The 2023 Merger Guidelines: An Assessment.

The article explores the 2023 Merger Guidelines and features a discussion between legal scholars Tim Wu and Herbert Hovenkamp. They offer different perspectives on assessing harm to competition in antitrust cases, with Hovenkamp emphasizing measurable metrics like price and output, while Wu argues for a focus on harm to the competitive process. The text discusses concerns about anticompetitive mergers in the tech industry and the enforcement of merger guidelines, highlighting examples such as Zillow's acquisition of StreetEasy, Google's acquisition of Waze, and Facebook's acquisition of Instagram. The participants also discuss various aspects of the new Guidelines, including market definition, the potential competition doctrine, and the treatment of rollups of private equity. They express differing opinions on the effectiveness and implications of certain Guidelines, but agree that they reflect current thinking in antitrust enforcement. [Extracted from the article]