A Variation-Selection-Adaptation Framework for the Digital Markets Act

S. Vezzoso [me], here. 

Competitiveness, Competition, and Competition Policy

 O. Budzinski, A. Stöhr, here.

Austrian Supreme Court: Meta must give users full access to their data

noyb,  here.

Compensation of Damages in Digital Markets.

 Here.

Distribution Is Oxygen. Endurance Is the Moat

 S. Wu, here.

Wir haben gewonnen!

 Here.

The Changing Role of European Competition Policy: Past, Present and Future

 Oxera, here.

Internet Services: Top 10 most popular Internet services worldwide

 Cloudflare Radar, here. 

First Draft Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content

 EC, here. 

Meanwhile, in Japan: App Store Gets Alternative Marketplaces, Third-Party Payments and More

 MacRumors, here. 

Financially and technologically viable? Hardly, according Tim Sweeney: Fortnite will not return to iOS in Japan in 2025. 

Open Letter: Stop Apple’s Illegal App Store Fees Under DMA

 Coalition for App Fairness, here.

And now for something completely different: The Seven Mountains Mandate

 

The NerdReich, here. 

[To be clear: not the name of a demanding ski slope up in Trento's mountains].

Anti-American(s) Antitrust: Trump Antitrust

Just for a laugh:  Anti-American Antitrust: How Foreign Governments Target U.S. Businesses | House Judiciary Committee Republicans. 

Portuese's portrait of the DMA should haunt him for a while...

What's going on with Big Tech and AI, Jonathan?

Video here.  

Pepsi and Walmart’s Monopolization Machine Revealed

 D. Dayen, here. 

Google AI summaries are ruining the livelihoods of recipe writers: ‘It’s an extinction event’

 Guardian, here. 

Producto gegen Google: Landgericht Berlin II

 Az.: 16 0 275/24, hier. 

"AI isn’t a theoretical thing...It’s already embedded in how Hollywood is operating now.”

 

Bloomberg, here. 

EU pushes back against US effort to change bloc’s tech rules

 Bloomberg, here. 

Merriam-Webster 2025 Word of the Year: Slop

 Here.

DSGVO-Reform: Rechtssicherheit und Innovation gehen Hand in Hand – Anpassungen für KI erforderlich

 DSK, hier. 

Making the Digital Markets Act Developer-Friendly

 L. Lasota, D. Presutti, J. Palepu, here. 

THE GREAT UNRAVELLING

 FEPS, here.

Keynote opening Digital Commons EDIC: Moving beyond the Digital Uncommons

 BertHub.eu, here. 

A Pragmatic Win, Not a Structural Fix, in South Africa’s Deal with Big Tech

 M. Markovitz, here. 

Final Report, here. 

Who are Tech Experts and What Can They Bring to Competition Enforcement?

 T. Davies, here. 

"I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry

 Blood in the Machine, here. 

Japan law opening phone app stores to go into effect

 

NHK, here. 

At the A19 DMA Conference last month, we had a very good presentation on this!  

Volksbanken ermöglichen iPhone-Zahlungen ohne Apple Pay

 WiWo, hier. 

Australia’s social media ban carries health warning for Big Tech investors

 FT, here. 

Google and Fortnite make peace

 Times of India, here. 

Apple loses its appeal of a scathing contempt ruling in iOS payments case

 ArsTechnica, here. 

Information manipulation in the age of generative artificial intelligence

 EPRS, here. 

Economic Planning in the Anthropocene

 Conference, Videos here. 

The Antitrust Case Against Airbnb

 The Sling, here. 

Is iRobot's demise a sign that competition and innovation in the market for robot vacuum cleaners *are indeed working*? #Discuss

 

Who's innovating here? What about data protection? The whole dilemma...

This consent judgment risks creating a blueprint for multinational companies to evade regulatory penalties in Nigeria

 I. Peters, here. 

The ACM has *just* been given powers to enforce the P2B Regulation [check: applicable since 2020] and you want to repeal it?

 Here.

Lina Khan on Warner Brothers

 Here.

