Assessing online platform mergers : Taking up the new challenges faced by the French Competition Authority in the digital economy

The purpose of this article is to share the lessons learned by the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) following its first in-depth investigation of a merger case involving two major online platforms. The FCA believes that anti-competitive risks arising out of Internet platform mergers must be carefully assessed through a case-by-case analysis accompanied by a large body of evidence, in order to conduct a proper investigation. Examples of evidence used in this case include a focus on the typology of platforms, the type of services they provide, their sources of revenue, and the behavior of their users on each side of the market. Questions concerning potential competitive pressure, especially from super-platforms, in addition to potential barriers to expansion, were also at the core of the analysis. The competitive assessment focused on specific risks posed by this kind of merger, such as the impact of a change of scale and of data collection on the remaining effective competition in the market. The FCA has laid the first stone in developing an innovative approach that can be used in the future to assess mergers in the digital economy