Nieman.Lab, here.
Why should people listen to them? Stop those cozy regulatory dialogues for good. This is just too serious.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Can competition policy and industrial policy jointly strengthen competitiveness - and where do potential tensions arise?
ASCOLA 25 November 2026 | 14:00 CET | Online, here.
Monday, October 26, 2026
Sunday, October 25, 2026
Meta needs to draw a clear line between providing a service and appropriating rights from their business users
EPC, here.
[I took part in the WIPO negotiations leading to the Marrakesh Treaty, representing the Italian Library Association. At the time, I found the EPC utterly insufferable, fiercely resisting any broadening of copyright exceptions for people with visual impairments. We had to fight hard. This time, however, they seem to have perfectly legitimate reasons for their position. Still, I cannot quite shake off my reservations about them - still holding a grudge!].
Saturday, October 24, 2026
Friday, October 23, 2026
Meta delays AI business terms amid media sector outcry
The Rapporteur, here.
There was clearly political pressure on the CMA, and the CMA found a way to exert pressure on Meta (talking about a long overdue designation, possibly?). Which raises a further question: has the European Commission really done nothing/very little, as the media piece would suggest (e.g., no talks of an interim measure under whatever regime)? Or is there so much going on behind the scenes that we mere mortals can only speculate?
Le code a changé - Comment Waze vous déroute
Arte.tv, ici.
Don't get me started. When Google was allowed to buy Waze I was already well into having given up on merger control...
Zuckerberg is staking Meta’s future on Muse, the personal AI agent it released to the general public last month
The Verge, here.
A bit of hope in Zuckerberg's creative self-destruction then!
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
CMA defending the indefendible with a perfectly straight face (two, actually)?
Watch here.
Among other exchanges, I loved MPs asking the CMA whether they knew what Meta was doing and what they were doing about it. “But Meta isn’t designated”, just after assuring everyone they had enough funding and were doing everything they needed to. Apparently, designating Meta wasn’t on the list. You do have to wonder.
The CMA is apparently thinking *very, very, very hard* about everything it's asked about (so we heard from the CEO, at least). Somewhere between all that thinking and actually doing anything, the whole thing seems to deflate, however.
Don't get too angry, relax...
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Monday, October 19, 2026
Friday, October 16, 2026
Competition and Data Protection: Time for Some Intellectual Evolution?
Listening yesterday to the EDPB–European Commission stakeholder discussion on the interplay between competition law and data protection, I was struck by how deeply entrenched certain ways of thinking remain. On the positive side, the DMA has undoubtedly served as a laboratory for the kind of cross-disciplinary learning which is needed. Its implementation has forced both communities to confront questions that cannot be adequately addressed from within either discipline alone. In many respects, this is where some of the most interesting intellectual and regulatory evolution has taken place.
In the broader competition policy/data protection arena, what we need now is not simply more cooperation between authorities, or further guidance on how two distinct legal frameworks interact. We need something more fundamental: an evolution in the way each discipline thinks, incorporating insights from the other into its own analytical framework. And with AI reshaping both the uses of data and the sources of market power, this intellectual evolution is becoming increasingly urgent.
400 publications are now partnering with us on our News AI pilot program
Google, here.
Old enough to remember dozens of pilots masquerading abuses.
More ways to connect with the web from Search
*Google*, here.
Evidence on publisher traffic? Otherwise likely only "dialogue fog"
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Friday, October 09, 2026
Thursday, October 08, 2026
Wednesday, October 07, 2026
Tuesday, October 06, 2026
Friday, October 02, 2026
Thursday, October 01, 2026
Friday, September 25, 2026
Wednesday, September 09, 2026
Tuesday, September 08, 2026
Monday, September 07, 2026
Saturday, September 05, 2026
Guelphs and Ghibellines, 102 Brussels Edition (a View from the Digital Ciompi)
.jpg) |
| Not Tagliacozzo, but Florence (IBA Annual Conference) |
Thursday, September 03, 2026
Wednesday, September 02, 2026
Tuesday, September 01, 2026
Monday, August 24, 2026
Thursday, August 13, 2026
Up the Stack: How AI’s Escape From the Commodity Trap Risks Enterprise Lock-in
A. Narayanan and A. Kapur, here.
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Saturday, August 08, 2026
Friday, August 07, 2026
Thursday, August 06, 2026
Wednesday, August 05, 2026
Tuesday, August 04, 2026
Monday, August 03, 2026
Saturday, August 01, 2026
Friday, July 31, 2026
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Epic v. Google is settled: what's next
"The parties are *advised* that the Court will retain Professor Nancy L. Rose to assist the Court in monitoring Google’s compliance with the injunction'
She was instrumental in preventing a gigantic "Epic Fail" - ICYMI, but nothing can replace public enforcement in the public interest.
