I got the chance to appear on the The DMA Agora podcast hosted by Alba Ribera Martínez where we discussed Google's AI Overview feature in Google Search. Among other topics, we covered: How AI Overview alters the flow of traffic around the internet. The various harms of AI Overview: its distortion of competition for traffic, the lack of choice offered to websites, Google's unfair advantage in AI…
The online search market has been remarkably stable for the past two decades , dominated by Google and its ten blue links. That equilibrium, however, looks increasingly unstable. Advances in large language models have produced AI assistants, like ChatGPT, which can return information in accessible prose, generate images, and even converse with users, a new paradigm which threatens Google’s…
Every year, the competition law focused legal publisher Concurrences runs the Antitrust Writing Awards, which seek to highlight scholarship from across the discipline across a variety of categories. Spencer Cohen and I are delighted to have been nominated for the Best Student Paper this year! [1] 🎉 Our paper, “ Error Costs, Platform Regulation and Democracy ”, was recently published in the…
I got the chance to appear on the Our Curious Amalgam podcast by the American Bar Association's Antitrust Law group . It was really exciting to be on! The hosts ( Matthew Hall and Anora Wang ) and I had a discussion about the latest developments in computational antitrust, sparked by my previous post about the the "dark side" of computational antitrust . Among other topics, we covered: What is…
This is a description of the tools I used to make this website. I write in Obsidian wherever possible. The exceptions are where I am forced to write in Microsoft Word (usually for journals) or Google Docs (usually to collaborate). Obsidian is excellent. It's really an "everything" app for writing, mainly because it's so extensible. The killer features for me are that it integrates well with my…
I appeared on a "Walk and Talk" video with the University of Manchester, showing what graduates of the B.Sc Computer Science programme go on to do in their careers.
Digital industries are a major focus of competition regulators, especially since the emergence of sector-specific legislation like the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). As was clear in the recent Article 19 symposium on the DMA which focused on its impact and next steps for its implementation, tech experts are playing an increasingly large role in competition enforcement, offering advice and…
As previously covered on this blog , Meta recently decided to integrate its AI assistant (Meta AI) into its WhatsApp platform, introducing the ability to chat to Meta AI at various points within the WhatsApp app. Its conduct raised eyebrows as a potential abuse of dominance, and later became the subject of an investigation by the Italian Competition Authority (the AGCM). This blog post covers two…
Given the creeping complexity of cases, expanding evidence bases, and the ever present threat (or reality) of budget cuts, competition authorities around the world are on the lookout for ways to streamline their enforcement activities. In response, some commentators have advanced the idea of " computational antitrust ", which entails the development of "computational methods for the automation of…
I'm featured on the Shaping Competition in the Digital Age podcast ( Spotify link ) with Anush Ganesh and Kena Zheng. The conversation is about, among other things, how I got into competition law from being a software engineer, how there really is no excuse for dominant undertakings designing internet platforms to be anti-competitive, and the need for conceptual clarity in competition law. The…
Originally published on ProMarket , along with Aline Blankertz, Justine Haekens and Nicholas Shaxson. The European Commission has struggled to tackle excessive prices in Europe, despite evidence of how they arise in relation to market power. We argue that adopting accounting and financial analysis as part of its toolkit can enable the Commission to understand and act when firms are exploiting…
On May 20th 2025, the European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that they had agreed on a competition cooperation agreement ( the Agreement ). Their announcement follows on from the conclusion of technical negotiations about such an agreement, which we previously blogged about last year . The Agreement is an important milestone in the evolving relationship…
In March 2025, Meta rolled out its AI assistant in Europe , which is accessible through its WhatsApp Messenger and will soon be available on Instagram and Facebook Messenger, too. The feature grants users of its platforms access to a “ reliable and intelligent assistant ” via a “ new blue circle icon ” on the apps. Trans-Atlantic observers may note that the launch comes almost a year after the…
Originally published on the EU Law Enforcement Blog . Why does Google hold a dominant position in AdTech? This blog post, summarising my paper in Utrecht Law Review , examines why and proposes a novel remedy which would entail Google divesting its AdTech stack and permitting consumers to choose which advertising network monetises their useage of its online platforms.
Competition law, given its history and potential as a tool of anti-domination, is a natural fit to protect and revitalise democracy in Europe from the threats posed by excessive concentrations of private power. Yet competition law is often seen as a limited tool, capable of playing only a marginal role in Europe’s response to the emerging plutocracy. Historically, competition has always been…
The UK’s withdrawal from the European Union put European competition policy in a somewhat awkward state. The schism left EU and UK competition law as geographical neighbours and almost identical twins in both legal form and substance, yet worlds apart in terms of their ability to coordinate. Prior to Brexit, and as the competition authority of an EU Member State, the UK’s Competition and Markets…
Originally published on the Comment Central . Big Tech firms degrade our information environment, both within and beyond the boundaries of their platforms. Dominant firms describe themselves as providing walled gardens which are safe and secure, and claim to invest heavily in combating problematic content. Yet aside from scandals suggesting otherwise , there is reason to be sceptical. Inflammatory…