The Internet of Change: Foreword to the Symposium on the Google and Facebook Cases

Abstract

In this Essay, which serves as a Foreword to the Antitrust Bulletin Symposium issue on the Google and Facebook cases, I argue that the Internet is now in the process of disrupting antitrust, as it has disrupted so many other areas of business and political life. This should not be surprising. The basic architecture of the Internet—decentralization and content agnosticism—enabled disruption; disruption is a “feature not a bug.” There is no reason to think that this disruption is now over and good reason to recognize its effect on antitrust. The Essay thus sketches out some of the ways in which the “Internet of Change” is now disrupting antitrust, including basic legal concepts (“markets” “monopoly”), economic models (reduced output is not the problem), and theories of harm. The Essay then provides short descriptions of the articles in the Symposium and concludes that although the Internet of Change has increased our impatience, we may have no choice but to await the slow and uncertain progress of the current litigation.