Occasional Paper Series - July 2013

Occasional Paper Series - July 2013

The Harvard Journal of Law & Technology Occasional Paper Series is an online-only component intended to showcase thoughtful and innovative writings on a wide variety of subjects related to the law and technology field. These pieces are reformatted for consistency, but otherwise undergo no editing or cite-checking by the members of the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology.

Each generation, a new-economy case comes along that tests antitrust law. It features a new technology that threatens monopoly power and harm to rivals or competition. And it prompts the question of whether antitrust is up to the task. In the 1970s, it was IBM. In the 1990s, it was Microsoft. In 2013, it is Google.

This symposium offers five distinct approaches to Google’s relationship to antitrust. Pamela Samuelson discusses pricing and entry barrier antitrust concerns presented by the Google Book Search settlement. Mark Patterson focuses on Google’s market power, emphasizing users’ inability to evaluate search results. Frank Pasquale laments the FTC’s inaction on the case related to search and calls for access to Google’s algorithms. In contrast, Marina Lao highlights the subjectiveness of “search neutrality” and explains why it should not form the basis for antitrust liability. And Geoff Manne and William Rinehart criticize antitrust condemnation of Google that is based on expansive notions of foreclosure, narrowly construed markets, and insufficient appreciation of innovative product design.