The Internet has evolved from a “hierarchy”—in which interconnection was achieved by having Internet Service Providers (ISPs) purchase transit services from top-level backbones and top-level backbone providers engage in direct settlement-free peering—to a “mesh” in which peering...

There is currently a great deal of interest in online competition, particularly involving large tech firms such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (a group commonly known as “GAFAM”). In this essay I examine several issues involving these firms that have often come up both in...