In an article on Apple’s acquisition of the Dark Sky weather app, Fortune magazine asked the question: Should Apple be allowed to kill one of Android’s best weather apps? The article quotes Diana Moss on how current antitrust approaches would likely miss important competitive implications of the transaction:
Small app and startup acquisitions have typically not received much scrutiny from antitrust regulators at the Federal Trade Commission or U.S. Justice Department.
With many other weather apps available to consumers, the Dark Sky acquisition probably isn’t significant enough on its own to draw serious review, Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute, says. And the concerning impact on the broader competition between mobile ecosystems hasn’t been a priority, she says.
“Enforcers have long focused their lens on narrow markets, often missing the forest for the trees, such as how acquisitions in large market ecosystems can help dominant firms leverage their market power from one market to another,” Moss says.
