Foreshadowing? The Asia-Pacific Tipline for 7 August 2020

Google is probably hoping that remarks made this week by Australian competition boss Rod Sims do not foreshadow the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s final decision on its acquisition of health tracking company Fitbit. Sims – not for the first time – took direct aim at large digital platforms, expressing concerns about how their past and future acquisitions of smaller rivals could harm competition, among several other issues. North of Australia, there have been rumblings that China’s antitrust watchdog may be preparing an investigation of major domestic technology companies Alibaba and Tencent, which own mobile payment platforms AliPay and WeChat Pay, respectively.