Saturday, July 25, 2026
Modern Economic Analysis and Antitrust Law: A Guide
S. Salop, here.
From what I have seen, this "modern" economic analysis certainly moves beyond a narrow focus on price. It takes innovation, quality, variety, entry and dynamic effects much more seriously, and it is far more sceptical than the Chicago tradition of claims that monopoly necessarily promotes innovation.
Yet it still appears to remain fundamentally efficiency-based. Competition, diversity and market openness matter chiefly because they are expected to generate better welfare outcomes. This means that exclusion may still be justified if the dominant firm can show sufficiently large efficiencies and persuade the decision-maker that those efficiencies outweigh the loss of rivalry.
That is precisely where a much deeper change of paradigm is needed. The issue should not merely be whether a single gatekeeper can organise the market more efficiently than a plurality of competing actors. It should also be whether one private firm ought to possess the power to determine the entire structure of market access, the permissible forms of innovation and the conditions under which others may compete.
Contestability, diversity and independent routes to market should therefore not be treated simply as variables in an efficiency balance. They are constitutive elements of a competitive order. The objective should not be merely to maximise welfare within a market structure controlled by the incumbent, but to preserve the possibility of decentralised experimentation, rival forms of organisation and challenges to the incumbent’s model.
In that sense, this type of newish economic analysis is not yet the necessary paradigm shift. It offers a more sophisticated balancing exercise when what may be required is a structural presumption against private control over the architecture of competition itself.
Yet it still appears to remain fundamentally efficiency-based. Competition, diversity and market openness matter chiefly because they are expected to generate better welfare outcomes. This means that exclusion may still be justified if the dominant firm can show sufficiently large efficiencies and persuade the decision-maker that those efficiencies outweigh the loss of rivalry.
That is precisely where a much deeper change of paradigm is needed. The issue should not merely be whether a single gatekeeper can organise the market more efficiently than a plurality of competing actors. It should also be whether one private firm ought to possess the power to determine the entire structure of market access, the permissible forms of innovation and the conditions under which others may compete.
Contestability, diversity and independent routes to market should therefore not be treated simply as variables in an efficiency balance. They are constitutive elements of a competitive order. The objective should not be merely to maximise welfare within a market structure controlled by the incumbent, but to preserve the possibility of decentralised experimentation, rival forms of organisation and challenges to the incumbent’s model.
In that sense, this type of newish economic analysis is not yet the necessary paradigm shift. It offers a more sophisticated balancing exercise when what may be required is a structural presumption against private control over the architecture of competition itself.
The central distinction is between better balancing within the welfare paradigm and treating plurality, contestability and dispersed power as values that cannot be traded away for claimed efficiencies.
What is needed is a true modern (new) competition school, not just an incremental fixing of the same, inadequate economic paradigm.
Thursday, July 23, 2026
Commission fines Google €890 million for breaches of the Digital Markets Act
EC, here.
"The Commission also takes note of Google's proposals on how it plans to apply the principles of the decision to AI Overviews and AI Mode, on which dialogue will continue in light of today's decision"
This is broadly the direction anticipated here (no crystal ball, just common sense). The Commission has now placed AI Overviews and AI Mode explicitly within the Article 6(5) dialogue. It should move quickly. Google is already deploying these services through Search, and the underlying distribution issue is sufficiently clear. A specification proceeding would provide a timely opportunity to define the conditions governing their integration, prominence and access to users. The dialogue on this topic is already well underway, as the press release notes; allowing it to remain informal would merely give the architecture more time to harden.
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
UK's Bloomsbury among beneficiaries of $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright lawsuit settlement
Reuters, here.
Too little, too late?
