.