Season 4, Episode 6: Consumer welfare and antitrust in tech (with Andrey Fradkin)

My guest on this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Andrey Fradkin, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Boston University's Questrom School of Business. The topic of our conversation is the role of antitrust in tech and the various design decisions impact consumer welfare. Among other things, our discussion covers: The role of antitrust law with respect to digital marketplaces; Whether digital marketplaces naturally trend toward anticompetitive behavior; How and whether certain consumer tech design practices can benefit consumers and still be considered anti-competitive; Amazon's treatment of its own products in search rankings (from Andrey's paper on the subject); Whether Amazon's branded search advertising product impacts the economics of retail on the Amazon platform; The tradeoffs that must be considered in the Amazon antitrust case (from Andrey's HBR article on the subject); How the impact on advertisers and consumers of advertising on the Amazon platform should be considered; How antitrust enforcement of Big Tech might evolve. Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast: Moloco. Moloco empowers businesses of all sizes to grow through advanced machine-learning solutions that deliver digital growth and performance for customers. INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on. Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.