Affectation with a public interest, between antitrust laws and regulation: Lessons from the U.S. experience of the first decades of the 20th century for online ecosystems

Concerns related to Big Techs lead to a proliferation of legislative proposals to complete competition rules with regulatory devices that would lead gatekeepers to be subject to obligations to leave market access free and undistorted. Within this context, this contribution revisits American decision-making practice from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century to show how sectoral regulation and the enforcement of competition rules have been activated to control the strategies of firms acting as gatekeepers. A company with private regulatory power carrying out an activity affecting the public interest could and should be subject to specific supervision.