DoorDash bids US$17 billion for Instacart
I previously reported on Matt Stoller’s incisive insights into the abuse of monopoly power. Last week he reported on U.S. delivery company DoorDash’s proposed US$17 billion takeover of grocery channel operator Instacart.
While the business press is largely treating this transaction as a routine play for market dominance in food and grocery delivery, Stoller argues that the merger represents something far more fundamental. In his view, the real story isn’t just app-based delivery; it’s an ongoing effort by major tech platforms to dismantle the classic employer-employee framework that defined 20th-century life.
Stoller frames the pending deal as the logical next phase of gig-economy consolidation. DoorDash already controls roughly two-thirds of domestic restaurant delivery in the U.S., while Instacart commands over half of third-party grocery delivery. Combining the two platforms creates a corporate giant capable of dominating both domains. However, Stoller points out that this isn’t simply a merger of complementary services. Because Instacart recently ventured into restaurant delivery itself, DoorDash is actively acquiring a direct, emerging competitor.
Stoller suggests the transaction will harm small, independent businesses because unlike the pressure imposed on delivery companies by direct-delivery titans like Walmart and Amazon, independent grocers and local restaurants lack the organisation clout and massive scale of corporate retail chains. For these smaller operators, third-party platforms are a vital bottleneck, forcing them to surrender trade secrets, customer data and their margins to platforms with immense market power.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, as industrialisation replaced independent artisans with factory work, two parallel legal pillars emerged: labour law and antitrust law. During that era, workers surrendered direct control over their daily output in exchange for guaranteed hourly wages, benefits, and workplace safety standards. While antitrust law was originally imagined as a tool to prevent corporate cartels from dominating working-class citizens, regulators gradually disconnected antitrust enforcement from labour protection over the following decades.
Stoller argues this separation has produced the rise of the “fissured workplace” and the complete erosion of the traditional employment model. Modern platforms like DoorDash, Uber and Instacart have built multibillion-dollar operations based on the premise they can exercise granular, algorithmic control over workers while eschewing every standard obligation of an employer.
Through aggressive political spending – such as the record-breaking US$204 million spent on California’s Proposition 22 – gig platforms successfully carved themselves out of labour protections. This shift left millions of drivers earning far below minimum wage once unpaid transit, waiting time, and vehicle expenses are factored in.
Stoller’s piece is worth reading because he argues that U.S. antitrust and labour law are finally colliding again. He points to recent legal and policy shifts under federal enforcement, where antitrust regulators have begun aggressively targeting corporate monopsonies that depress worker compensation.
Many insiders have become whistleblowers by reporting these platforms using opaque, dynamic pricing algorithms – sometimes factoring in metrics like worker desperation – to set take-it-or-leave-it compensation rates.
Stoller says that because gig companies insist their workers are independent contractors, they inadvertently expose themselves to antitrust liability for illegal price-fixing among independent business entities.
The DoorDash-Instacart acquisition might seem irrelevant to Australia and Australians, but it’s an urgent wake-up call. By consolidating nearly 10 million Instacart and DoorDash workers under a single operating umbrella, the combined company would eliminate the ability of gig workers to ‘multi-app’ and pit rival platforms against each other to secure better pay.
As tech founders wield increasing political power, it will be fascinating to see whether they’re allowed to undo a century of labour standards, or whether a reenergised antitrust movement can restore balance between corporate power and workers.
Roger Montgomery is the Founder and Chairman of Montgomery Investment Management. Roger has over three decades of experience in funds management and related activities, including equities analysis, equity and derivatives strategy, trading and stockbroking. Prior to establishing Montgomery, Roger held positions at Ord Minnett Jardine Fleming, BT (Australia) Limited and Merrill Lynch.
He is also author of best-selling investment guide-book for the stock market, Value.able – how to value the best stocks and buy them for less than they are worth.
Roger appears regularly on television and radio, and in the press, including ABC radio and TV, The Australian and Ausbiz. View upcoming media appearances.
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