Incorporating privacy considerations into EU data-driven merger review

ABSTRACTIn recent years, large digital companies have been gobbling up hundreds of smaller highly innovative firms involved in the collection and the processing of data. Some regulators, academics and practitioners have expressed concerns that Big Tech might use the increased market power and the greater concentration of consumers' personal data stemming from data-driven mergers to harm consumers in the form of lower privacy protection. They wonder whether and to what extent the EU Commission and/or national competition authorities should take into account data protection considerations when reviewing transactions under the Merger Regulation and/or national merger control rules. The Commission's decisional practice points towards three possible routes for integrating privacy concerns into competition analysis. Given their respective shortcomings, we explore the possibility of using the German Federal Cartel Office's line of reasoning in its Facebook decision as a model for the incorporation of privacy considerations into EU data-driven merger analysis.KEYWORDS: Data-driven mergersEU merger controlBig TechBig Datathird-party trackingmulti-sided marketsprivacypersonal data protectionGDPR AcknowledgmentThe author would like to express his deepest gratitude to Diana Treščáková, Associate Professor at the Department of commercial law of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia, Anna A. Berdnikova, Assistant Professor at the Department of Legal Regulation of Economic Activity of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Konstantin V. Grigoriev, Emile A. Ustian, Anastasia O. Kulazhina, Stanislava I. Semtsiva and Valerya E. Tiakhti, students of the law faculty of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, for their in-depth research carried out within the framework of "MВТСK", an initiative of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, prior to the writing of this paper. The author would also like to extend his warmest thanks to Patrick Anthony Hutchinson for his thorough review of this article and his invaluable contribution to its style.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Jason Furman, Diane Coyle, Amelia Fletcher, Derek McAuley and Philip Marsden, Unlocking Digital Competition, Report of the Digital Competition Expert Panel UK, March 2019 p.12 accessed 1 March 2023.2 David Goldman, 'Microsoft/Yahoo! Microsoft and Yahoo: Search partners' (CNNMoney, 29 July 2009) accessed 1 April 2023.3 Evelyn M. Rusli, 'Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion' (New York Times, 9 April 2012) accessed 17 March 2023.4 Parmy Olson, 'Facebook Closes $19 billion WhatsApp Deal' (Forbes, 6 October 2014) accessed 17 February 2023.5 Alex Hern and Jana Kasperkevic, 'LinkedIn bought by Microsoft for $19 billion in cash' (The Guardian, 13 June 2013) accessed 12 February 2023.6 Ingrid Lungen, 'Apple closes its $400 Million Shazam acquisition and says the music recognition app will soon become ad free' (Techcrunch, 24 September 2018) accessed 16 November 2022.7 James Pero, 'Google buys Fitbit for $2.1 billion in a bid to rival Apples on wearables' (Daily Mail, 1 November 2019) accessed 13 March 2023.8 Prity Khanal, 'Amazon closes deal to acquire One Medical for $3.9 billion' (TechStory, 23 February 2023) accessed 3 February 2023.9 Maurice E Stucke and Allen P Grunes, Big Data and competition policy (Oxford University Press 2016) 3.10 OECD, 'Big Data: Bringing Competition Policy to the Digital Era' (2016) DAF/COMP 14, 22 www.oecd.org/competition/big-data-bringing-competition-policy-to-the-digital-era.htm> accessed 15 February 2023.11 Claudia Biancotti and Paolo Ciocca, 'Opening Internet Monopolies to Competition with Data sharing Mandates', Policy Brief 19-3, Peterson Institute for International Economics, April 2019 accessed 8 February 2023.12 A consumer is defined in EU law as "any natural person who […] is acting for the purposes which are outside his trade, business or professions" according article 2, paragraph 1, letter b), directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair in consumer contracts, OJ 1993, 1.95, .29–34 accessed 8 March 2023.13 