Google's Fuite en Avant? A DMA Response Becomes Harder to Avoid
France had so far remained outside the rollout, apparently because of the unresolved dispute over press content and publisher choice. In 2024, the Autorité de la concurrence fined Google €250 million for breaches of commitments governing negotiations with publishers. Google now refers to constructive discussions with authorities and publishers. The new framework reportedly includes a separate opt-out, specific information on impressions generated by the AI services, and remuneration for publishers whose content is used.
It remains unclear whether the framework fully meets the Autorité de la concurrence’s expectations, and further adjustments may follow. This looks less like a small victory than a unilateral attempt by Google to create facts on the ground in France. Google appears to have concluded that its revised arrangements are sufficient under the existing commitments, leaving the Autorité to assess them after deployment. Most importantly, this leaves Google’s chosen architecture intact, including the use of Google Search as the distribution infrastructure for its own AI services.
A more impactful, low-hanging fruit is already on the Commission’s table: Article 6(5) DMA. The Commission has a pending non-compliance proceeding concerning preferential treatment within Google Search and issued preliminary findings in March 2025. That proceeding currently concerns Google’s own vertical services. On that (too long) existing front, we may soon see the non-compliance decision, probably accompanied by a rather large fine. AI Overviews and AI Mode raise the same distribution issue on a broader scale: whether Alphabet may use Google Search to give its own answer services privileged prominence and immediate access to users. A dedicated specification proceeding might, indeed, be particularly useful here: it could define the conditions under which Alphabet may integrate and promote AI Overviews and AI Mode within Google Search. The Commission has just completed two specification proceedings concerning Google, on Android interoperability and access to Search data. Whether it is prepared to open a third will indicate how seriously it intends to treat AI integration as a contestability problem.
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Saturday, July 18, 2026
Friday, July 17, 2026
Spaghetti Revolving Doors à la Meloni
The leadership of Italy’s Competition Authority has just been entrusted to a figure whose family background and institutional trajectory are deeply rooted in the Italian extreme right. Former Clearly Gottlieb, who has been representing Google & Co.
Now we watch.
Thursday, July 16, 2026
Like the Red Queen, the DMA in the AI age must run as fast as it can merely to remain in the same place.
Commission provides guidance to Google for AI interoperability on Android and sharing of Google Search data under the Digital Markets Act - EC, here.
Much tbd. Decisions not yet available, just a few thoughts for now.
The Article 6(7) specification proceeding may represent a transitional stage in DMA enforcement. The functional capabilities identified by the Commission—invocation, contextual awareness, the performance of actions and access to system resources—increasingly characterise the AI-assistant layer rather than the operating system as such. As AI assistants become the primary interface through which users access digital ecosystems, enforcement may therefore need to move from regulating operating-system interoperability to regulating AI assistants as core platform services in their own right.
Such a shift may already be possible under the existing DMA. Virtual assistants are expressly included among the categories of core platform services, and that concept could be interpreted functionally and in technologically neutral terms. This would be consistent with the General Court’s recent judgment in Apple, which rejected an understanding of a core platform service determined by the particular device or operating system through which it is provided, focusing instead on the common function performed by the service.
Should the Commission consider that interpretation legally uncertain, however, it should pursue the safer legislative route: initiating the procedures required to recognise generative and agentic AI assistants explicitly as a distinct category of core platform service. The DMA itself provides for investigations into new digital services and for periodic reconsideration of the existing CPS list, including through legislative proposals. Digital regulation cannot preserve its relevance by standing still. To borrow from the Red Queen, it must do all the running it can merely to remain in the same place; otherwise, the DMA risks becoming not the framework governing the emerging digital ecosystem, but an archaeological layer buried beneath it.
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
Rapport de la commission d’enquête sur nos vulnérabilités et dépendances numériques
Assemblée nationale, ici.
Monday, July 13, 2026
Saturday, July 11, 2026
What kind of incentives are we creating for the future of journalism, entertainment, and original content
C. Pedigo, here.
At Politico Tech Week I argued this isnthe type of questions useful economic thinking should deal with - forget Industrial Organization, which is mostly only a dangerous distraction.
Dreading your next teaching semester in the AI age? AI-resilient pedagogy might help
U. Chicago, Law School, here.
I subscribe to many of the points made here.
