European Commission announces antitrust probe into Amazon data use

The European Commission (the EU’s antitrust regulator) has announced that it is investigating Amazon’s use of third-party data as part of a wider probe into its business practices.

Many retailers use Amazon as a platform to sell their products and, in doing so, provide Amazon with sales data. At the same time as hosting such retailers, Amazon actively competes with them (by selling to consumers directly itself). Amazon therefore has access to sales data from multiple retailers whilst retailers using Amazon generally only have access to their own data. The investigation is focused on whether Amazon’s collection of data from these retailers may give it an unfair competitive advantage.

This new probe, which is still in its preliminary stages, follows increasing scrutiny of Amazon’s conduct. In 2015, the European Commission launched an investigation into Amazon’s use of “most favoured nation” clauses in contracts with e-book publishers due to concerns that it was using such clauses to prevent the emergence of rival e-book platforms (the investigation ended in 2017 following Amazon committing to address the behaviour). Also, in 2017, European Commission found that Amazon had received illegal state aid from Luxembourg (in the form of reduced taxes) of over €280 million (which it is required to reimburse).

More generally, this investigation reflects the increasing eagerness of the European Commission and other competition authorities to explore how the collection and use of data might violate competition law rules.

Watch Margrethe Vestager (head of the EU competition regulator) announcing the investigation here - and follow this blog for further updates as it progresses.