Victoria H.S.E Robertson, 'Excessive Data Collection: Privacy Considerations and Abuse of Dominance in the Era of Big Data' [2020] 57 Common Market Law Review 161–90 17114 Reuben Binns and Elettra Bietti, 'Dissolving Privacy, One Merger at a Time: Competition, Data, and Third Party Tracking' [2020] 36 Computer Law & Security Review, 3 accessed 8 November 2022.15 Efficiencies of scale of large digital platforms can be defined as their ability, through the online searches of the first- party services' clients, to collect large-scale datasets on which they can "train" at a low cost their algorithms to improve their performance and efficiency. See OECD (2016), 'Big Data: Bringing Competition Policy to the Digital Era', (2016) DAF/COMP 14, 12 October 2016, 11 accessed 15 February 2023.16 Binns and Bietti, (n 14) 15.17 Data analytics can be defined as the ability to design algorithms that can access and analyze vast amount of information. See Craig Stedman, 'Data analytics' (TechTarget) accessed 24 February 2023.18 Pedro García de Pesquera Villagrán, "EU Competition Law and Artificial Intelligence", McDermott Will & Emery, (Lexology, 8 Sept. 2019) accessed 25 February 2023.19 Big Data has commonly been characterized by four, V's: the volume of data; the velocity at which data is collected, used and disseminated; the variety of information aggregated; and finally the value of the data. Each, V' has increased significantly over the past decade.' See Maurice E Stucke and Allen P Grunes, Big Data and competition policy (Oxford University Press 2016) 16; OECD, 'Data-Driven Innovation for Growth and Well-Being: Interim Synthesis Report' (2014) 11 accessed 29 March 2023.20 OECD, 'Big Data: Bringing Competition Policy to the Digital Era' (2016) DAF/COMP 14, 22 accessed 1 March 2023.21 The vast majority of online service providers use a two-sided, or multi-sided, business model, whereby the service is offered at zero price to attract users, with online generating the revenues necessary to fund the free service and make a profit. A flourishing doctrine exists on two –or multisided markets, see e.g., Jean-Charles Rochet and Jean Tirole, 'Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets' [2003] 1 Journal of the European Economic Association 990; Allen P Grunes, 'Another look at privacy' [2013] 20 George Mason Law Review 1107 1109–70; Ethan Zuckerman, 'The Internet's Original Sin' (The Atlantic, 14 Aug. 2014) accessed 27 March 2023; David S Evans, 'Multi-Sided Platforms, Dynamic Competition, and the Assessment of Market Power for Internet-Based Firms' University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No753 (2016) accessed 2 March 2023.22 Grunes (n 22) 1110; Rodrigo Montes, Wilfried Sand-Zantman and Tommaso M. Valleti, 'The Value of personal information in markets with endogenous privacy' TSE Working Paper 15–583, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) accessed 5 March 2023.23 Robertson (n 13) 164.24 European Data Protection Supervisor, 'Towards a New Digital Ethics: Data, Dignity and Technology' Opinion 4/2015, 11 September 2015 accessed 5 February 2023.25 Sebastian Schelter and Jerome Kunegis, 'Tracking the Trackers : A Large-Scale Analysis of Embedded Web Trackers' (2016) Proceedings of the ICWSM 679, 680 accessed 7 February 2023.26 Nils-Peter Schepp and Achim Wambach, 'On Big Data and its Relevance for Market Power Assessment' [2016] 7(2) Journal of European Competition Law & Practice 120–2427 A small number of companies dominate third-party tracking across both the mobile and web. For app-based trackers, Alphabet/Google is the most prevalent tracker, followed by Microsoft (including LinkedIn), Facebook and Twitter. The picture is only slightly different for web-based trackers, where Alphabet/Google is the most successful tracker, followed by Facebook and Twitter. See Robertson (n 13) 163.28 Wolfgang Kerber and Karsten K Zolna, 'The German Facebook Case: The Law and Economics of the Relationship Between Competition and Data Protection Law' [2022] European Journal of Law and Economics 229 OECD, 'Start-ups, Killer Acquisitions and Merger Control' [2020] 13 accessed 12 February 2023.30 Heli Koski, Otto Kassi and Fabian Braesemann, 'Killers on the Road