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Antitrust authorities of the European Union have opened a preliminary investigation into
Amazon.com
Inc.
AMZN -1.06%
processing other merchants who sell products using its platform, launching a new regulatory front against a US technology giant.
EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Wednesday that investigators had recently sent questionnaires to traders using Amazon to sell goods as part of the preliminary investigation. According to Vestager, the survey focuses on whether Amazon uses customer data collected via billions of transactions so that small merchants selling the same products on Amazon are not able to do so.
"The question here is about the data," Ms. Vestager said, adding that the investigation was in its infancy and that her office had "no conclusions" about the opportunity to do so. open a formal inquiry.
An Amazon spokesperson has had no immediate comment.
As head of EU antitrust policy, Vestager has become one of the world's leading regulators of technology, helping to inspire investigations of Brazilian technology companies in the United States.
Alphabet
Inc.
Google twice, for a total of about 6.76 billion euros, for abusing the dominance of its search engine and its Android operating system in order to favor its own services .
Under his leadership, the EU also ruled that Amazon had to pay some 250 million euros of allegedly unpaid taxes in Luxembourg, which Amazon also appealed.
Ms. Vestager did not hide her desire to find business that could determine whether companies are abusing the data they accumulate to thwart their competitors. Indeed, this is one of the hottest topics in competition law in recent years. Some lawyers say the data is fungible and reproducible, but others argue that its use to power self-learning software and artificial intelligence can confer a lasting advantage to large companies.
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Until now, the EU has not found any data problems. The bloc raised the issue by considering
Facebook
Inc.
2014 purchase of WhatsApp chat service, but later he was allowed to pose no competition problem. In 2008, it approved Google's acquisition of the DoubleClick advertising services company, as other companies would still have access to many data sources after mergers.
The Amazon Marketplace Survey responds to concerns raised by retailers in the context of a 2017 e-commerce sector survey regarding so-called "dual-role" platforms. ". A typical example of a dual-role platform is Amazon, which, on the same website, provides market services to third-party sellers and sells products as an online retailer, in direct competition with these third-party sellers.
This could give Amazon access to competitively sensitive information about its competitors' products, which it could use to stimulate its own retail business to the detriment of third-party sellers in its market. The purpose of the preliminary inquiry is to ascertain whether these concerns have benefits and must be followed.
A copy of a questionnaire sent in recent days, the authenticity of which was confirmed by a person familiar with the probe, asked retailers the importance and availability of certain data, such as the return rates of competitors. compete with a third-party merchant.
Some Amazon market vendors contacted on Wednesday have not yet received an EU questionnaire, but have expressed support for the survey. One of the major sellers in Europe who declined to be named complained that Amazon had increased the cost of selling multimedia products by 50% in some countries, but said that Amazon was so great that it had no choice but to continue using it.
Christian Mayrhofer, managing director of Dodax AG, a Swiss-based merchant who makes about half of his turnover on Amazon, said the platform was lower than his own sales, while charging higher fees to third party sellers.
"We are growing on our own site and trying alternative platforms," said Mr Mayrhofer. "But in all honesty, nothing can compete with Amazon."
Amazon's spokesperson did not immediately comment on vendors' concerns.
Write to Sam Schechner at [email protected] and Valentina Pop at [email protected]
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