The power and ambition of the giants of the digital economy is astonishing-Amazon has just announced the purchase of the upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods for $13.5bn, but two years ago Facebook paid even more than that to acquire the WhatsApp messaging service, which doesn't have any physical product at all. What WhatsApp offered Facebook was an intricate and finely detailed web of its users' friendships and social lives.

　　Facebook promised the European commission then that it would not link

　　phone numbers to Facebook identities, but it broke the promise almost as soon as the deal went through. Even without knowing what was in the messages, the knowledge of who sent them and to whom was enormously revealing and still could be. What political journalist, what party whip, would not want to know the makeup of the WhatsApp groups in which Theresa May's enemies are currently plotting? It may be that the value of Whole Foods to Amazon is not so much the 460 shops it owns, but the records of which customers have purchased what.

　　Competition law appears to be the only way to address these imbalances of power. But it is clumsy. For one thing, it is very slow compared to the pace of change within the digital economy. By the time a problem has been addressed and remedied it may have vanished in the marketplace, to be replaced by new abuses of power. But there is a deeper conceptual problem, too. Competition law as presently interpreted deals with financial disadvantage to consumers and this is not obvious when the users of these services don't pay for them. The users of their services are no their customers. That would be the people who buy advertising from them-and Facebook and Google, the two virtual giants, dominate digital advertising to the disadvantage of all other media and entertainment companies.

　　The product they're selling is data, and we, the users, convert our lives to data for the benefit of the digital giants. Just as some ants farm the bugs called aphids for the honeydew they produce when they feed, so Google farms us for the data that our digital lives yield. Ants keep predatory insects away from where their

　　aphids feed; Gmail keeps the spammers out of our inboxes. It doesn't feel like a human or democratic relationship, even if both sides benefit.

　　31.【題干】According to Paragraph 1, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for its_____.

　　【選項】

　　A.digital products

　　B.user information

　　C.physical assets

　　D.quality service

　　【答案】B

　　【解析】細節題。根據題干信息定位到第一段第二句。該句提到兩年前Facebook花了更多的錢獲得了WhatsApp的信息服務。接著提到WhatsApp提供給Facebook的是關于其用戶的朋友圈以及社會生活等具體精煉的信息。由此可知，B項為正確答案。下載考研萬題庫 觀看逐題權威視頻解析

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　　32.【題干】Linking phone numbers to Facebook identities may_____.

　　【選項】

　　A.worsen political disputers

　　B.mess up customer records

　　C.pose a risk to Facebook users

　　D.mislead the European commission

　　【答案】C

　　【解析】細節題。根據題干關鍵詞linking the phone number定位第二段第一句。該句提到Facebook向歐洲委員會承諾不會把用戶的電話號與Facebook的身份認證連系到一起，但是協議通過之后Facebook立馬失信。接下來提到“甚至都不清楚信息里面都有什么，也不知誰發的消息，發送的目的又是什么”。因此，可能會給用戶造成風險。因此C項符合文意。下載考研萬題庫 觀看逐題權威視頻解析

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　　33.【題干】According to the author, competition law_____.

　　【選項】

　　A.should serve the new market powers

　　B.may worsen the economic imbalance

　　C.should not provide just one legal solution

　　D.cannot keep pace with the changing market

　　【答案】D

　　【解析】細節題。根據題干關鍵詞competition law 定位到第三段第一句。該句指出“競爭法似乎成為解決這些不平等權力的唯一辦法，但是此法案太過笨拙”。下一句提到“一方面，相比于數據經濟變化的速度，此法案發展是非常緩慢的”。由此可知，該法案跟不上當前市場變化的步伐。因此D項為正確答案。下載考研萬題庫 觀看逐題權威視頻解析

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　　34.【題干】Competition law as presently interpreted can hardly protect Facebook users because_____.

　　【選項】

　　A.they are not defined as customers

　　B.they are not financially reliable

　　C.the services are generally digital

　　D.the services are paid for by advertisers

　　【答案】D

　　【解析】根據題目中的because 可確定為因果細節題。題干中的信息出現在第三段后半部分，是題目中的原詞 competition law as presently interpreted，而原因在其后面的句子。下文寫到，the users of their services are not，讀到這里的not，一定要找而是誰。繼續讀下一句，That would be the people who buy advertising from them···，與選項對應，可得出[D]the services are paid for by advertisers。下載考研萬題庫 觀看逐題權威視頻解析

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　　35.【題干】The ants analogy is used to illustrate_____.

　　【選項】

　　A.a win-win business model between digital giants

　　B.a typical competition pattern among digital giants

　　C.the benefits provided for digital giants' customers

　　D.the relationship between digital giants and their users

　　【答案】D

　　【解析】根據題目中is used to illustrate可判斷為例證題，要找到the ants analogy論據所證明的論點;論點在論據之前，因此先找到論據the ants analogy，再找到論據前的論點句。所以本題定位到最后一段的第一句，The product …is data，and we…convert our lives to data…。此句中，data即digital giants，we 即 users。因此答案為[D]the relationship between digital giants and their users.下載考研萬題庫 觀看逐題權威視頻解析

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