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"Contractual restrictions on the portability and management of online search advertising campaigns across Googles AdWords and competing platforms" [2020] ELECD 332; in Maihaniemi, Beata (ed), "Competition Law and Big Data" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020) 176

Book Title: Competition Law and Big Data

Editor(s): Mäihäniemi, Beata

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Contractual restrictions on the portability and management of online search advertising campaigns across Googles AdWords and competing platforms

Number of pages: 37

Abstract/Description:

This chapter analyses whether one of the initial concerns in Google Search investigations, that is contractual restrictions on portability, should be considered by the European Commission could indeed be seen as anticompetitive. These restrictions have been rightfully found to reduce consumer welfare by creating artificial switching costs which discourage advertisers using Google’s AdWords from running parallel online search advertising campaigns on competing platforms. The chapter analyses whether contractual restrictions on the portability of campaigns are in fact an abuse of dominance taking into account established theories of harm such as ‘exceptional circumstances’. The chapter concludes that restricting portability and management of online search advertising campaigns could be qualified as deliberately refusing access to interoperability information. It also offers other ways to tackle the issue of portability, such as by the application of the Software Directive and by the application of trade secrecy law.