e-Commerce Collusion? The Trustbusters Take Aim

Deck: 
Privacy Concerns: Can Gaming Be Prevented?
Fortnightly Magazine - September 1 2000
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The Federal Trade Commission likely will regulate those business-to-business Web portals, but how much?

Electric utility executives may be a step behind the Internet revolution, but in one key respect they may have an advantage over anyone else building an e-commerce Web portal for business-to-business (B2B) procurement.

Utility executives don't fear government regulation. They're already caught in the net.

That affinity may in fact prove downright useful. Consider the comments and reactions heard in Washington, D.C. in late June, when business leaders from around the country gathered with government regulators at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to share ideas on how to avoid collusion and ensure fair trade when industry competitors collaborate in e-commerce ventures.

The public workshop, "Competition Policy in the World of B2B Electronic Marketplaces," took place less than three months after the FTC had issued new antitrust guidelines for evaluating "collaborations among competitors," including joint ventures and strategic alliances. In that action, taken on April 7, the FTC had referred specifically to purchasing collaboratives to centralize procurement. It said such deals could "facilitate collusion" by standardizing costs or enhancing a competitor's ability to "monitor a participant's output level through knowledge of its input purchases."

And at the workshop itself, the discussions revealed a definite concern for antitrust issues and a leaning by the participants and hosts alike toward regulatory oversight.

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