According to the lawsuit, Amazon favored its own products on its platforms over competitors
Washington:
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com on Tuesday, accusing the online retailer of harming consumers through higher prices. This is the latest legal action by the US government aimed at breaking Big Tech’s dominance of the internet.
The lawsuit was expected after years of complaints that Amazon.com and other tech giants were abusing their dominance in search, social media and online retail to become gatekeepers to the most lucrative aspects of the Internet.
The lawsuit, involving 17 attorneys general, follows a four-year investigation and federal lawsuits filed against Alphabet’s Google and Meta Platforms’ Facebook.
“The FTC and its state partners say Amazon’s actions allow it to prevent rivals and sellers from lowering prices, reducing quality for shoppers, overcharging sellers, stifling innovation and preventing rivals compete fairly with Amazon,” the agency said in a statement.
The FTC said it was asking the court to issue a permanent injunction ordering Amazon.com to stop its unlawful conduct.
The FTC said Amazon, founded in 1994 and valued at more than $1 trillion, punished sellers who tried to offer prices lower than Amazon’s by making it difficult for consumers to find sellers on Amazon’s platform to find.
Other accusations include that Amazon favored its own products on its platforms over competitors on the platform.
FTC Chair Lina Khan, while in law school, wrote about Amazon.com’s dominance in online retailing for “The Yale Law Journal” and was part of the staff of the House committee that authored a 2020 report that found advocated reining in four tech giants: Amazon.com, Apple, Google and Facebook.
The need to take action against Big Tech is one of the few ideas that Democrats and Republicans agree on. During the Trump administration, which ended in 2021, the Justice Department and the FTC opened investigations into Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.
The Justice Department has sued Google twice: once under Republican Donald Trump over its search activities and a second time over ad technology since Democratic President Joe Biden took office.
The FTC sued Facebook during the Trump administration, and Biden’s FTC continued the lawsuit.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
