[nickdandakis]

Question from someone that's not familiar with law, or I guess specifically antitrust (anti-monopoly?) law.

How are these acquisitions not in violation of these laws. Especially from the Big Tech Cos that slurp up literally any small competitor.

From the article:

"DoorDash's acquisition of Caviar creates a highly differentiated company with a unique brand and wide-ranging selection."

How is this not a play at eliminating competition?

[epc]

It is not illegal to buy competitors (commenting only on US law). It can potentially violate antitrust laws if you eliminate all competition in a market by buying out competitors. But given the existence of Seamless/Grubhub, Uber Eats, and others, plus most of the restaurants still take phone & fax orders, it would be difficult to argue Doordash buying Caviar corners the delivery market.

[btown]

IANAL, but as far as I know generally the standard is "is this likely to cause meaningful harm re: pricing/quality to consumers?" See https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a... for a fair amount of context. Horizontal mergers happen every day in the private markets (like this transaction), and generally they're a good thing: you're likely to get a premium by selling to a strategic rather than a financial investor (e.g. private equity) since they can value synergy. And anyone who's taken an entrepreneurship course knows that having a larger variety of potential high-quality liquidity events incentivizes the creation of new businesses. The problem is when enough of a market is consolidated in a way that might allow the consolidator to adjust pricing in a consumer-hostile way, which isn't touched by this specific transaction.

To your more general question of "how is this not a play at eliminating competition" - consider it more "can we (DoorDash) make more money operating Caviar by finding synergies with our existing infrastructure, than we pay for Caviar based on a model that describes Caviar operating under Square without that benefit?" That's a question of efficiency, not competition, and it's generally a good thing.

[lancepioch]

Eliminating competition isn't illegal. Creating monopolies isn't illegal.

Using a monopoly in one industry to negatively affect businesses in another industry or gain a monopoly there is illegal.

[lacker]

In US law, eliminating competition is generally fine. It's only a problem when there is a monopoly or close to a monopoly. DoorDash doesn't seem close to having a monopoly on food delivery.

[closetohome]

I'd recommend reading up on the Microsoft antitrust case. That's where most of us learned about antitrust law.

[outericky]

Because there is still a lot of competition? Grubhub, ubereats, and many others.

[baddox]

It would be very strange if all acquisitions of competitors were considered a violation of antitrust law. It's something that I would expect to be very common in a well-functioning, fiercely competitive market.