Amazon Faces Probe in Europe Over Third-Party Selling -- Update

By Sam Schechner

Amazon.com Inc. will face a formal European Union antitrust investigation into its dealings with third-party merchants, expanding a multipronged regulatory push that has ensnared other big Silicon Valley giants like Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google.

The European Commission, the EU's top antitrust enforcer, said Wednesday that its investigation will look into whether Amazon is abusing its dual role as both the provider of a marketplace where independent sellers can offer products and a retailer of products in its own right.

In particular, the probe will investigate whether Amazon is using sensitive data from independent merchants to compete against them. Investigators will examine what data Amazon uses to pick a seller to be the default option for a given product when a user clicks the "buy" button.

The probe could eventually lead to formal charges, fines and orders to change business practices, but it could also be dropped.

"We will cooperate fully with the European Commission and continue working hard to support businesses of all sizes and help them grow," an Amazon spokesman said.

The case opens a new -- and potentially more complex -- chapter for competition enforcers on both sides of the Atlantic. The EU has led the antitrust charge against Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., for more than a decade, issuing billions of euros in fines. Now antitrust scrutiny of technology titans is rising in the U.S., as well, with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Justice Department dividing up oversight of four of the largest U.S. tech firms, including Amazon, Google, Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc.

Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 17, 2019 06:09 ET (10:09 GMT)

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