BIG TECH MERGERS AND MODERN ANTITRUST LAW: RETHINKING COMPETITION IN DIGITAL MARKETS
AUTHOR – PRIYAM PRATIK, STUDENT AT FACULTY OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF ALLAHABAD
BEST CITATION – PRIYAM PRATIK, BIG TECH MERGERS AND MODERN ANTITRUST LAW: RETHINKING COMPETITION IN DIGITAL MARKETS, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 6 (9) OF 2026, PG. 1038-1048, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344. DOI – https://doi.org/10.65393/IJLRV6I9108
Abstract
Acquisition has become a defining instrument of strategy for the small group of firms collectively termed as ‘Big Tech’, raising the question of whether merger control regimes built around 20th century industrial markets remain capable of constraining digital consolidation. This article examines this question through the distinctive economics of platform markets, including network effects, multi-sided pricing and the compounding value of proprietary data, before tracing the doctrinal shift from the structuralist presumptions of Brown Shoe to the consumer welfare standard associated with the Chicago School, and the subsequent challenge to that standard mounted by the New Brandeis movement. It then undertakes a detailed comparative examination of recent litigation involving Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, including the Federal Trade Commission’s unsuccessful retrospective challenge to Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, decided in November 2025, the remedies judgment concluding the United States’ search monopolization case against Google, the Ninth Circuit’s 2025 affirmation of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and the pending structural litigation against Amazon. The article compares the ex-ante gatekeeper model adopted under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act with the conduct-based approaches retained in the United States, the United Kingdom’s strategic market status regime, and India’s newly introduced deal value notification threshold. It concludes that conventional retrospective enforcement is structurally ill-suited to markets capable of transformation within a single product cycle, and proposes calibrated procedural reforms, including deal value thresholds, presumptive burden-shifting for dominant acquirers, and interim behavioral conditions, capable of being adopted without abandoning the existing doctrinal architecture of competition law.
Keywords: Big Tech; mergers and acquisitions; antitrust regulation; competition law; Digital Markets Act; killer acquisitions; platform dominance.