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24 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 55 (2020-2021)
Why Google Dominates Advertising Markets

handle is hein.journals/stantlr24 and id is 55 raw text is: Why Google Dominates Advertising Markets Competition Policy Should Lean on the Principles of Financial Market Regulation Dina Srinivasan* *Since leaving the industry, and authoring The Antitrust Case Against Face- book, I continue to research and write about the high-tech industry and competition, now as a fellow with Yale University's antitrust initiative, the Thurman Arnold Pro- ject. Separately, I have advised and consulted on antitrust matters, including for news publishers whose interests are in conflict with Google's. This Article is not squarely about antitrust, though it is about Google's conduct in advertising markets, and the idea for writing a piece like this first germinated in 2014. At that time, Wall Street was up in arms about a book called FLASH Boys by Wall Street chronicler Michael Lewis about speed, data, and alleged manipulation in financial markets. The controversy put high speed trading in the news, giving many of us in advertising pause to appre- ciate the parallels between our market and trading in financial markets. Since then, I have noted how problems related to speed and data can distort competition in other electronic trading markets, how lawmakers have monitored these markets for con- duct they frown upon in equities trading, but how advertising has largely remained off the same radar. This Article elaborates on these observations and curiosities. I am indebted to and thank the many journalists that painstakingly reported on industry conduct, the researchers and scholars whose work I cite, Fiona Scott Morton and Aus- tin Frerick at the Thurman Arnold Project for academic support, as well as Tom Fer- guson and the Institute for New Economic Thinking for helping to fund the research this project entailed. I remain deeply grateful to the many scholars that generously shared their feedback, comments, and insight, often on matters well outside of my area of expertise: Eric Budish, Kevin Haeberle, Scott Hemphill, Michael Kearns, Lina Khan, Jonathan Macey, Doug Melamed, John Morley, Gabriel Rauterberg, Thomas Philippon, Marc Rotenberg, Ashkan Soltani, and Chester Spatt, amongst others. I also warmly thank John Schwall and Rick Arney for helping me to better appreciate the parallels to financial markets, Zach Edwards for critical thinking and research assis- tance, Jennifer LaCosse for careful edits and thoughtful suggestions, Chaaru Deb for excellent legal research assistance, and the editors at the STANFORD TECHNOLOGY LAW REVIEW for outstanding editorial support. The views and errors therein are my own.