ANTITRUST LAW IN THE AGE OF BIG TECH: REGULATING DIGITAL MARKET POWER AND SAFEGUARDINGCONSUMER INTEREST

In the contemporary digital economy, antitrust law feels a new set of powerful challengers in the form of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft among others. Large enterprises which control these numerous digital platforms, data infrastructure, and international markets, have elicited fears of their monopolistic nature, thus making these companies wield unprecedented market power.

This paper seeks to analyze and discuss the challenges that traditional antitrust legislation is facing due to certain features of the digital economy and activities of the dominant players, the Big Tech companies. Using experiences from the US and EU significant antitrust cases of Big Tech firms, this paper exposes the weaknesses of the existing legal policies and identifies the changes that need to be made to strengthen the competition law approach in the digital economy.

In particular, the paper analyzes such cases as United States v. Microsoft, the European Commission’s cases against Google, the FTC’s lawsuit against Facebook, Apple v. Epic Games, and others. It claims that the current antitrust legislation that is in place is inadequate for handling non-price competition questions that include data privacy, platform monopolies, and subsiding innovation. As a result, this paper offers a range of policy advice to the appropriate authorities to ensure that digital markets function in ways that guarantee the welfare of consumers while promoting innovation.