Comments are all ❤️❤️❤️ for her, nice to see! A class apart as antitrust enforcer. 

Joint paper by the members of the HLG on Artificial Intelligence - Mapping out regulatory interplay related to AI issues

 Here.

ENSURING A NATIONAL POLICY FRAMEWORK FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

 EO, here.

Epic v. Apple, again

 Here.

Concurrence et compétitivité de l’UE : audition de B. Coeuré

 Ici.

Gutachten zu Zugriffsmöglichkeiten von US-amerikanischer Sicherheitsbehörden

 Köln Uni, hier und hier. 

Gangster Antitrust

 

Digital Commons EDIC launches to advance Europe’s technological sovereignty

 EC, here. 

Disney Accuses Google of Using AI to Engage in Copyright Infringement on ‘Massive Scale’

 Variety, here. 

A few hours later: 

Disney to Invest $1 Billion in OpenAI, License Characters for Use in ChatGPT, Sora, here. 

XVI JORNADAS NACIONALES DE DEFENSA DE LA COMPETENCIA

 ACCO, aquì y aquì.

Instacart Shares Fall on Report of Experimental Price Testing

 WSJ, here.

Commission raids Temu office over foreign subsidy concerns

 Euractiv, here.

Another word of the year: sycophancy

 US AGs to GenAI companies, here.

How Netflix’s WB Megadeal Stunned Hollywood — and Sparked a Fight From David Ellison

 Variety, here.

Europe's Tech Dependency

 Bruegel, here.

 

 

(Talking about lobbying: Alexandra and Robin should perhaps ask...Who's financing Bruegel, BTW?)  

 

 

Google adding more links in AI Mode, testing AI features for Google News

 9To5Mac, here.

The usual playbook, AI edition!

Google is testing AI-powered article overviews on select publications’ Google News pages

 TechCrunch, here. 

La Commission européenne enquête sur l’IA de Google

 RFI, ici. 

A pay-to-scrape AI licensing standard is now official

 The Verge, here. 

Data Act FAQ for DPOs

 CEDPO, here. 

Interview: Meet the competition lawyer taking Microsoft to task over its cloud licensing tactics

 ComputerWeekly, here (Isa, again!). 

What Europe’s Digital Markets Act Has Delivered So Far and What Comes Next

 Isa and Mark, here. 

EU Court upholds antitrust fine on Intel but reduces it to €237 million

 Euractiv, here. 

Cory Doctorow - Rescuing the Internet From “Enshittification”

 Daily Show, Video here. 

How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants - and how I built a dashboard to see through it

 L. Leek, here. 

EU says easier iPhone-Android switching is proof the DMA is working

 9To5Mac, here. 

Fascintern Media

 R. Berjon, here. 

Full transcript: POLITICO's interview with Donald Trump

 Here. 

[I watched it all, pretty weird - the journalist was amazing] 

Surveillance pricing, perfected (?)

 More PerfectUnion, here.

That may be the word of the year: turbulence.

 T. Ribera, here.

How People Use AI Agents

 Perplexity, here.

EU Probes Google Over Use of Online Content to Power AI

 WSJ, here. 

Laid-back piece by Edith. Exercise in gauging in which way the breeze (gale?) is blowing? 

The age-old saying “the devil is in the details” may not have been devised with the drafting of an antitrust remedies judgment in mind, but it sure does fit

 Judge Mehta, here. 

The DMA Lab #1: DMA Review | DMA & Geopolitics | Goals, Cases: with René Repasi & Niklas Brüggemann

 Here. 

We've been playing ourselves with the idea of a DMA Lab for more than a year...Competition! 

[We didn't hear about Panelists/Hosts' conflicts of interest - no professional involvement, such as representing clients, at all?] 

Commission opens investigation into possible anticompetitive conduct by Google in the use of online content for AI purposes

EC, here. 

[NotebookLM's own DeepDive here, just for fun]

In our Article 19 Report we discussed this and how it could eventually translate into a DMA obligation here.   

