Letter to House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law on Self-Dealing by Platform Monopolies

The corporations that rule online markets for goods, services, information, and news are all more than 20 years old and have dominated their respective fields for more than a decade. Amazon, Apple, and Google have each surpassed $1 trillion in valuation, and Facebook made $70.7 billion in revenue in 2019 on surveillance-based, hyper-targeted advertising. Unfortunately, competition on merit alone does not explain the phenomenal rise of these corporations to such positions of power and control, nor does it explain the durability of their power. Individuals at each of these corporations have introduced smart ideas and products to market. But much of the success of these corporations is also due to having acquired hundreds of other companies, along with the people and services within these companies, in ways that have enabled these giants to build intricate and self-reinforcing networks of essential services. Many of these acquisitions were clearly illegal under the Clayton Act’s prohibition of mergers and acquisitions where the effect “may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.” They went through because law enforcement agencies failed to enforce the law.

This illegal monopolization through countless acquisitions, in turn, has played an integral role in powering the further rise of these giants. The platform monopolists of the 21st century have long followed the monopolist’s classic playbook. They exploit their positions as providers of multiple essential services to bankrupt, supplant, or sideline rivals in every market in which they operate. They also exploit their position as gatekeepers to the marketplace to manipulate and extort businesses and individuals who simply want to sell their goods, services, and ideas to their fellow citizens. This problem is getting worse fast. The number of businesses that are not at the mercy of the platform monopolists is declining every day, as the giants continue to expand aggressively into new business lines.

In this letter, we recommend reforms aimed at opening the gates of fair competition to new innovators, restoring dynamism to our economy, decreasing market concentration, ensuring basic rule of law for all sellers and buyers, and protecting the security of our nation and our democracy.

Read the full letter here.