European Commission announced a formal antitrust investigation against Amazon

Earlier we mentioned that the European Commission is considering launching an anti-monopoly investigation against Apple and Amazon. Of course, it is necessary to collect all kinds of information before the investigation begins. The current information collection for the US technology company Amazon has been completed, so the European Commission announced a formal antitrust investigation to Amazon. The focus of this survey is how Amazon uses third-party seller data to influence competition. Simply put, Amazon competes with third-party stores.

Amazon has a large number of self-operated stores and commodities, but there are also many third-party merchants. Third-party merchants are essentially Amazon’s own competition. The ranking of search results for any product affects the sale of goods, and the EU believes that Amazon may place its own products on top of third-party goods. At the same time, the shopping cart is also a decisive factor affecting the user’s purchase, but some products in Amazon can be directly added to the shopping cart, and some need to open the details page.

The EU says more and more consumers are choosing to buy goods online, and e-commerce is also promoting retail competition to bring more choices and better prices. The EU needs to ensure that large online platforms do not eliminate these advantages through anti-competitive behavior, so the EU decided to pay close attention to the dual role of Amazon.