of Emerging start-ups-Implications for Market Entry and Venture Capital Financing' (1 July 2020) ETLA- Working Paper 81 accessed 8 March 2023.31 Stucke and Grunes (n 9) 129.32 The concept of network effects refers to a situation in which the usefulness for each user of using a technology or service increases as the number of users increases. See Jacques Cremer and others, 'Competition Policy for the digital era', Final Report for the European Commission, Directorate-General for Competition, 2019, 73. accessed 1 April 2023.33 Increasing returns of scale is the term for decreasing unit cost while maintaining a consistent level of quality in production. See Nicholas Economides and Ioannis Lianos, 'Restrictions on privacy and exploitation in the digital economy : a market failure perspective' [2021] Journal of Competition Law & Economics 1–83 2034 By economies of scope one shall understand the fact that the production of one good reduces the cost of producing another related good. In such a case, the long-run average and marginal cost of a company, organization, or economy decreases due to the production of complementary goods and services. See David Kindness, 'Economies of Scope' (Investopedia, 24 February 2021 accessed 30 January 2023; Bertin Martens, 'Data Access, Consumer Interests and Social Welfare: An Economic Perspective' (2020) accessed 19 January 2023 In the context of data-driven mergers, economies of scope can be reached through the combination of two complementary datasets which can generate more insights and economic value compared to keeping them in separate data silos. See Bertin Martens, 'Data Access, Consumer Interests and Social Welfare: An Economic Perspective' Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC), 18 May, 2020 accessed 13 March 2023.35 Consumers' lock-in refers to a situation in which consumers are dependent on a single manufacturer or supplier for a specific service, and cannot move to another vendor without substantial costs or inconvenience. See Markus Eurich and Michael Burtscher, 'The Business-to-Consumer Lock-in Effect' Working paper, August 2014, University of Cambridge accessed 15 April 2023.36 Feedback loops can be defined as the technological phenomenon according to which self-learning algorithms increasingly gain capacity to learn as they process more relevant data. Consequently, the digital platforms which use them are able to target consumers with increased precision, improve their products and services and attract new customers. See Christophe Samuel Hutchinson, 'Potential Abuses of Dominance by Big Tech through their use of Big Tech and AI' [2022] Journal of Antitrust Enforcement 9 accessed 22 March 2023.37 Market power is the ability of a firm or a group of firms to make decisions independently of its competitors, customers and final consumers, as set out in the European Commission's Guidelines. See European Commission, Guidance on the Commission's enforcement priorities in applying Article 82 of the EC Treaty to abusive exclusionary conduct by dominant undertakings, O.J 2009, C45/7. accessed 17 February 2023. The OECD considers that market power in the digital realm may enable dominant companies 'to supply products or services of reduced quality, to impose large amounts of advertising or even to collect, analyze or sell excessive data from consumers". See OECD (n 20) para 48.38 Competition & Markets Authority (hereinafter "CMA"), 'The Commercial Use of Consumer Data', Report on the CMA's Call for Information (2015), 91–93 accessed 17 March 2023.39 Literature suggests that lowering the level of privacy protection could constitute an exploitative abuse, see Ariel Ezrachi and Viktoria HSE Robertson, 'Competition, Market Power and Third-Party Tracking' World Competition : Law and Economics Review, Vol.42, No1 March 2019, Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No11/2019 8–9 accessed 13 February 2023; Katharina Kemp, 'Concealed Data Practices and Competition Law: Why Privacy Matters' [2020] 16 European Competition Journal 62840 Privacy can be defined as "the claim of individuals, groups or institutions to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent information about them is communicated to others". See