Apparently, sales of dog food by the U.S. shopping giant Wal-Mart were bigger than the worldwide sales chalked up by e-commerce last year. Even if that is true, the current media frenzy about e-commerce makes it hard to countenance. There is a danger that this current fashion for one particular technology and its commercialization will impede rational thinking.
It is understandably big news when Time Warner, newly empowered by its linkup with the Internet company America Online, takes over EMI, thereby creating a vertically integrated behemoth jeopardizing free competition, market access and more than 3,000 jobs. It is difficult to imagine how the European Commission will avoid an investigation under its competition law.
This is more the product of industrial consolidation to protect profits and executive salaries, in the context of an increasingly globalized marketplace, than daring entrepreneurship capitalizing on the opportunities opened up by a new technology. As such, it does not deserve privileged treatment as a pioneer of a new technological trajectory, which will inevitably be the argument advanced in its defense against the rigorous application of the law.