However, devices are great to take notes. Condemning students to the use of pen and paper is anachronistic at best. I'd erect barricades to restore the right to use my pad and e-pen in the classroom!
For IO economists and consultants only? What could possibly go wrong?
Theories of dynamic harm
- Giulio Federico, Oxera, Project Director for the Study
- Chiara Fumagalli, Bocconi University
- Nancy Rose, MIT
- Michele Polo, Bocconi University
- Laurent Eymard, BRG
Wednesday, July 08, 2026
A gatekeeper cannot transform a challenge to designation into a general anticipatory attack on the whole DMA regulatory regime.
Yours, EU GC here.
Also extremely interesting: "Since Apple has been unsuccessful, it must be ordered to pay the costs incurred by the Commission and Coalition for App Fairness, in accordance with the form of order sought by them."
Top: "the EU legislature intended to prevent the classification of a service under the DMA from varying according to the technological choices made by the gatekeeper" - technology neutrality. E.g., relevant legal question: does an AI assistant perform the function of a virtual assistant under the DMA?
Re EECC: hat the Court anticipated possible Apple's moves like a well-chosen national proceeding (before the BNetzA?) that generates a preliminary reference on Article 2(7) - eventually produce a CJEU ruling binding across both regimes?
Tuesday, July 07, 2026
Monday, July 06, 2026
Thursday, July 02, 2026
Google Android: the Court of Justice upholds Google’s fine of around €4.1 billion
CJEU, here.
Judging from the press
release, this is a victory on every front. And, this time, quite
literally without appeal. Whether EU competition law can still be
rescued and made more effective is another matter, but it should at
least put some courage back into our enforcers and policy makers!
Favourite
sentence so far "This applies all the more where the conduct at issue
does not lend itself to a quantitative, price-based analysis".
Least favourite: BEUC - The European Consumer Organisation should
bear its own legal costs. If the EU is serious about civil society as
part of its enforcement infrastructure the economics of standing before
its courts deserve the same scrutiny as the substance argued there. The
courts anchors liability in consumer harm (e.g., para. 414 on diversity
of information sources) but their representatives see nothing of the
€4.125 billion fine and have to bear their legal expenses?
Interestingly,
the Stockholm/PriceRunner ruling invites Android claimants (rival
search services, browser vendors, OEMs even?) to plead continuation past
2018. This could at least provide solid economic incentives to comply
with the related DMA obligations - quickly.
Wednesday, July 01, 2026
Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Saturday, June 27, 2026
Thursday, June 25, 2026
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Pax Silica: Europe’s Innovation Prize to Trump's America?
Pax Silica is presented by the US State Department as its flagship initiative on AI and supply-chain security; the FT reports the EU, Germany, the Netherlands and Greece have joined the US-led initiative.
It is hard to know whether this is merely the geopolitical equivalent of FIFA giving Donald Trump a Peace Prize, whereby EU's regret has already been scheduled.
The defining move is the shift from digital sovereignty to “innovation sovereignty”. Join the American stack, rely on American compute, capital and frontier firms, and call the result sovereignty. In a competitive account, innovation should unsettle monopoly. Here, it's the alibi for the US to preserve it.
Having watched the EU make odd moves in digital policy for decades, I often assumed there was a sensible plan I was failing to see. It turned out it was rather the German (car, mostly) industry, opportunistic national politicians, and/or plain stupidity. Is this time different?
Monday, June 22, 2026
Saturday, June 20, 2026
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Antitrust for EU Practitioners Without the Jet Lag
While Trump at the G7 Meeting just said in Macron's face "I'm the boss", cheerful atmosphere in sunny Brussels.
After twenty-four hours at the European Competition Forum, the first impressions are becoming sharper. The Forum, we learned, apparently began as a chat, with the European Commission also present, on a platform which one hopes was not itself the competition problem.
A second reason was more practical: the familiar pilgrimage to Washington to talk antitrust. At some point, someone apparently asked the obvious question: why not talk antitrust in Europe, without the jet leg? From that perspective, the Forum could become something the place (.Square") where antitrust practitioners from across the world come to discuss competition law not in Washington DC, but in Brussels. Or, as Executive Vice-President Ribera put it, in “the capital of the rule of law”.