Alan F Westin, Privacy and Freedom (Atheneum 1970) 7. On the definition of privacy also see Daniel J Solove, 'A Taxonomy of Privacy' [2005] 154 University of Pennylvania Law Review 447 486–87 and Daniel J Solove, 'The Meaning and Value of Privacy' in B Roessler and D. Mokrosinska (eds), Social Dimension of Privacy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Cambridge University Press 2015) 71–82. Privacy can be a "final good" valued as such, or an "intermediate good", acting as a parameter, among many, of competition: see J Farrell, 'Can Privacy Be Just Another Good?' [2012] 10 Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology 251. While the current competition law framework may integrate the latter in defining a dimension of quality on which there may be competition (as there is competition in price, the former may be more difficult to integrate in the analysis.41 Lynskey and Costa-Cabral call this an "internal constraint" that data protection law exercises on competition law: Francisco Costa-Cabral and Orla Lynskey, 'The Internal and External Constraints of Data Protection on Competition Law in the EU' (2015) 25 LSE Working Papers accessed 18 February 2023.42 European Data Protection Supervisory (hereinafter "EDPS"), 'Preliminary Opinion on Privacy and Competitiveness in the Age of Big Data: The Interplay Between Data Protection, Competition Law and Consumer Protection in the Digital Economy' (2014) 26. For a comment on the Opinion, see Fransisco Costa-Cabral, 'The Preliminary Opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor and the Discretion of the European Commission in Enforcing Competition Law' [2016] 23 Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law 495.43 Ben Holles de Peyer, 'EU Merger control and Big Data' [2018] 13 (4) Journal of Competition Law & Economics 767–90 768; Autorite de la concurrence and Bundeskartellamt, "Competition Law and Data" (10 May 2016) 23 accessed 8 January 2023.44 Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector and amending Directives (EU) 2019/1937 and (EU) 2020/1828 (Digital Markets Act).45 Consumer welfare refers to the individual benefits derived from the consumption of goods and services. See R Shyam Khemani and Daniel Shapiro, 'Glossary of Industrial Organization Economics and Competition Law' [1993] OECD 29 accessed 17 October 2022; Under the notion of consumer welfare, the Commission understands the benefits brought by effective competition such as low prices, high quality products, a wide selection of goods and services, and innovation. Through its control of mergers, the Commission prevents mergers that would likely deprive customers of these benefits by significantly increasing the market power of firms. See Paragraph 8 of the Horizontal Merger Guidelines (Guidelines on the assessment of horizontal mergers under the Council Regulation on the control of concentrations between undertakings, OJ C 31/5, 5.2.2004).46 See e.g., C-413/06 P Bertelsmann [2008] ECR 4951, para. 121, T-168/01 Glaxo [2006] ECR II 2969, para. 106, and many other judgments, including C-413/14 Intel [2017] 632, para. 13447 Maria C Wasastjerna 'The implications of Big Data and Privacy on Competition Analysis in Merger Control and the Controversial-Data Protection Interface' [2019] 30(3) European Business Law Review 337–66 35248 See European Commission, 'Discussion paper on the application of Article 82 of the Treaty of exclusionary abuses' DG Competition (2005) 7 accessed 11 November 2022.49 Stucke and Grunes (n 9) 107. See also Michal S Gal and Daniel L Rubinfeld, 'The Hidden Costs of Free Goods: Implications for Antitrust Enforcement' [2016] 80 Antitrust Law Journal 521–6250 Frederic Jenny, 'Competition Law Enforcement and Regulation for Digital Ecosystems: Understanding the Issues, Facing the Challenges and Moving Forward' [2021] 3 Concurrences 24.51 David S Evans, 'The Antitrust Economics of Free' Competition Policy International' (2011) University of Chicago Law School, John M.Olin Program in Law and Economics Working Paper No555, 22 accessed 29 January 2023; Robert H Lande, 'The Microsoft-Yahoo merger: Yes, privacy is an antitrust concern' (2008) University of Baltimore