Amazon And Google May Face Antitrust Scrutiny Under Trump

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Powerful tech platforms have platform privilege -- the incentive and ability to prioritize their own products and services over those of competitors. In my last Washington Bytes post, I wrote about Facebook competing against news publishers that depend on its platform to reach customers. In the same way, Amazon competes against merchants and Google competes against websites that depend on them.

Because platform privilege involves leveraging market power to alter the competitive playing field, it can lead to antitrust problems. Google has born the brunt of antitrust enforcers’ ire to date, but is Amazon next?

Two recent papers sound the alarm about Amazon’s market power and control over much of the infrastructure of modern commerce. In Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, Lina Khan explains that antitrust law, originally intended to check political power, has evolved to measure harm predominantly through consumer prices. Amazon grew through predatory underpricing strategies that distorted competition, but antitrust doctrine’s single-minded focus on price left these tactics unchecked, argues Khan.


Power, not just prices, is the point of antitrust law, she asserts, quoting Senator John Sherman during the 1890 passage of the Sherman Act: “If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessities of life.”