The economic value and utility of customer data has led to many technology companies devising successful business models on the basis of providing free access to their online platforms and services in return for access to their users’ personal data. Data has therefore become an important input for online services and thus a parameter for market competition in the digital economy.

Read this chapter in Shearman & Sterling’s 2019 Antitrust Annual Report, “Developments in the Antitrust Enforcement of Online Platforms’ Use of Data.”