Dan Wall

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@tommydprimetim1 @BlueDotFlu Man, you are so craving for attention.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@Sherman1890 HMT is just a tool, originally developed to make sure markets based on substitution weren’t too narrow. It morphed into a way of defining narrower markets, canceling out consumer behavior. Excluding products consumer behavior says are subs is always questionable.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@johnmarknewman @FTC @Meta Hi, John. I’m surprised by the question since I tend to think a defining characteristic of the movement is to favor the content of pre-1960s caselaw, without regard to whether advances in our understanding of economics continues to support or undermine the cases. Disagree?

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@Sherman1890 So if there is no evidence that the firm is making monopoly profits, and it hasn’t reduced output, aren’t we done? Why hypothesize anything?

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@Sherman1890 Boasberg reminds that HMT helps decide whether imperfect substitutes are constraining enough. The utility of that in a retrospective case has always been unclear to me. Not just a Cellophane issue. If there is no evidence of high profits, etc., how does HMT help us infer power?

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@dougmelamed @profthomlambert @Sherman1890 “Common” doesn’t do it justice. It is a practically defining characteristic of the Neo-Bs to claim that anyone who defends the antitrust consensus that existed for decades before they came along is owned by, and a tool of, big corporations. So tiring.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@geoffmanne @johnmarknewman @ErikHovenkamp @danielahanley @Sherman1890 I agree with that in principle, but no remedy should permit its easy evasion. I wonder if this is the court‘s way of dealing with this problem that if you take Google out of play entirely, there’s not much competition for the default status.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@johnmarknewman @ErikHovenkamp Hmmm. From a liability perspective, it makes sense to think that one year exclusive agreements wouldn’t be a problem. But allowing that here? Seems like the opposite of fencing in. I hope that is not what he intends.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@johnmarknewman @Sherman1890 John, I am much less optimistic than others about AI lessening Google’s monopoly power. Maybe, but I don’t think so. I am not comfortable with the reliance on that in shaping the remedies package. Hope I’m wrong.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@danielahanley @johnmarknewman @Sherman1890 I’m definitely not saying that you can’t do more than enjoin the conduct. Clearly you can. I’m saying structural relief is never granted when prohibitory injunctions and fencing-in provisions appear to be reasonable remedies. That is an empirical observation over 40 years.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@johnmarknewman @Sherman1890 There was never any reasonable chance of getting divestiture in a lawsuit over exclusive default contracts. We don’t restructure firms because they engage in bad contracting practices. This sense of failure is because the proposed remedy defined winning in unachievable terms.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@GusHurwitz And entirely unsurprising. While Google way overplayed Microsoft, the basic causation requirement is there and makes sense.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@Sherman1890 Oh man. Individualized issues re causation are one of the few arguments that work to defeat class cert.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@Rock5491 @dougmelamed @DanielDancrane Is populism not ideology? That’s what it is. All of this is an effort to make antitrust play to the crowd that hates big corporations. And I’m sorry, Doug, but there is no way those guidelines play within the proper bounds of the consumer welfare standard.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@Sherman1890 @TimSweeneyEpic I do. This begs the question of when are you going to look at substitutability? Before or after you choose iOS or android? And are we just going to ignore that Apple and Google are competing for the same customers?

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@danielahanley @Sherman1890 I sure hope you will say that when the next Supreme Court decision on mergers comes down. Brown Shoe will be dust. And Anthem? It applied Baker Hughes and only relied on old SCOTUS cases wrt efficiencies.

[Dan Wall @DanWall55]

@Sherman1890 The problem is that in the presence of switching costs, aftermarkets commonly pass HMT no matter how intense the systems competition effect may be. That creates an extremely high risk of false positives.