Does Breaking Up Data Actually Fix Market Power

The FTC has settled its case against Zillow and Redfin by requiring the dominant platform to share rental data with its competitor—a remedy that will almost certainly produce no meaningful change in how renters experience the market. Zillow must now syndicate Redfin listings without restriction. Sounds like victory for competition until you examine what actually happened the last time regulators tried this move.

In 2011, the FTC required Google to divest or separate ITA Software's flight search monopoly from its general search results. The company chose separation: competitors got access to the same data Google used. Google's market position in airline searches nonetheless strengthened after the remedy took effect, not weakened. Competitors had the data. Google still controlled how it appeared on the screen.

That is what the Zillow settlement replicates. Redfin's listings will be syndicated. Zillow determines the ranking algorithm, the prominence of display, the order in which results appear. A company can be forced to share its inventory without being forced to treat that inventory fairly in its own distribution system. The data flows. The power stays put. Structural separation without ranking parity is regulatory theater—it looks like antitrust enforcement to a public that wants to believe markets can be fixed by paperwork.

What shifts market power is forcing the dominant player to change how it ranks competitors against itself. That would mean Zillow's search algorithm treating Redfin listings by the same merit criteria it uses for its own inventory, not burying them algorithmically to protect Zillow's market share. The FTC has stopped short of that demand. It has required the lesser remedy, the one that failed before, betting that a second application will somehow work differently.

This matters because it reveals what antitrust enforcement actually believes it can accomplish. A regulator that settles for data access has already surrendered on the harder claim: that market dominance itself creates an obligation to compete fairly, not just to share resources while preserving advantage. The settlement tells competitors and consumers the same thing Google's 2011 remedy did. You can have access. You cannot have power. The outcome depends less on what regulators required than on whether Zillow chooses to honor the spirit of what was demanded. Market incentives will not push in that direction.