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the Malaysian Competition Act 2010 (MCA2020) excluded M &A control and MyCC unable to conduct a
market study to determine its pre-merger or post-merger impact on the competition and consumers welfare
(Ramaiah, 2020). However, 2019, MyCC’s found Grab abused its dominant position by imposing restrictive
clauses on its drivers (disallowing competitors advertising) that undermine new entries and other small
enterprises to enter the E-haling industry in Malaysia. MyCC proposed a fine of RM86.8 million against Grab
for (Jay&Antara, 2019) for abusive behaviour (Section 4 MCA2010) but the decision was set aside and granted
leave for judicial review. The case displayed the lack of the regulator’s capacity building and legal tools to nab
digital merger. And reflected difficulty to prove modus operandi in digitalized based firms because lacking the
expertise in EA, SAD to gather the information for the legal proceedings against digital giants such as Grab.
Thus, MyCC, national competition watchdog’s parens patriae was undermined with no merger
control(Ramaiah,2020) and lack of expertise in digital case.
In Indonesian’s Antimonopoly and Unfair Business Competition (Law No.5/1999) found lex imperfecta,
despite having merger control regulation, had to forgo Uber-Grab digital merger (Ramaiah, Sirait & Smith,
2019). The decision queried, whether Indonesian Competition Commission(ICC) lack of regulation or lack the
legal tool to assess the impact towards digital competition in Indonesia? ICC attempted to overcome the
regulatory gap by introducing ‘pre-notification procedure’ (Guidelines to measure M&A) for better process in
future (KPPU, 2019) but again Gojek-Tokopedia merger took off reflecting the inherent weakness and lack of
capacity building in identifying and regulating digital M&A in Indonesian. Meanwhile on later development
PT Solusi Transportasi Indonesia (or ‘GRAB’ Indonesia) was nabbed (KPPU,2020July 02) for the violation
Law No.5/1999 for abusive charges ‘special rental’ amounting to discrimination by monopoly for Grab App
software application (KPPU, 2020, September) (Nugraha, 2020). But the decision got reversed by the Supreme
Court of Indonesia for reasons of insufficient evidence and penalties did not reflect an effort to economic
recovery in the middle of the pandemic. Hence, the decisions were critiqued as a victory fort for digital firms’
atrocity and undermined the ICC. And it impairs the competition spirit in Indonesia (Fauzie,2021) because it
undermines new and small players (which may go unnoticed) development, and survival compared to the
dominant players better equipped digital technology and investment, besides imposing switching costs for
people in sharing economy to move from one platform to another (Safiri, 2021).
Meanwhile, technology companies in India, although revered for their innovation and efficiency, also not
susceptible to anticompetitive motivated collusion, acquisition, and abuse of market power. Indian digital giants
such as Uber, Ola and PayTM in India, market power marginalise the market by enticing users by subsidising
their goods with their huge financial capital, by resorting into practices like deep discounting, cash-back offers
and other schemes designed to attract new users and establish the network effect (Graham & Smith, 2014)
initially even if sustain heavy losses for years. (Chakravartti & Mundle, 2017). Digital markets employ
algorithms to limit competition through agreements, concerted practices, and other subtle means. Such as
disguising the collusive agreement as an introductory offer by a new player, instead of appearing as systematic
competitive strategies by using capital as their competition weapon, where eventually tipping in favour of the
player, which might not have the most innovative product or service, but the one that can manage to obtain huge
capital and entice as many users as possible through its introductory offers. The Indian, Competition Act, 2002
(ICA2002) and the Competition Commission of India (CCI) similarly faced with difficulty to nab for
infringement, in the absence clear evidence to show agreement between platforms to coordinate or be any part
of such agreement. Such as between drivers themselves, to delegate the pricing power to the platforms or cab
aggregators (Peter & Singh, 2019). Meanwhile “abuse of dominance” cases on global technology giants like
Google, Amazon, and their Indian counterparts like Flipkart (CCC,2014: CCi,2019), decisions heavily
influenced by European Commission (EC) or of United States FTC/ DOJ decisions per se (Gouri, 2021).
However, CCI in WhatsApp’s privacy policy and mandatory terms of service that gave users the option to
optout decided that “…in a data driven ecosystem, the CL needs to examine whether the excessive data
collection and the extent to which such collected data is subsequently put to use or otherwise shared have anti-
competitive implications which require anti-trust scrutiny…” (CCI, 2021). Hence, CCI have similar issues in

E- Proceedings of The 5th International Multi-Conference on Artificial Intelligence Technology (MCAIT 2021) [135]
Artificial Intelligence in the 4th Industrial Revolution