Potential abuses of dominance by big tech through their use of Big Data and AI

Abstract

Abstract While companies are targeting online shoppers with increased precision thanks to their combined use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, concerns have been expressed among competition law scholars that giant tech companies may use their enhanced market power resulting from their access and control of Big Data and AI to foreclose the market from potential competitors and subsequently charge higher prices to consumers. If proven, such practices amount to abuses of dominance in the meaning of Article 102 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union. The recent adoption by the European Commission of its proposal for a Regulation on the Digital Markets Act aiming at setting up rules to ensure that markets characterized by large platforms acting as gatekeepers, remain fair and contestable and the launch of a new string of investigations by the European Commission into possible anti-competitive conducts of Google Amazon, Apple, and Facebook have shown that these concerns are not purely hypothetical.