Amazon’s Reach and Sweep: The FTC Suspicious Amazon-Amazon Conjecture Revisited
An FTC press release states that the suit targets parts of Amazon’s business. Specifically, the agency is accusing Amazon of punishing sellers for offering lower-priced products on different platforms and only allowing sellers to use Prime shipping benefits. The agency is targeting the ability of Amazon to bias its results in favor of its own products.
The company paid more than $30 million to resolve FTC lawsuits that claimed it failed to remove data from children’s conversations with its voice assistant, and that it monitored customers’ Ring camera recordings without their consent.
FTC ChairKhan has long worried aboutAmazon’s reach and sway. She rose to prominence as a law student in 2017, when she published “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” The tech giant was found to be anti-competitive by the paper, which concluded that it should be broken up.
Indeed, the FTC this year lost a lawsuit against Facebook parent Meta over its acquisition of virtual reality company Within Unlimited, and later struck out on its attempt to block Microsoft’s purchase of videogame company Activision Blizzard.
As the FTC chair, Khan made it clear that she was unafraid of challenging companies in court and undeterred by the risk of some losses.
Khan helped write a 449-page report that called for the separation of Apple, Amazon, and other tech companies. They have become the kind of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons, the report said.
Amazon has built up one of the largest delivery companies in the U.S. with a web of warehouses, air hubs and trucking operations that ship more packages than FedEx. It has ventured into healthcare, home security, filmmaking and other fields that have made it one of the most valuable companies in the world, worth over a trillion dollars.
Amazon is still the most popular online shop in the US, capturing more than 40% of all online shopping according to private and government research. About two-thirds of U.S. adults are members of Amazon’s subscription service, Prime, as estimated by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.
The FTC filed a restraining order against non-Gaussianity in the state of e+e- annihilation
The FTC did not immediately seek a breakup of the company. The court requested a permanent injunction, but it could change in the future. The case is expected to last a long time.