DoorDash Wants Your Second Opinion To Come From DoorDash

DoorDash has agreed to buy Instacart for about $17 billion. The proposed deal is expected to close at the end of 2027 or in the first half of 2028, subject to regulatory approval. DoorDash plans to keep the Instacart brand and app, combine the membership programs, and not require grocers to use its delivery services exclusively.

Fine. That's the announcement. Two businesses, a purchase price, some conditions. Nobody needs to overturn a table yet.

But let's linger over keeping both apps. Because that's lovely. You'll still be able to look at DoorDash, decide you don't like what you see, and indignantly open Instacart. Your little protest march will travel six inches across a phone screen and arrive at another entrance to the same goddamn building.

Different welcome mat. Same landlord.

The companies want greater scale to compete with giants like Walmart and Amazon. This is the American business solution to everything being too big: assemble something even bigger. The kitchen has a grease fire, so we've hired a second grease fire with a better logistics department.

And there are actual questions here, beneath the flaming skillet. Instacart competes with DoorDash and Uber Eats in grocery delivery. Analysts expect antitrust scrutiny. Regulators will have to examine competition, not just admire a presentation in which every arrow points upward and every human being is represented by a shopping basket.

DoorDash can argue that other retailers belong in the competitive picture. Fair enough. Count them. Examine the market. Do the work.

But WHO decided that retaining two app icons should feel reassuring? WHO? If my landlord buys the building across the street, I do not celebrate the continued existence of its doorbell. I want to know what happens to the rent.

Keeping the names isn't keeping the rivalry. YOU CAN'T PRESERVE COMPETITION BY SAVING THE FUCKING LOGOS.

And then, and THEN, there's the information. A combined company would hold an enormous amount of data about Americans' shopping habits. Not just the groceries. The habits. The patterns. All those tiny domestic emergencies that turn into transactions: dinner fell through, the milk's gone, somebody has to eat before the next shift.

You see a carton of eggs. Corporate America sees a carton of eggs surrounded by seventeen consulting opportunities.

The FTC has launched a study into whether and how companies, including DoorDash and Instacart, use shoppers' data to set prices and driver wages. A study is not a finding of wrongdoing. That distinction matters. We can ask what the hell is going on without pretending we already possess the answer in a sealed envelope.

We do know this: Instacart ended price experiments after criticism of a study finding that some customers paid different prices for the same items from the same store at the same time.

Same item. Same store. Same time.

Apparently the missing ingredient in grocery shopping was wondering whether the cucumber had assessed your negotiating position.

I need to sit down. Buying food should not require a burner phone and a convincing backstory about how little you like yogurt.

I just wanted dinner. Something warm. Maybe a vegetable. Now I'm thinking about whether my purchase history suggests I'll surrender another dollar before I surrender the broccoli. There goes the appetite. Terrific service. Delivered straight to my nervous system.

Wait. THAT'S THE WORSE PART. The worker delivering the food needs a decent wage. The customer needs an affordable dinner. Neither one is buying a rival for $17 billion. Yet somehow they're the ones whose prices and pay need all this exquisite mathematical attention.

Seventeen billion dollars to buy the competitor. A microscope for the driver's paycheck.

Regulators should scrutinize this proposal, including the companies' arguments in its favor. Before approval, not after everyone's installed the update and the customer-service menu offers seven ways to be ignored by one owner.

Keep both apps if you like. Two checkout buttons are not an antitrust policy.