Forum. The competition Authority has published, on Tuesday 6 march, the results of the sector inquiry which it launched in may 2016, bearing on the competitive situation in the sector of advertising on the internet and the importance of the exploitation of the data. The red wire of this investigation can be summarized as follows : the market of online advertising does not function properly because of the existence of a duopoly Google – Facebook. The reaction of some commentators, eager for sensationalism, but obviously not to the fact of the technicalities of competition law, has been very strong. It was up to ask for nothing less than the dismantling of Google.
It seems absurd to substitute lamain too visible of a competition authority – also called is-it – the invisible hand of the market
If such an idea can be seduced by its spectacular nature, it was not original. Since the regulation antitrust is born in the United States with the Sherman Act of 1890, which some call the ” Constitution of the american economy “, the dismantling of Standard Oil into thirty-four companies, delivered in 1911, and is a totem in the field of regulation of the economy by the competition law. She reemerged from far away, as was the case on November 27, 2014, when a resolution of the european Parliament, without legal value, asked already the dismantling of Google. In the matter, beyond the sensationalism, a number of difficult issues, legal and economic, arise.
On the legal level, it should be noted that the attempt of the competition Authority to build in 2015 the power of injunction structural, limited to the retail sector, but including the possibility to order transfers of assets to an operator in a dominant position without prior characterisation of market abuse, has met with the censure of the constitutional Council.
In the framework of the review of the law of 10 July…
