검색포털서비스 사업자의 시장지배력 남용행위와 경쟁제한적 행위가 소비자 후생에 미치는 영향

Recent concern on the Internet Search Portal Services has been focused on the issue of the abuses of their market power and its negative impacts on the consumer welfare. In the aspects of the competition law, this kind of concern started from Google case first in EU markets, and the legislative result on Google which was imposed around $3 billion penalty demonstrates that there should be needed more regulatory restrictions in Korea. In this paper, I tried to analyze the negative elements of the big size internet portal service companies in three categories of the search service area, payment service area and online electronic commerce area. As a market dominant company, internet portal services have abused their monopolistic power to the advertisement suppliers. Under current regulatory regime in Korea, there cannot be found adequate methods to restrict the monopolistic impacts by the internet portal service companies. In order to improve the welfare of the consumers in the market, I recommend that there be certain regulatory action, such as revision of the Korean competition regulations. Also, the manner looking the service area by the Korean Courts needs to be changed through interpreting the concepts of ‘market dominant company’widely in the future.