I'd add another aspect, if I may 😉: downstream products like NotebookLM having exclusive access to YouTube videos to produce content? Perhaps not a copyright infringement (derivative?) but what about competition in downstream markets for AI-related products? 

The Slingshot, with Tim Wu

Here.  

AI Antitrust Amnesty in the US - What about in the EU?

 In the US, here. 

I posed the question this morning and received an answer within 30 minutes. That was efficient, thank you!

Pay Attention to How You Pay Attention

 E.Klein, here. 

Commonwealth Bank pays penalties and offers redress for alleged breaches of Consumer Data Right Rules

 ACCC, here. 

Please, don't automate science!

 Togelius, here.

The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI (05 Dec 2025)

 C. Docrorow, here.

Digitale Souveränität: Kann Europa das schaffen?

 Deutschlandfunk, hier.

On extracting yourself from the extractors

 The great Elettra, here. Don't miss her!

Elettra gave a much appreciated guest lecture to us in Trento 4 (? must check) years ago  - in our (comparitively) age of innocence...

The Protocol-Institution Continuity, and other "Chicche"

From R. Berjon's Guest Lecture, Trento University, 5th Dec. 

Check My Ads Institute Comments on the Joint Guidelines on the Interplay Between DMA and GDPR

 Here.

Context Portability for Agents with Fabric, Google, and DTI

 Video, here.

What has modern slavery to do with competition policy?

 ACCC, here.

"Computers were not intended to make judgement decisions"

 

BBC, 1970 [same year as the Hesse legislation] here. 

We were on a very promising path, what happened since?  

 

Europe’s clean, just and competitive transition: a conversation with Teresa Ribera

 Bruegel, here. 

Search engines in times of Artificial Intelligence

 EPRS, here. 

The DMA at the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs Ordinary meeting

 Video here.

Commission opens antitrust investigation into Meta's new policy regarding AI providers' access to WhatsApp

 EC, here.

Meta to face competition probe over AI use in WhatsApp, Ribera confirms

 Euractiv, here.

How are they going to coordinate with the Italian proceeding? Looking forward to interim measures!

Of course, also the DMA should already be updated - at least by delegated act (pity they didn't open any proceeding yet - as we discussed at our A19 Conference). 

From a 2024 (time flies) article "it appears quite probable that some form of platform integration, potentially through the blending of AI or virtual worlds technologies in WhatsApp, may occur." No crystal ball required!

Artificial intelligence, intellectual property, and human rights: mapping the legal landscape in European health systems

 R. van Kessel, here.

IPFS at Eurosky Live Berlin: Highlights From A Bright Future

 R. Berjon, here.

And tomorrow (virtually) at Trento University. 

Review of the EU Merger Guidelines – Stakeholder Workshop of 4th December 2025 and "Trento Choice" of relevant questions

Today in our Trento classroom the discussion turns to merger control. The timing is well suited, as Brussels today is holding a workshop on how the system might be reshaped. This creates a practical dilemma for anyone teaching the subject: it is not obvious what to present with confidence when the current framework is not performing especially well. 

Still, the workshop offers a coherent set of questions that helps to structure the debate and clarifies what is worth addressing. Here is the Trento selection of questions we consider most relevant/intriguing:

.

 

US lobbying playbook, delivered to you by Teneo

 SOMO, here.

A fresh approach to competition policy

 EC, here.

Great! Who should deliver it?

The economics of copyright and AI

 C. Peukert, here.

Whenever I see a "model" applied to policy, as a PhD economist I ask myself: do we really need it? What's the model obfuscating which would instead matter to policymakers? 

Silicon Valley Builds Amazon and Gmail Copycats to Train A.I. Agents

 NYT, here. 

Future-proofing the EU: ordoliberal governance and algorithmic regulation

 A. Küsters, here. 

Best contribution to the OECD panel "Artificial Intelligence and Competitive Dynamics in Downstream Markets"

 Douze points go to...

[CADE's contribution to the proposals of regulation of the AI systems, under analysis by the Brazilian Congress here; BTW, did our EU competition authorities submit contributions re AI Act?]

