EC,
here.
"The Commission will...comprehensively analyse the role of online platforms (search engines, social media, app stores, etc.) in the market. This will cover issues such as the non-transparency of search results and of pricing policies, how they use the information they acquire, relationships between platforms and suppliers and the promotion of their own services to the disadvantage of competitors –
to the extent these are not already covered by competition law. It will also look into how to best tackle illegal content on the Internet."
Staff working paper
here.
"The accumulation and use of data by certain market players can contribute to their market
power, in particular in their relationship with the data suppliers", p. 53.
"Some platforms act as a marketplace and a retailer
at the same time. These platforms may use the transactional data acquired from business
users of the marketplace segment to enhance the performance of the platform's retail arm.
This can lead to discrimination in listing between platforms' own services and third party
services. Companies may also complain that they do not get access to the data collected
through transactions linked to their "products", p. 55.
"some platforms simply forbid companies from selling more
cheaply elsewhere (including the seller's own website, other platforms and all offline
distribution channels). The issue has already been examined by various competition
authorities", id.
"Given the dynamics of the markets created and served by platforms, and the relatively short
time that they have been in existence, more work is needed to
gather comprehensive and
reliable evidence on how different types of platform work and their effects on their customers
and the economy as a whole. On the basis of such an evidence base, an assessment can be
made of the nature of the problems that may arise from their pivotal role in the digital
economy and whether existing regulatory tools are sufficient to tackle them, or whether new
tools need to be developed" id.
