Thread by @Caffar3Cristina

So, showtime. While no one was paying attention, Google shifted the #search_monopoly from desktop to mobile - and won. Appeal heard next week: @EU_Competition decision in 2018, started in 2013, on econ theory of harm developed originally for the #Russian case before @FAS_RF 🧵1/

https://twitter.com/lewis_crofts/status/1441292564099854348

Aside from fripperies on market definition, real issue was #leveraging power in #Google_Playstore (that every OEM wanted) by offering it #free on condition Google Search was #preinstalled “at every entry point” on the device. Plus other goodies. No other engine stood a chance. 2/

Unusual (& initially counterintuitive) was that leveraging was not “from dominance in search” into something else, but from #must_have Playstore to establish & protect #search_monopoly. Eventually we got there: it’s like #Microsoft! Tying/ leveraging! There’s precedent! Cool.3/

This was a cracking theory of harm (if i say so myself) on leveraging in a two-sided market with a zero-price constraint, migrated from the Russian case into Europe. Written up properly by star economists JP Choi & DS Jeon, and by F. Etro & me (refs below) 4/

“A Leverage Theory of Tying in Two-sided Markets” aeaweb.org/articles?id=10… & “On the Economics of the Android Case” tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Too bad the #remedy (choice screen) worked in Russia but did nothing (and still does nothing) in Europe. Superdominance vs fragmented fringe v hard to dent. 5/

Follow reporting next week by @lewis_crofts, will be worth it (& fun)

Ah, disclosure of course: worked on Russian & EC case adverse to Google, @TomValletti was Chief Economist @EU_Competition at the time, current Chief Economist Pierre Regibeau was in my team. Small world. /end