The Improvement Of The Application Criteria Of Horizontal Merger And Acquisition In Internet Industry

Information technology and artificial intelligence are hot,and the internet industry has rapidly developed into a new engine for the modern economy.Especially in recent years,China’s internet industry is thriving and flourishing.The horizontal mergers and acquisitions of internet companies in the market are frequent,making the antitrust enforcement of horizontal mergers and acquisitions in the Internet industry particularly prominent.As an emerging industry,the internet industry has many characteristics that are different from traditional industries,such as network effects,information products,bilateral markets,user lock-in effect,etc..The market competition is also different from the price competition in traditional industries.It is more manifested in big data competition,attention competition,platform competition,zero price competition,and innovation power competition.In the face of this new competition pattern of the Internet industry,how to effectively implement anti-monopoly systems and criteria based on traditional industries is a dilemma facing anti-monopoly law enforcement in China and around the world.The operator concentration system is one of the three basic systems of the Anti-Monopoly Law.Horizontal mergers and acquisitions are the most important means of operator concentration and the most obvious form of anti-competitive effects.Among them,the criteria for the declaration of operator concentration is even more important.Procedural and substantive significance,so the anti-monopoly response to the horizontal merger and acquisition declaration criteria of the Internet industry has become an urgent issue.However,China’s current criteria for concentration of business operators applies uniformly to horizontal and non-horizontal mergers and acquisitions,and no special consideration is given to horizontal mergers and acquisitions with the most obvious anti-competitive effects.The current double-tier turnover criteria is too single and sluggish to adapt to the Internet The particularity of the industry.The Internet industry’s horizontal M & A reporting criteria should be improved on the basis of the current single turnover criteria.The path of design may give consideration to introducing conditional market share criteria,transaction volume criteria,and a reporting criteria adjustment mechanism.