Time to break up? The case for tailor-made digital platform regulation based on platform-governance standard types

Abstract

Abstract The rise of hybrid-conglomerate platforms like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta (GAMAM) has led to significant market power concentration and negative competition implications, right down to calls for their potential breakups. To expand dominance, these platforms leverage extensive ecosystems with strategic control over resources and customer relationships, often at the expense of others. We conduct a qualitative meta-analysis of 87 empirical platform-governance problem cases from a regulatory perspective. Using a decomposition approach, we develop a taxonomy of competition problems induced by platform governance and identify four governance standard types (i.e., growth, consolidation, extension, and protect and capture), representing platform lifecycle phases from a regulatory perspective. Each standard type describes the platform owner’s governance strategy, consequent competition problems, and potential remedies. Our findings show how lack of regulation of digital platforms’ governance design has contributed to their growing market power and that effective regulatory intervention requires making platform governance more open and neutral. Moreover, we emphasize the need for platform governance regulation that shifts the burden of proof for regulatory compliance from regulators to platform owners.

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