At least yesterday and this morning, and this may change this afternoon or on the third day at the latest (when I will no longer be there), the panels followed a familiar pattern: competition authorities, some academics, companies, and possibly consultants, although not always clearly identified as such. Unsurprisingly, no one in the latter categories volunteered any possible conflicts of interest.
As for substance, frankly, there was little that a regular reader of this blog would not already know rather well. Antitrust received the usual beating: proceedings take at least seven years, while regulation is expected to be broader and faster. There was considerable praise for interoperability, including under the DMA. Unsurprisingly, once AI and interoperability entered the discussion, operating systems followed immediately, with Android and Apple as the obvious reference points.There was also a brief reference to digital sovereignty, innovation & Co. coupled with the familiar suggestion that competition policy can do little in these spaces.
On this point, I disagree. It is not competition policy as such that can do little. It is this kind of competition policy (besides the mixed, ex ante DMA) that can do little. A different competition policy could matter considerably more. But we are clearly not there yet. The intellectual centre of gravity remains markedly traditional and proven ineffective if not plain wrong.
That said, traditionalism is not a certainty any more; Yesterday, for instance, we heard some openings from the current EC competition chief economist that were broader than what we have heard from another entrenched IO economist, Fiona Scott Morton, who had also been considered for the same role. In that respect, one may say, with some relief, that the appointment could have been worse.
Live posts here.
Europe's Innovation Problem Is a Competition Problem
T. Valletti, the new evolutionary economist in town?, here;
Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Monday, June 15, 2026
Europe 2031- What getting AI wrong means for us
D. Juijn et al., here.
We're already in 2029! One antenna-raising is its recurring praise for partnering with American AI firms as the path forward for the European economy. Moreover, remarkably little discussion of market power, gatekeeping, interoperability, the DMA, etc.
Sunday, June 14, 2026
Saturday, June 13, 2026
Would you be able to change the underlying model that powers Siri AI. Ask Siri.
Someone just asked Siri to confirm if this would eventually be true, Here.
Friday, June 12, 2026
Thursday, June 11, 2026
How to get rid of Musk and the other Tech oligarchs? Do it like the Europeans do!
Jon Stewart's Weekly Show, here.
Wednesday, June 10, 2026
Google ecosystem: too opaque to regulate?
Google's own words about the opacity of the ecosystem, here.
Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers
The Decoder, here.
It is not that German judges invariably get it right — the dreadful Meta decision rather proves the point. Yet, as I recently told someone whose identity now escapes me, they remain among the very few actors in whom I still place some faith to save us from the "tragedy of AI."
The ruling here (AI translated0.
Tuesday, June 09, 2026
Monday, June 08, 2026
Friday, June 05, 2026
Thursday, June 04, 2026
VW cuts owners' access to their own vehicle data with API change
Heise.de, here.
Unsurprising, but this increasingly makes the Data Act a...laughing stock? A good idea that was already watered down during the long negotiations - never enough for the VDL-supported car industry!
More generally, are all regulatory systems that give 'API control' to the gatekeeper bound to fail? We discussed exactly this in Episode 3.
Sign the petition here.
Wednesday, June 03, 2026
Digital Markets Act: the General Court annuls the decision designating Meta as a gatekeeper as regards Marketplace
EC, here.
The crux is how the EC legally assessed the changes made in January/July 2023 (relevant/not relevant) and the reasons given. Not such a big deal, IMHO - another Pyrrhic victory by Meta?
How Trump supercharged the EU’s tech independence push
Politico.eu, here
[Is Europe condemned to an endless regulatory pilgrimage, forever seeking in the next regime the salvation denied by the last?]
Tuesday, June 02, 2026
Sunday, May 31, 2026
Technological Lifecycles and Dominant Designs: A Missing Lens for Antitrust
With L. Hummel, here.
Missing lens XXXX
Friday, May 29, 2026
Thursday, May 28, 2026
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Here. Helena Malikova should be a public icon by now, says Isabella Weber in her book . I agree! -
EFF, here.
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The Verge, here . A bit of hope in Zuckerberg's creative self-destruction then!
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Arte.tv, ici . Don't get me started. When Google was allowed to buy Waze I was already well into having given up on merger control...
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The Rapporteur, here . There was clearly political pressure on the CMA, and the CMA found a way to exert pressure on Meta (talking about ... -
ArsTechnica, here .
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M. von Thun, here .
