Professor Ioannis Kokkoris comments on Google’s plan to buy Fitbit Inc. in an article for Bloomberg.
Google’s plan to buy Fitbit Inc. is running into a wall of antitrust and privacy worries in the U.S., Europe and Australia, where competition officials are increasingly wary of how internet giants can exert control over data to cement their dominance.
Ioannis Kokkoris, Professor of Competition Law and Economics; Dean for International, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London, said he expects the Fitbit purchase to get an extended investigation. “The deal relates to complicated markets and market definition will be a major determinant to the outcome: what type of watch are we talking about” and what health information, he said in an email. “The potential wider benefits for Google of having access to such data will also need to be assessed in detail.”
Read the full article.