SUMMARY:

In 2015, the FCC’s Title II Open Internet broadband order was predicated on a demonstrably false central competitive premise: that the Internet’s edge was competitive while the broadband Internet core was not competitive. The facts prove the opposite.

The 2015 FCC’s competition premise is myth.

While there is plenty of information in the record, and in the July 17 comments, that broadband is  competitive, until now there has been little data and research on the overall competitiveness of the Internet edge providers, save for NetCompetition’s July 17^th comments that showed how concentrated the Internet edge is using the Internet Association as a proxy.

To further rebut comments that were predicated on the demonstrably false central premise that the Internet’s edge is competitive, NetCompetition submits additional Internet competition research below.

Summary: The substantial evidence catalogued here provides proof of the Internet’s cartelization, extreme concentration, winner-take-all tendencies, and mythical competition. The public data shows that the tacit Internet cartel of Google, Amazon and Facebook is 7-8 times more concentrated than the top three offline companies and that the top ten Internet economy companies are >10 times more concentrated than the top ten offline economy companies.

Public data that Google, Amazon, and Facebook have acquired ~350 potential competitors and the Internet Association overall has acquired ~900 potential competitors, indicates that the apparent cartelization of Internet companies’ investment, acquisition, and innovation processes ensure no innovative “garage startup” has a plausible competitive opportunity to seriously threaten the Internet cartel’s dominance.

Public data also ironically shows that almost all the Internet Association’s members are anti-competitively threatened by one of more of the Google, Amazon, or Facebook, winner-take-all online onslaughts.

U.S. antitrust authorities have enabled a cartelized and extremely concentrated Internet by taking their eye off the purpose of antitrust law -- protecting the process of competition, by first protecting the process of innovation by dominant online platforms.

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Why are none of Google’s many paid experts not publicly defending Google and Facebook’s 2014 decisions to stop competing against each other in search and social? And why are they not trumpeting the pro-consumer, pro-innovation, and increased efficiency benefits of accelerating their digital advertising dominance since those decisions?

The silence is telling, and maybe even suspicious, given the DOJ cartel enforcement “what to look for”  primer.

Summary: Amazon’s monopolization ambitions, strategies, and tying tactics are eerily like Google’s.  Both these companies likely have not earned their respective dominances purely on merit, but also via illegal anti-competitive behaviors.

At a minimum, Amazon’s proposed acquisition of WholeFoods warrants an FTC “second request” for information, i.e. a fuller antitrust investigation of whether the acquisition could “substantially lessen competition” in any implicated relevant markets.

How much smoke and fire must there be, and how many people must get burned, before the fire department will investigate and put out a forest fire?

Apparently, a lot, if the forest fire is in the digital ad market that Google and Facebook dominate, and U.S. antitrust authorities are the firefighters.

Where’s the fire here?

Google and Facebook, which don’t directly compete in search and social, together dominate over 70% of the digital advertising market. They also dominate about 80% of online referral traffic, the online oxygen upon which every Internet publisher depends for survival.

After fiercely competing directly with each other in search and social in 2013 and 2014, Google and Facebook abruptly and quietly stopped competing against each other in 2014 with no explanation.

Since then, Google and Facebook have accelerated their capture of almost all digital ad revenue growth and profitability, exposing that Google and Facebook have become a de facto cartel that has illegally divided up the digital advertising space.

In 2014, Google and Facebook apparently decided they could each optimize their growth and profitability by colluding as dominant market complements to each other, rather than competing head-to-head as less efficient search-social competitors.

The economic motivation behind Google and Facebook’s apparent illegal market division is this.

July 17, 2017

FCC Restoring Internet Freedom WC No. 17-108

Submission by Scott Cleland, Chairman, NetCompetition (An e-forum supported by broadband interests.)

Debunking Edge Competition Premises in FCC 2015 Title II Broadband Order – FCC Comments

In 2015, the FCC’s Title II Open Internet broadband order implicitly was based on three core competitive premises about “edge” competition and competitors, that are demonstrably false, which undermines the factual legitimacy and legal justification of the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet order, and which supports the current FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom NPRM to overturn it.

Summary: The 2015 FCC’s three demonstrably false core competitive premises are:

Ironically, the world’s leading winner-take-all Internet platforms -- Google, Amazon, and Facebook -- are the leading voices of the July 12th “Internet-wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality.” They want to pressure the U.S. FCC to maximally regulate ISPs as Title II telephone utilities, even though they don’t believe in operating neutral networks themselves.

Even more ironic, is this 1 min. Google-YouTube video -- by the Internet Association, “the unified voice of the Internet economy.” It defines net neutrality and what it wants the FCC to ban ISPs from doing. However, those banned behaviors closely describe how Google, Facebook and Amazon often operate. Awkward.

In yet another video supporting this Day of Action, three U.S. Senators video message said: “We believe the Internet is the extraordinary opportunity that gives everybody in America the chance to get ahead. We have to make sure it is not controlled by a handful of powerful corporations.”

This piece has two tasks.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, June 29, 2017, Contact:  Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

FCC General Counsel Brendan Carr Is a Great Pick for FCC Commissioner by President Trump 

WASHINGTON D.C. – The following may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition:

“President Trump’s nomination of FCC General Counsel Brendan Carr to be an FCC Commissioner is a great selection. He is exceptionally skilled, knowledgeable, and experienced on FCC issues; and he has proven to be a highly productive and capable FCC General Counsel in managing the FCC’s very heavy workload transparently, effectively, and expeditiously.”

NETCompetition.org is a pro-competition e-forum representing broadband interests. 

Scott Cleland served as Deputy U.S. Coordinator for  International Communications and Information Policy in the George H. W. Bush Administration. 

What’s quintessential illegal monopoly behavior?

A dominant company that is proactively, consistently, and purposefully focused on eliminating most of its business competition, not just competing on the merits, but also via illegal collusion, predation, anti-competitive acquisition, and obstruction of justice.

That quintessential illegal monopoly behavior belongs to Alphabet-Google 2007-2017.

The public evidences of Google’s patterns of collusion, predation, anti-competitive acquisition, and obstruction of law enforcement are substantial and hiding in plain sight.

They are just waiting for DOJ antitrust leadership, investigators and prosecutors to connect the dots in an up-to-date theory of the case, after organizing and synthesizing the substantial investigative evidence that already resides in the DOJ’s and FTC’s antitrust files, because of ten different U.S. Google antitrust-related investigations of Google by either the DOJ or FTC from 2007-2013.

In addition, some law enforcement conclusions and actions involving Google from 2007-2013 have been proved either wrong or ineffective with the benefit of hindsight, that now need to be addressed.

If one considers the evidence, it is evident that U.S. antitrust enforcers have enabled the current “new normal” of online winner-take-all platforms: Alphabet-Google in e-information, Amazon in e-commerce, Facebook in e-social, Uber in e-transportation services, Airbnb in e-accommodation services, and a “unicorn” queue of online winner-take-all platform wannabes.

Summary of Conclusions

U.S. antitrust officials should be alarmed by the extreme early concentration of a relatively young twenty-year old, U.S. online company marketplace.

Five online winner-take-all platforms -- Google, Amazon, Facebook, Uber and Airbnb -- already command ~80% of U.S. online companies’ revenue share and market capitalization.

And they are collectively capturing 82% of U.S. online companies’ revenue growth share, meaning they are growing more dominant not less.