School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No2008-06, 1 accessed 12 January 2023.52 Stuart Thomas, 'Too Little Too Late? An Exploration and Analysis of the Inadequacies of Antitrust Law When Regulating GAFAM Data-driven Mergers and the Potential Legal Remedies Available in the Age of Big Data' [2021] 17 European Competition Journal 413.53 Ibid.54 Economides and Lianos (n 33) 30.55 Colleen Taylor, 'Google's $3.2 Billion Acquisition of Nest Gets the FTC Green Light' (Techcrunch, 7 February 2014) accessed 20 March 2023.56 Stucke and Grunes (n 9) 108.57 Stuart (n 52) 413.58 Stucke and Grunes (n 9) 107. See also Michal S Gal and Daniel L Rubinfeld, 'The Hidden Costs of Free Goods: Implications for Antitrust Enforcement' [2016] 80 Antitrust Law Journal 521–62.59 David S Evans, 'Attention Platforms, the Value of Content and Public Policy' [2019] 54 Review of Industrial Organization 775 792; Gianclaudio Malgieri and Bart Custers, 'Pricing Privacy: The Right to Know the Value of Your Personal Data' [2018] 34 Computer Law & Security Review 289; John M Newman, 'The Myth of Free' [2018] 86 George Washington Law Review 513 551–55; Gal and Rubinfeld (n 49) 522, 528 ; Chris Jay Hoofnagle and Jan Whittington, 'Free Accounting for the Costs of the Internet's Most Popular Price' [2014] 61 UCLA Law Review 654.60 Tamara Dinev and Paul Hart, 'An Extended Privacy Calculus Model for E-Commerce Transactions' [2003] 17 (1) Information System Research, 61 62.61 Ibid., 62–68; II-Horn Hann et al., 'Overcoming Online Information Privacy Concerns: An Information-Processing Theory Approach' [2007] 24(2) Journal of Management Information Systems 13 17; II-Horn Hann et al. 'Online Information Privacy: Measuring the Cost-Benefit Trade-Off' (International Conference of Information Systems Proceedings 2–3, Barcelona, 15–18 December 2002) accessed 11 March 2023; Joseph E Phelps, Giles D'Souza and Glen J Nowak, 'Antecedents and Consequences of Consumer Privacy Concerns : An Empirical Investigation' [2001] 15 (4) Journal of Interactive Marketing 2 4.62 Dinev and Hart (n 60) 62.63 European Data Protection Supervisor, 'Privacy and Competitiveness in the Age of Big Data: The Interplay between Data Protection, Competition Law and Consumer Protection in the Digital Economy: Preliminary Opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor' (2014). Robert H Lande, 'The Microsoft-Yahoo Merger: Yes, Privacy Is an Antitrust Concern' (2008) University of Baltimore School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No 2008–06 accessed 7 January 2023.64 Maurice E. Stucke and Allen P Grunes, 'No Mistake About It: The Important Role of Antitrust in the Era of Big Data' The University of Tennessee Legal Studies Research Paper # 269 May 2015, The Antitrust Source (April 2015) accessed 15 March 2023.65 Robertson (n 13) 170.66 Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of 11 Dec. 2018 establishing the European Electronic Communications Code [2018], para. 16.67 Zhengmin Li, 'The Implication of Data Concentration on EU Merger Control on EU Merger Control' (Master Thesis Lund University faculty of law, 2020) 31 accessed January 18 2023.68 Maria T Patakyova, 'Competition Law in the Digital Era-How to define the relevant market' (the 4th Conference on Economics and Management Proceedings, Belgrade, 3 September 2020) 175 accessed 1 January 2023.69 Lande (n 51) 1; Natasha Just, 'Governing online platforms: Competition policy in times of platformization' [2018] 42 (5) Telecommunication Policy 386, 388.70 Ariel Ezrachi and Victoria H.S.E Robertson, 'Competition, Market Power and Third-party Tracking' [2019] 42 World Competition 5–19 13.71 OECD (n 21) 16.72 OECD (n 21) 5.73 Commission, Horizontal Merger Guidelines under the Council Regulation on the control of concentrations between undertakings (the "EUMR"), OJ C 31/5, 5.2.2004 (the "Horizontal Guidelines") para 8; See also Commission, Guidelines on the Assessment of Non-Horizontal Mergers Under the Council Regulation on the Control of Concentrations Between Undertakings [2008] OJ C 265/07, 10.74 Microsoft/Skype, COMP/M.6281 C (2011) 7279 Decision 07/10/2011.75 Maurice E Stucke, 'Should we be Concerned about Data-polies?' [2018] 2 Georgetown Law Technology Review 275.76 EC