14 DAY TRIAL // The European Commission has published its preliminary view on Amazon’s antitrust case, and the conclusion is as simple as it could be: the company breached EU antitrust rules.
In its statement of objections, the Commission notes that Amazon has a dual role as a platform, as it sells not only its own products but also provides partners, which are pretty much independent sellers, with the option of selling their own goods on Amazon.com.
But while other companies can thus list their products on Amazon’s website, the American giant also gets access to plenty of information that it shouldn’t otherwise access and which eventually allows it to make strategic business decisions that would help it favor its goods.
For example, Amazon can access third-party data like the number of ordered and shipped units, independent sellers’ revenue, shipping data, consumer claims, warranties, and so much more.
“The Commission's preliminary findings show that very large quantities of non-public seller data are available to employees of Amazon's retail business and flow directly into the automated systems of that business, which aggregate these data and use them to calibrate Amazon's retail offers and strategic business decisions to the detriment of the other marketplace sellers. For example, it allows Amazon to focus its offers in the best-selling products across product categories and to adjust its offers in view of non-public data of competing sellers,” the European Commission explains.
Second Amazon investigation
The Commission has also announced a second antitrust investigation, this time related to the Buy Box feature that Amazon could abuse to favor its own products.
“In particular, the Commission will investigate whether the criteria that Amazon sets to select the winner of the “Buy Box” and to enable sellers to offer products to Prime users, under Amazon's Prime loyalty programme, lead to preferential treatment of Amazon's retail business or of the sellers that use Amazon's logistics and delivery services,” the Commission concluded.
Amazon hasn’t yet released a statement on the Commission’s findings.