Study on the next data frontier: generative AI, regulatory compliance and international dimensions

 Final Report, for the EC, here. 

Where you read: "Public initiatives such as Common European Data Spaces and GAIA-X are widely anticipated to improve data accessibility, but awareness and participation remain limited, especially among SMEs." - GAIA-X, seriously? How much did the EC pay for this Report? 

AI poses unprecedented threats. Congress must act now

 B. Sanders, here.

Mehr Rechtssicherheit durch Verbots- und Erlaubnistatbestände

 TUM Think Tank, hier.

Bundeskartellamt prüft Lösungsvorschläge von Apple im ATTF-Verfahren – Markttest gestartet

 Hier.

[I can't believe this is still ongoing, really]

Time To Decide Europe Summit 2025

 ERSTE Foundation, here. 

The operator of an online marketplace cannot avoid its obligations under the GDPR by relying on the exemption from liability provided for by Directive 2000/31

 CJEU, here. 

Google ordered to pay $55m in penalties for anti-competitive conduct

ACCC, here. 

The Standards of Fairness in Digital Law

P. Van Cleynenbreugel, L. Grozdanovski (Eds), here. 

The Public Value of Arts and Culture: Investing in Arts and Culture to Reimagine Economic Growth in the 21st Century

 M. Mazzucato, here. 

Google deletes X post after getting caught using a ‘stolen’ AI recipe infographic

 BleepingComputer, here. 

[It's complicated] 

A Variation-Selection-Adaptation Framework for the Digital Markets Act

AI generated - don't trust it ;-) 

S. Vezzoso, ORDO 2026.

Abstract: This paper examines the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) through the lens of an evolutionary economics framework structured around the concepts of variation, selection, and adaptation (VSA). It argues that the DMA represents a bold, systemic regulatory shift, motivated by the inadequacy of traditional antitrust enforcement to address entrenched digital dominance. By introducing the VSA framework, the paper offers a novel tool for evaluating how effectively the DMA promotes contestability— with innovation as the form of competition most at risk in digital markets. The framework is applied to the case of online search, with a focus on Alphabet, the only search engine designated as a gatekeeper to date. The analysis highlights the extent to which current DMA obligations promote variation (diversity), counter biased selection mechanisms, and enable effective adaptation among gatekeepers, challengers, other market participants, and regulators. It also identifies persistent gaps in regulatory design and implementation, suggesting that additional measures may be needed to fulfil the DMA’s stated ambitions. In doing so, the paper contributes both a structured analytical approach and critical insights to the ongoing evaluation and future development of the DMA. 

Digital Omnibus: First Analysis of Select GDPR and ePrivacy Proposals by the Commission

 noyb, here.

Europe needs a plan for decoupling from America

 FT, here. 

A Decade of OECD Competition Trends, Data and Insights

 OECD, here. 

Situating the Dynamic Competition Approach

AI Generated 

  N. Petit et al.,  here.

Expanding Google Cloud’s Cross-Cloud Network with a groundbreaking AWS collaboration

 Google, here. 

During the A19 Conference, we discussed why there wasn't any ongoing DMA qualitative designation for the third hypescaler 🤔 

Immediately after Mehta let Google escape, the company reconstituted its monopolization techniques in the generative AI space

 M. Stoller, here. 

In the US *only* - of course.......

Global Forum on Competition 2025

Video of the opening here. 

We're relying on Teresa to come up with something useful ;-)  

 

Brazil: "concerns" about the possible sharing of personal data between WhatsApp and Meta for the purpose of targeted advertising

 ANPD, here. 

Privacy's Autonomy Thicket: Disentangling Choice, Consent, and Control

 N. Richards et al., here. 

What if generative AI is reaching its limits?

 EPRS, here. 

N.Y. Law Could Set Stage for A.I. Regulation’s Next ‘Big Battleground’

 NYT, here. 

Seventh AI Pact webinar on AI Innovation for SMEs and startups

 Video here. 

Google Unbundles YouTube Services Following Korean Competition Probe

 CPI, here.