In both the United States and in Europe, antitrust enforcement in the digital economy has been a popular topic that has received significant media coverage, though approaches to actual regulation have differed significantly.

While in Europe antitrust has increasingly been used as a tool to regulate the so-called ‘FANG’ companies (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google), to date the U.S. antitrust authorities have taken a far less aggressive approach towards enforcement of the FANGs. Whether antitrust authorities have sufficient tools to take action against the FANGs, and indeed whether such enforcement is the most appropriate approach to regulation, is up for debate in both the United States and in Europe.

Read this chapter in Shearman & Sterling’s 2019 Antitrust Annual Report, “Antitrust as a Tool to Regulate the FANG Companies.”

The authors and contributors below were supported by associate Alisa Mastro.