The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has another major technology company in its sights: Amazon. The US agency is currently immersed in a judicial process in which it is trying to prevent Microsoft’s purchase of Activision, but, at the same time, it is also investigating the e-commerce platform led by Jeff Bezos.
According to Bloomberg, the FTC is close to finalizing its biggest antitrust case against Amazon and could file a lawsuit in the coming weeks. The future lawsuit will allege, according to documents consulted by the media, that Amazon has systematically harmed sellers who do not use some of the platform’s optional services such as “Fulfilled by Amazon”.
Should the FTC be able to prove that Amazon, which has near-monopoly power in its sector, is maliciously manipulating the market, the agency could request at trial that the tech giant be restructured or even dissolved altogether.
The main problem for the FTC is that it would not exactly be an easy task, as U.S. law has so far allowed Amazon to continue to grow, despite its “monopolistic appearance”, due to the absence of daily consumer harm. Against this backdrop, Amazon would have almost everything in its favor to win the lawsuit or, at most, pay a (hefty) fine, without needing to change anything in its structure or the way it conducts its business.
This future lawsuit against Amazon would join the one filed just a week ago in which the FTC alleges that the company has been misleading its customers to subscribe to Prime, and that it has made it difficult for them to cancel the subscription, which renews automatically.
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