Research On The Method Of Defining The Relevant Market Of The Internet Antitrust

The scale of Chinese Internet users has reached 688 million, the Internet penetration rate has reached 50.3% and “.CN” domain name registration ownership has reached the first place of the world until December 2015. Basic application, business transactions, networking finance, entertainment and public service and other Internet industry segments have maintained a steady growth. As can be seen that the Internet industry has been deeply integrated into our daily lives, making a great contribution to China’s economic development. Though China’s anti-monopoly law came into effect since 2008, China has gradually emerged antitrust lawsuit against the Internet industry giants, and the court’s decision on these definition of relevant market is considerable controversial. It is urgently needed to research the academic question of the defination of the relevant market by theorists and judiciaries.This study focused on Theoretical Analysis and Application on the definition of the relevant market in the Internet Industry antitrust field. On the basis of comprehensive comparison of domestic and international research, based on the study of the economic characteristics of the Internet industry, it builds critical loss analysis within the framework of the SSNIP analysis for each type of Internet two-side market. Then it establishes the implementation of the standard application of this method to solve the problem of defining the market for each type of Internet two-side market. Finally, use the extended critical loss analysis method to analyze specific cases.In the theoretical analysis part, first, this paper defines the connotation of the relevant concepts, the economic characteristics of the Internet two-side market; Second, analyzing the defects that traditional methods may exist when applied to the Internet two-side market and the key improvements of it; Third, Under the condition of the Profit and loss balance, it builds the extended critical loss analysis to apply to the Internet industry with the comprehensive comparison of existing methods. The specific approach, as the starting point, classifies the Internet two-side market according to whether if there is a deal on both sides of the markets and the price structure on both sides of the two-side market, then, deduce the critical loss analysis formula to define the relevant market for each type of the Internet two-side market. Fourth, summarizing the above analysis, the thesis establishes the standard implementation of the extension method.In the case study part, we selected an influential case-Qihoo 360 charging Tencent QQ which is called the first China’s Internet antitrust case. From the divergence among the court, the plaintiff and the defendant for the defining the relevant market of the case, according to the standard procedure, the thesis uses the extended critical loss analysis and the data collected from third parties such as iResearch to make an empirical analysis. Finally, the result is that the instant messaging market which Tencent QQ belongs to constitutes a relevant market in this case, and the microblogging and the SNS social networking site does not belong to the relevant market.