Press release, 'Mergers: Commission Approves Acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft, Subject to Conditions' (IP/16/4284, 6 December 2016). ; accessed 5 March 2023.77 See Case M.7217—Facebook/WhatsApp. ; accessed 14 Feb 2023.78 For "privacy" as part pf the non-price parameter "quality", see Stucke (n 75) 285–90, Orla Lynskee, 'Non-price Effects of Mergers- Note (OECD DAF/COMP/WD(2018)70), 25 September 2020 accessed 7 December 2022; Erika M Douglas, 'Digital crossroads: the intersection of competition law and data privacy, report to the global privacy assembly digital citizen and consumer working group, July 2021 accessed 14 January 2023; Wasastjernaz (n 47) 354; Robertson (n 13) 172–83; Giuseppe Colangelo and Mariateresa Maggiolo, 'Data accumulation and the privacy-antitust interface: insights from the Facebook case' International Data Privacy Law [2019] 8(3) International Data Privacy Law 369–71; Marco Botta and Klaus Wiederman, 'The Interaction of EU Competition, Consumer, and Data Protection Law in the Digital Economy: The Regulatory Dilemna in the Facebook Odyssey' [2019] 64 (3) Antitrust Bulletin 428:446 42979 Lande (n 51) 1; Just (n 69) 386, 388.80 See, for example, Wasastjerna (n 47) 354; Robertson (n 13) 172–83; Colangelo and Maggiolo (n 78) 369–71.81 Stuart (n 52) 407–36.82 Botta and Wiedeman (n 78) 424.83 Economides and Lianos (n 33) 24.84 Stuart (n 52) 41.85 Yongqiang Sun, Dina Liu, Sijin Chen, Xingrong Wu, Xiao-Liang Shen, Xi Zhang, 'Understanding Users' Switching Behavior of Mobile Instant Messaging Applications: An Empirical Study from the Perspective of Push-Pull-Mooring Framework' [2017] 75 Computers in Human Behaviour 727.86 On switching costs, see e.g., Aaron S Edlin and Robert G. Harris, 'The Role of Switching Costs in Antitrust Analysis: A Comparison of Microsoft and Google' [2013] 15 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 169–213.87 Facebook/WhatsApp (COMP/M.7217) Commission decision of 3 October 2014 C (2014) 7239 final, paras. 111, 124.88 Microsoft (Tying) Case Comp C-3/39.530 [2009].89 UK Office of Fair Trading, Completed Acquisition by Motorola Mobility Holding (Google Inc.) of Waze Mobile Limited, ME/6167/13 (17 December 2013).90 Alessandro Acquisti, Curtis Taylor & Liad Wagman 'The Economies of Privacy' [2016] 54 (2) Journal of Economic Literature, 444–48.91 Anita L Allen, 'Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values', White House Big Data Report, February 2015, 11 accessed December 13 2022.92 Geoffrey A Manne and R Ben Sperry, 'The Problems and Perils of Bootstrapping Privacy and Data into an Antitrust Framework' [2015] CPI Antitrust Chronicle, 10 93 Stucke and Grunes (n 9) 16.94 Facebook/WhatsApp (COMP/M.7217) Commission decision of 3 October 2014 C (2014) 7239 final, para 87.95 In legal discourse, consumer choice has always been seen as an assessment criterion in composition law (see, e.g. Neil W Averitt and Robert H Lande, 'Using the "Consumer Choice" Approach to Antitrust Law' [2007] 74 Antitrust Law Journal 175–264).96 Guidelines on the assessment of horizontal mergers 2004. O.J. C/31/5 para 8.97 Microsoft/LinkedIn (M.8124) Commission decision of 6 December 2016 C (2016) 8408 final.98 Ibid, para 290.99 Microsoft/LinkedIn, para. 350.100 Google/Fitbit (M.9660) Commission decision of 17 December 2020 C (2020) 9105 final OJ C 194/7.101 Simon Vande Walle, 'The European Commission's Approval of Google/Fitbit' [2021] 3 Competition law review, 3.102 Economides and Lianos (n 33) 33.103 Bundeskartellamt 2019 a Decision n B6-22/16of February 2019a.104 See Bundesgerichtshof, Order of 23 June 2020 in Case KVR 69/19 47–49).105 Ibid.10.106 Brian X. Chen, 'I Downloaded the Information That Facebook Has on Me. Yikes' (New York Times, 11 April 2018).107 Anne C. Witt, 'The Excessive Data Collection as Anticompetitive Conduct: the German Facebook Case' [2021] Jean Monnet Working Paper 8/19, New York University School of Law p.9 accessed 2 January 2023.108 Oliver Budzinsky, Marina Grusevaja and Victoria Noskova 'The Economics of the German Investigation of Facebook's Data Collection' [May 2020] Vol.26 Ilmenau Economics Discussion Papers, No. 139, Institute of Economics of the Ilmenau University of Technology, 3