Amazon Gets UK Antitrust Scrutiny On Data Usage, FT Says

Amazon.com is getting U.K. antitrust scrutiny into how it uses data from smaller sellers on its site, the Financial Times reported, citing three people with knowledge of the matter. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority has been analyzing Amazon's business for months, according to the newspaper. While the regulator hasn't yet announced an investigation, it may focus on whether Amazon favors merchants that use its logistics and delivery services, the report said. Silicon Valley giants are the focus of a vast array of European probes into how internet giants increasingly govern the terms of what people do online, often gaining insights into user behavior that no-one else can match. The U.K. move adds to European Union and German probes of Amazon's business and follows multiple investigations into Google, Facebook and Apple.

Part of a Bigger Problem

[ytene]

Do Amazon and Facebook and Google have the ability to mis-use the data they harvest from their platforms, placing advertisers and resellers that use those services at a disadvantage?

But at an operational level there is no fundamental difference between what Amazon do and what any major grocery retailer does when they offer their own branded products, in competition with well-known, "named" brands. How many own-branded products does Walmart [wikipedia.org] carry? Or Kroger [wikipedia.org].

So yes, bring it on. Stop the "major platform