Google and Amazon are both fiercely committed to creating value for one side of the marketplace—users—and justify their actions to themselves on that basis. But as they replace more and more of the supplier side of the network with their own services, they risk weakening the marketplace as a whole. After all, someone else invented and invested in those products or services that they are copying. This is why antitrust law can’t just use lower costs for consumers as its primary benchmark, rather than the overall level of competition in the market. Lower costs are only one outcome of competition.
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