Friso Bostoen, PhD researcher, Institute for Consumer, Competition & Market, KU Leuven (University of Leuven); Fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders. For correspondence: <mailto:friso.bostoen@law.kuleuven.be>. In accordance with the ASCOLA Transparency and Disclosure Declaration, the author has nothing to disclose.The original post was published on 30 March 2018 on the CoRe Blog <https://coreblog.lexxion.eu/uber-grab-merger/>. It was subsequently adapted for inclusion in Friso Bostoen, ‘Competition law in the peer-to-peer economy’ in Bram Devolder (ed.), The platform economy: unravelling the legal status of online intermediaries (Intersentia 2019). This article is an updated version of those works.