EU regulators registered antitrust charges on 10th November against Amazon, accusing the company of using its access to data from firms that sell products on its platform to gain a one-sided benefit over them.
The charges have been filed 2 years after the bloc’s antitrust enforcer started to look into the amazon. These are the latest effort by European regulators to control the power of big tech firms. The commissioner of the EU commissioner has slapped Google with antitrust fines totaling closely 10 billion dollars and opened identical antitrust investigations this summer into Apple. The EU’s executive Commission has further opened the 2nd investigation on 10th November into whether Amazon specials treat product offers and merchants that use its personal logistics and delivery system.
While the United States initially criticized the European Union for aiming at American firms, it has more recently begun taking a tougher line on Amazon as well, suing Google in 2020 for abusing its dominance in online search and advertising.
Image from Amazon
The EU investigation found that the Seattle-based company is accessing and analyzing real-time data from other vendors that sell goods on its platform to assist help it decide which new products of its own to present and how to price and market them.
Investigators have focused on that practice in countries like France and Germany, which are Amazon’s 2 biggest markets in the European Union, but Vestager didn’t give accurate instances of merchants affected by Amazon’s behavior.
The stakes have grown for retailers as many European nations have shut supplementary shops provisionally to try to encompass the pandemic, pushing more shopping online, where the e-commerce platform is a major presence.
The company has faced a possible fine of up to 10% of its annual global revenue. That could amount to 28 billion dollars which are based on its 2019 earnings. The company has denied all the accusations.
