Anti-trust authorities around the world, including Australia’s Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, are joining in a global discussion on how they should respond to acquisitions by big digital platforms of smaller start-ups, possibly eliminating future competition.

ACCC chair Rod Sims revealed this during a speech at the 2019 Competition Law Conference in Sydney at the weekend.

ACCC Chair, Rod Sims

Sims told the conference that Google and Facebook had commercial incentives to acquire nascent companies, even if the chance of them ultimately posing a competitive threat was small.

“Arguably, Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram eliminated the threat of a substantial potential competitor,” he said.

Sims noted that over the past 12 years, Facebook has acquired 66 companies for a total of US$23 billion, while between 2004 and 2014, Google acquired 145 companies for an outlay of $23 billion.