Virtual assistants as gatekeepers for consumption? – how information intermediaries shape competition

Victoriia Noskova

European Competition Journal, 2023, vol. 19, issue 1, 30-56

Abstract: In July 2022 the European Council gave final approval to new regulation of digital markets. This specifically addresses the main concerns raised by the business behaviour of operators of core services in their gatekeeping positions. The list of core services was extended during revisions. In this article, I address the question of whether the inclusion of virtual assistants into the list of core services was the right decision. Overall, this paper argues that (i) virtual assistants as gatekeepers for consumption should be listed among core services, (ii) some of the Digital Markets Act’s obligations need to be adopted to fit the specifics of virtual assistants, (iii) there are two relevant dimensions of power which should be considered in competition policy and regulation analysis: market power on virtual assistants’ market and the ecosystem of related markets (cross-market integration criterion), (iv) the growth of new gatekeepers should be prevented, among other means by stricter merger control.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17441056.2022.2129771 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:recjxx:v:19:y:2023:i:1:p:30-56

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/recj20

DOI: 10.1080/17441056.2022.2129771

Access Statistics for this article

European Competition Journal is currently edited by Philip Marsden

More articles in European Competition Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().