The anti-plagiarism software provider can buy a competitor in the Australian market

Turnitin wants to buy much smaller (at least in Australia) competitor Ouriginal – which excited the interest of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The ACCC has an interest in the concentration of market power in education publishing and asked consumers and competitors for advice on the impact of a takeover (CMM July 7 and September 13).

The ACCC now decides that Ourriginal is not big enough in Australia “to provide a particularly significant competitive constraint on Turnitin.”

The Australian market probably was not top of Turnitin’s mind in the global plan – Ouriginal has but few clients here. However, an overall arrangement will extend Turnitin’s vast resources and related market power. There are 1.4bn student papers and 82m scholarly articles in its plagiarism-detection databases.