디지털 플랫폼 사업자의 빅데이터와 관련한 시장지배력 및 프라이버시 문제에 대한 고찰

There is little doubt that the proper use of “big data” in any industries can promote innovation and economic efficiency. But some argues that Google, Facebook, or Amazon may abuse their market power delivered from their own big data. This article addressed some issues concerning big data, market power, and privacy in multi-sided digital platforms. First of all, big data owned by digital platforms are not a selling product. It implies that neither antitrust relevant markets nor market power on big data can exist. It is true that big data is a valuable asset to run digital platforms. However any firms may use big data by collecting and processing non-rivalrous user information. For this reason, big data itself can be neither barriers to entry nor essential facilities in the antitrust sense. Indeed there are no evidence showing that big data actually hinder market entry. In regard to privacy, the protection of it is not the proper goal of competition law. It is better to solve privacy issues with privacy law rather than competition law.