Wrangling over the proposed Google-Yahoo advertising deal makes one wonder whether scale, a virtue in Silicon Valley, can also be a vice. With apologies to economist E.F. Schumacher, big isn’t bad anymore, it’s good.
Small Isn’t Beautiful Anymore
Tag Archives: scale
Airline Mergers and Oligopoly Pricing
The airline industry charges lower prices today than a decade ago, despite substantial consolidation and massive, billions-per-year operating losses. As a matter of economics, those facts teach that the market is highly competitive. Some antitrust Neanderthals may disagree, but they are reading from a hymnal that no longer has much spiritual resonance.
When Is a Market Not?
The data to establish that Internet ads are a subset of a broader advertising market — one in which, almost by definition, Google is not a “dominant” or even large player — may be there. Now it’s up to the advocates, economists and enforcement officials to figure out the answer.