Friso Bostoen

Wild that the US, through antitrust enforcement, has been more effective at getting app store fees down than the EU, which relied on antitrust enforcement + a specific regulatory framework (the Digital Markets Act). A lesson in there somewhere!

Quote from Friso Bostoen, CERRE Researcher and Assistant Professor of Competition Law and Digital Regulation Tilburg University: “Agents are set to be the defining service of the new AI era. Policymakers must protect innovation and contestability. With adjustments, the DMA can help achieve this.” Photo of Friso Bostoen on the right.

🗨️Alexandre de Streel & @bostoenfriso.bsky.social shared CERRE research on AI at GW’s Competition & Innovation Lab conference. They addressed:

✅ AI supply-chain concentration
✅ AI Act implementation
✅ Competition policy in digital markets

🔎Explore CERRE's research cerre.eu/publications/

Short & sweet contribution to a @capitolforum.bsky.social story on Microsoft's integration of AI services in its productivity suite.

Small but symbolic: in the Google judgment, Judge Mehta writes about the EU's "Digital Marketing Act" instead of the "Digital Markets Act" (quite a difference in meaning!). Might be representative of the US's substantive engagement with EU competition policy (with notable exceptions, of course).

A real change of tone from Nick Clegg, who until recently headed policy at Meta. The poison is in the "they *claim* to read the same books" line. Makes me mildly curious about his upcoming book.

Via @bloomberglp.bsky.social.

A final point on which US judges differ from the European Commission: they don't want to (or even can) play whack-a-mole on compliance. So the result of Apple minimally/formally complying (or not even that) is different from the EU: Apple must now allow linking out without *any* commission fee.

Apple v. Everybody In 2008, Apple released the App Store and allowed developers to start submitting apps. Steve was adamant that we review each and every app…

Maybe Shoemaker was the last App Store exec who was willing to seriously question the 30% fee (link). Many notable observers who are usually sympathetic to Apple have meanwhile questioned its extraction-at-all-costs strategy (e.g., Ben Thompson, John Gruber).

medium.com/@phillipshoe....

Now that I've finished reading, it's difficult to argue Schiller really defended developer interests. He is, also according to the judge, one of the few at Apple who actually read the judgment but, while being on "team no commission", he did want to make it very difficult for developers to link out.

The order exposes an internal battle of financial interests (Maestri) vs developer interests (Schiller), with the CEO (Cook) picking the first side. I'm afraid Apple's erosion of developer goodwill will harm it sooner than later—also financially.

US judges can be refreshingly direct (certainly compared to EU ones), but Judge YGR's contempt order in Epic v Apple is really something else. Worth reading in full (as I'm doing now).

Exclusive | Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Failed Negotiations to End Antitrust Case The FTC wanted $30 billion to drop its case. Zuckerberg offered much less and hoped Trump would back him up.

Apparently, Meta also considers itself likely to win the case, offering "only" $1B to settle it.

Interesting reporting by @wsj.com at www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

Mark Zuckerberg making the case for a spin-off of Instagram - a potential (and logical) remedy should the FTC win its ongoing case against the company (even if I think such a win is a distant prospect).

Via www.thebignewsletter.com

Woah, I used this exact scenario in an assignment for my International Competition Law class last semester. Life imitates art!

I'm trying Ecosia on mobile (Bing on desktop) and find its results noticeably worse.. I used DuckDuckGo on desktop & mobile before and found it fine though perhaps slightly inferior - that was a while ago though, it probably improved. Have only used Brave's browser before.

Been trying out different search engines & found Bing interesting. Microsoft set up a gamified system that rewards you for searching. Not overly generous (I collected a 10 EUR gift card after a year), but does suggest other search engines are underpaying (unless their quality is higher).

And hey, we’re here on Bluesky, not Twitter! But I agree that quite a lot has to happen before such switching.

Hence my reference to lock-in earlier; there are certainly factors that make platforms less sensitive to leaving and hence user interest. We go into how platforms can turn their back on users in this paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.....

To keep them from leaving! In that sense, the platform has an interest in satisfying the users’ interest.

Fair point. This was written a while ago and I can’t say my confidence in this statement grew since. But platforms do need to serve the interests of all user groups, incl consumers, even if lock-in can temper that.

Or should we look at quality-adjusted prices? Definitely an argument to be made that you get more out of an hour of HBO than an hour of Netflix

So, should we conclude that the consumer welfare gains from a subscription to Netflix are higher than those its competitors?

Via @bloomberg.com

Artificial Intelligence and Competition Law (Chapter 9) - The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Ethics and Policy of Artificial Intelligence The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Ethics and Policy of Artificial Intelligence - February 2025

Those with an interest in competition/AI might want to take a look at my chapter: www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

Great to see this in print!

I love the presence of 'competition' as a value in the US, from the old (American History Museum, first 3 📸) to the new (airport ad against Ticketmaster, last 📸). Special, even if the antitrust conversation doesn't always follow.

DMA and Beyond Conference – Knight-Georgetown Institute

Thanks @megangray.bsky.social! No paper on SSRN just yet, but you can find the conference draft linked here: kgi.georgetown.edu/events/dma-a....

Is the Netherlands a #DMA enforcement paradise? This paper outlines how the #Netherlands has influenced the DMA & examines the ACM's preparations to play a key role in its enforcement.

Read: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Subscribe: www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en...

#LawSky

If you're still looking for holiday reading, let me plug my paper 'Creation and Competition in the Metaverse', which goes into interoperability & the creator economy.

If you have half the fun reading it as I had writing it, it promises to be a good time!

ssrn.com/abstract=497...

Just came across some data that confirms the above: Google Hotels/Lodging loses quite some traffic (-33%), which is mostly compensated by ads & intermediated channels (at a higher cost).

www.mirai.com/blog/dma-imp...

So (i) more ads, a cost that finds its way into the consumer price; & (ii) more intermediation, as consumers more easily end up on a platform rather than the hotel's site, which again leads to fees for hotels & finally consumers. Not a great outcome but is this due to the DMA or Google's compliance?

You can still get to the 'map with hotels' view by scrolling down or by clicking the 'Lodging' tab. I think these results are not sponsored but am not 100% sure.