Research On Antitrust Review Issues Of Data-driven Merger

With the development of Internet and artificial intelligence technology,the data economy is booming all over the world.Big data is beginning to become the basic resource of industrial development.In the field of market competition,Big data is becoming more and more important in competition,Big data and data-related technologies help companies to provide high-quality products and services,and it plays a vital role in expanding their competitive advantages.As a result,more and more companies are choosing to share Big data by merger.This kind of merger is called data-driven merger.The core difference between data-driven merger and traditional merger lies in the fact that the former attaches great importance to Big data.Since the value of Big data will bring great economic benefit to companies by merger,the aggregation of data in data-driven merger may produce anticompetitive effects,and the problem further raised is that the current merger control system for data-driven merger does not match the trend of data-driven merger and the characteristics of the data-driven competition.The issues include the difficulty of defining the relevant market,and the controversial issue of the inclusion of privacy protection factors in the merger review process.This article will be divided into four chapters.The first chapter introduces the concept and characteristic of Big data,and introduces how companies use Big data to create economic benefit in the context of the digital economy,and points out that there are two feedback loops in the market where users,companies and advertisers are located,which explains the importance of Big data in obtaining economic benefits for companies.The second chapter introduces the concept and characteristics of data-driven companies and the EU's merger control system,and evaluates its practical cases,and it is found that the traditional analysis method and the review logic of merger review system is still applicable to data-driven merger.The third chapter analyzes the challenges posed by data-driven merger to the current antimonopoly regulation.The first challenge is about the definition of the relevant market,the market of free products or services in the context of the digital economy makes the traditional definition of the relevant market difficult to apply,The other challenge is whether the privacy protection should be included in the merger review process,it should be made clear that in the context of digital economy,privacy protection as a component of product or service quality should be regarded as a non-price competitive dimension,and thus subject to the merger review system.The fourth chapter puts forward some suggestions for perfecting the anti-monopoly regulation of data-driven merger in China.The suggestions include emphasizing the concept of safeguarding consumer welfare,shifting to prudent regulatory thinking,putting emphasis on new market definition methods and evaluating the effect of data aggregation on market competition.Furthermore,regulatory agencies should incorporate privacy protection into the process of merger review.