Evans: US antitrust punishes lawbreaking while Europe engineers market competition
Benedict Evans · How do you destroy a tech monopoly? · Nov 2, 2020 · at 29:05
Benedict Evans contrasts American and European regulatory frameworks, explaining why differing legal philosophies complicate transatlantic coordination on Big Tech antitrust.
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“US regulation tends to proceed in criminal cases. They tend to look, they tend to say, did you break the Sherman Antitrust Act of 16, 21, or whenever the hell they passed it? And yes or no, and if yes, then we will do this thing. And 20 years ago, they tried to do this to Microsoft, and in fact, part of the problem of the Microsoft case was it was actually quite narrowly focused on contracts with OEMs, and the judge sort of expanded it into saying, well, then I'm going to break up Microsoft, and that just didn't really follow, and didn't happen. And so, whereas the UK and European approach is to say, this is a big important market, there's no competition, there's structural reasons why there aren't competition, so we're going to change the way the market works to create more competition.”
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