Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is the OII's Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation. His research focuses on the role of information in a networked economy.
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger’s research investigates how data concentration by dominant digital firms affects competition and innovation. As machine learning becomes central to economic productivity, access to data, not just capital or ingenuity, has emerged as a key resource driving progress.
Mayer-Schönberger argues that current market structures create a feedback loop: firms with the most real-world data generate the most innovation, pulling further ahead. In a series of publications and policy contributions, he outlined how this dynamic undermines competition and entrenches the dominance of a few digital superstar firms such as Google and Amazon.
Mayer-Schönberger proposed a bold alternative: mandated data sharing, which would require large companies to make selected datasets accessible to competitors in anonymised, standardised ways.
Working with policymakers in Germany and beyond, Mayer-Schönberger helped translate the data sharing concept into actionable legislation. His research has shaped national and EU-wide frameworks for regulating digital markets.
In 2018, he partnered with economist Justus Haucap to develop a detailed proposal for a “Data for All” law, commissioned by Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD). The proposal formed the basis of new SPD policy, championed by then-party head Andrea Nahles and later adopted at the party’s 2019 annual conference.
Mayer-Schönberger also served as a member of Germany’s Digitalrat, advising Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government. His ideas directly influenced the Datenstrategie, Germany’s national data strategy, published in January 2021, and are reflected in the subsequent Tenth Amendment to the German Competition Act, which created legal grounds for compelling data access in digital markets where dominant firms impede competition.
At the European level, his work informed the European Commission’s Data Strategy and contributed to the development of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA compels “gatekeepers” to give business users access to key datasets such as user queries, views, and rankings. These reforms were presented by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as part of Europe’s strategy to ensure digital fairness and sovereignty.
As digital transformation accelerates, this body of work provides a model for structural digital policy, ensuring that data, the core resource of the 21st-century economy, is accessible not just to the few, but to the many.
