✅ Unit 1 of this subject is free to read: open Unit 1 → · 🛒 order the package →
Unit 7: Recent Development Trends
7.1 Digital Markets and the Challenges They Pose to Competition Law
The platform economy broke antitrust’s assumptions:
| Classic assumption | Digital reality |
|—|—|
| Zero price = no market | Free services paid in attention and data |
| Small share = no power | Network effects: small share, total lock-in |
| Entry disciplines incumbents | Entry barriers: data, ecosystems, default positions |
| Price is the harm metric | Quality, privacy, innovation the metrics |
| One market at a time | Ecosystems leaping market to market |
The challenges: multi-sided platforms (subsidizing one side, monetizing the other — the zero-price side’s very definition); network effects (the winner-take-most dynamic); data advantages (the feedback flywheel: more users → more data → better service → more users); default positions (the pre-installed, the pre-selected); and acquisition strategy (buying nascent rivals — the killer-acquisition file). The institutional answers worldwide: new digital-market acts (ex-ante codes for gatekeepers — the DMA model), specialised digital-market units, and the revived structural-remedy appetite (breakup theories returning after decades).
7.2 Big/Small Tech and Competition Issues
Big Tech (the gatekeepers): search, social, marketplaces, app stores, operating systems — the enforcement wave’s names: the shopping-comparison self-preferencing case (Google), the app-store gates, the ebook conspiracy (Apple), the browser/OS tying (Microsoft — the classic that taught the moderns), the privacy-harms-as-competition-harms argument (the FTC-Facebook file).
Small Tech (the challengers): startups as the innovation defence — and as acquisition bait; the small-business view of platforms (the restaurant and the delivery app; the shop and the marketplace — dependency without bargaining power).
The Nepali reflection: platform markets reach Nepal (the social-marketplaces, the ride apps, the payment apps) while enforcement capacity is nascent — the 2063 Act’s amendment debates reading the digital template: platform provisions, data-access remedies, and the extraterritorial question of Unit 5.
7.3 Emerging Trends in Competition Policy
- Sustainability:
This is a preview. The complete Competition Law notes — full unit, Exam Focus box and model questions — are in the PDF / full version. Get the complete notes →