European Union regulators have filed antitrust charges against Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of using data to gain an unfair advantage over merchants using its platform:
The EU’s executive commission, the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, said Tuesday that the charges have been sent to the company. The commission said it takes issue with Amazon’s systematic use of non-public business data to avoid “the normal risks of competition and to leverage its dominance” for e-commerce services in France and Germany, the company’s two biggest markets in the EU. The EU started looking into Amazon in 2018 and has been focusing on its dual role as a marketplace and retailer. In addition to selling its own products, the U.S. company allows third-party retailers to sell their own goods through its site. Last year, more than half of the items sold on Amazon worldwide were from these outside merchants. Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, the EU commissioner in charge of competition, said it’s not a problem that Amazon is a successful business but “our concern is very specific business conduct which appears to distort genuine competition.” Amazon faces a possible fine of up to 10% of its annual worldwide revenue, which could amount to billions of dollars. The company rejected the accusations.
Well, this isn’t good news for Amazon as this could be the start of a number of countries looking into the way that Amazon does business as the EU tends to be the bellwether for this sort of thing. Hopefully for Amazon’s sake, they have all their ducks in a row. Because this is going to get rocky.
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This entry was posted on November 10, 2020 at 10:29 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Amazon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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EU Files Antitrust Charges Against Amazon For Unfair Business Practices
European Union regulators have filed antitrust charges against Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of using data to gain an unfair advantage over merchants using its platform:
The EU’s executive commission, the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, said Tuesday that the charges have been sent to the company. The commission said it takes issue with Amazon’s systematic use of non-public business data to avoid “the normal risks of competition and to leverage its dominance” for e-commerce services in France and Germany, the company’s two biggest markets in the EU. The EU started looking into Amazon in 2018 and has been focusing on its dual role as a marketplace and retailer. In addition to selling its own products, the U.S. company allows third-party retailers to sell their own goods through its site. Last year, more than half of the items sold on Amazon worldwide were from these outside merchants. Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, the EU commissioner in charge of competition, said it’s not a problem that Amazon is a successful business but “our concern is very specific business conduct which appears to distort genuine competition.” Amazon faces a possible fine of up to 10% of its annual worldwide revenue, which could amount to billions of dollars. The company rejected the accusations.
Well, this isn’t good news for Amazon as this could be the start of a number of countries looking into the way that Amazon does business as the EU tends to be the bellwether for this sort of thing. Hopefully for Amazon’s sake, they have all their ducks in a row. Because this is going to get rocky.
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This entry was posted on November 10, 2020 at 10:29 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Amazon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.