Since 2010, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) have acquired more than 400 companies. Competition authorities did not scrutinize most of these transactions and blocked none. This raised concerns that GAFAM acquisitions target potential competitors yet fly under the radar of...

Ad-supported websites face an increasing loss of monetizable ad impressions due to the rapid spread of adblockers, which allow users to get desired website content without unwanted advertising. As a countermeasure, many of these websites use anti-adblock filters, which detect adblock users and...

The digitisation of existing business models and the new way of doing business of digital platforms pose new challenges both to the performance of companies in the market and to the lives of consumers and users. The dominant digital companies are all American (Google, Facebook, Amazon, and...

This report provides an overview of the relevant economic research literature on platforms or multi-sided online markets. It discusses platforms from a regulatory policy angle, including potential market failures in platforms, the extent of self-regulation and possible regulatory responses...