On 11^th December 2018, the ACCC released its preliminary report on the Digital Platforms Inquiry, and one thing is certain – Google and Facebook won’t be happy after reading it.

The draft recommendations are extensive and call for significant changes to privacy and consumer protection laws and new regulatory oversight to monitor and curb the market power exerted by Google and Facebook.

On 4^th December 2017, the Treasurer, Scott Morrison directed the ACCC to conduct an inquiry into digital platforms such as Facebook and Google. The inquiry was tasked with looking into the impact of digital search engines, social media platforms and other digital content aggregation platforms have on competition on the media and advertising industry. In particular the inquiry will look into the impact of digital platforms on the supply of news and journalistic content and the implications for content creators, advertisers, consumers and media owners. On 11^th December 2018, the ACCC released its preliminary report on the inquiry. The ACCC will accept submissions in response to the preliminary report up to 15^th February 2019, following which it will release its final report by June 2019. In this report, we outline some of the key highlights and recommendations from the ACCC’s preliminary report and provide our take on the same.