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EU's Antitrust Commissioner Opens Preliminary Probe into Amazon (cnbc.com)
European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has begun questioning merchants on Amazon's use of their data, Vestager said Wednesday. The issue, she said, is whether Amazon is using data from the merchants it hosts on its site to secure an advantage in selling products against those same retailers. From a report: "These are very early days and we haven't formally opened a case. We are trying to make sure that we get the full picture," Vestager said during a news conference Wednesday. The probe comes as the world's largest online retailer faces growing calls for regulation. Investors and insiders have long cited Amazon's size and reach as reason to break the company up. President Donald Trump has hinted at antitrust action against Amazon as part of continued attacks against CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was set to meet this month with state officials to discuss antitrust concerns in Silicon Valley, though much of the regulation on Big Tech thus far has come out of Brussels.
>> Investors and insiders have long cited Amazon's size and reach as reason to break the company up.
OK, I know journalists don't usually graduate at the top of the class, but it seems unlikely that people who own ("investors") or work for the company ("insiders") want Amazon broken up. I'd suspect the people who really want this to happen would be "competitors", "labor advocates" and most especially "attorneys".
All I hear about is how the EU goes after companies, fines them, and then the appeal, and of course the appeal goes down in flames. So in the end, the EU gets to take a bunch of money, company XYZ is frustrated, and life goes on.
Sooo, is there ever times when the EU antitrust commission investigates and finds out, hey these guys are ok! Does this happen or is this just the money printing machine it appears to be?
Any extra-terrestrial intelligence worth it's salt would undoubtedly have a 'prime directive' that prohibits contact with less advanced races.
Understanding criminals don't obey laws, is it any leap of logic to understand why these criminal-aliens prefer anal sex?
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Amazon is an abusive monopoly
Amazon has less than 10% of retail. It's smaller than Walmart.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Amazon has less than 10% of retail. It's smaller than Walmart.
That's not a false number there everyone. However, that said, Amazon is 49.1% of all e-commerce sales. I'll point here for infographic of online versus offline sales. Now those numbers are a bit dated as they were 2016 to 2017, but it shows that online is $400B and offline is around $3.4T or $3,375B for those wanting to keep a consistent scale. More interestingly online sales show higher growth than offline sales +14% versus +5%. If everything were to stay exactly the same in terms of percentage of sales and rates of growth, Amazon does seem be a big concern should online sales begin to outstrip offline sales. Now do note, that's a big IF there, so use whatever amount of gains of salt you so wish on that.
I don't think IGW is wrong here. This is one of those things that this might be a problem one day and Governments should be proactive, not reactive. It's a question of, should a government act proactively when such actions may or may not be warranted? Or should the government sit on the sidelines and wait until there is a problem, which in turn may not ever come to pass? With how fast online sales are growing, I don't think it unwise for the EU to start having this on their radar. How far they should go though, I couldn't honestly say.