经济学人:科技公司的收购与兼并(1)

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Facebook keeps buying firms which could one day lure¹ users away: first Instagram, then WhatsApp and most recently tbh, an app that lets teenagers send each other compliments anonymously². Facebook一直在收购那些有朝一日可能会分流其用户的公司：先是Instagram，然后是WhatsApp，最近是tbh——一个让青少年匿名赞美对方的应用。

Although Amazon is still increasing competition in aggregate³, as industries from groceries to television can attest⁴, it can also spot rivals and squeeze them from the market. 尽管亚马逊总体而言仍在促进竞争，从食品杂货到电视等行业都可以证明，但它也有可能识别出竞争对手并将其挤出市场。

What to do? In the past, societies have tackled monopolies either by breaking them up, as with Standard Oil in 1911, or by regulating them as a public utility, as with AT&T in 1913.  该怎么办呢？过去各国处理垄断企业的办法或是将其拆分，比如1911年对标准石油公司的拆分，或是将它们当作公用事业来监管，例如1913年对AT&T采取的措施。

Today both those approaches have big drawbacks. 今天，这两种方法都有很大的缺陷。

The traditional tools of utilities regulation, such as price controls and profit caps, are hard to apply, since most products are free and would come at a high price in forgone⁵ investment and innovation. 价格管制和利润上限等传统的公用事业管制工具难以应用，因为大部分产品都是免费的，而且还会抑制投资和创新，代价太高。

Likewise, a full-scale break-up would cripple the platforms’ economies of scale, worsening the service they offer consumers.  同样，完全肢解将削弱这些平台的规模经济，导致提供给消费者的服务质量下降。

And even then, in all likelihood one of the Googlettes or Facebabies would eventually sweep all before it as the inexorable logic⁶ of network effects reasserted itself. 而且即使拆分了谷歌、Facebook这样的企业，由于网络效应无可避免地会重新发挥作用，其中的某个“小谷歌”或“小Facebook”最终还是很可能再次横扫市场。

The lack of a simple solution deprives politicians of easy slogans, but does not leave trustbusters impotent.  缺乏简单的解决办法会让政客找不出简明的口号，但不至于让反垄断机构无能为力。

Two broad changes of thinking would go a long way towards sensibly taming the titans. 如果能大幅转变两种思考方式，将大大有助于巧妙地驯服这些大家伙。

The first is to make better use of existing competition law.  首先是更好地利用现有的竞争法规。

Trustbusters should scrutinise mergers⁷ to gauge⁸ whether a deal is likely to neutralise a potential long-term threat, even if the target is small at the time. 反垄断机构应该仔细审查兼并案，判断某项兼并是否有可能消除潜在的长远的威胁，即使当时兼并对象的规模还很小。

Such scrutiny⁹ might have prevented Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and Google’s of Waze, which makes navigation software.  以前如果有这样的审查，Facebook可能就不会收购Instagram，谷歌也不会收购导航软件Waze了。

 

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