The American competition authority, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), is taking webshop and tech giant Amazon to court in seventeen American states for monopoly formation. That the FTC reported on Tuesday. According to the watchdog, “Amazon uses a range of interlocking anti-competitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopolistic power.” Amazon, which has a market value of 1,250 billion euros, quickly reacted aggressively to the announcement. The company said the FTC “is wrong on the facts and the law, and we look forward to making that clear in court.”
The FTC is scathing about Amazon in the statement: “Amazon’s far-reaching conspiracies affect hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions every year, as well as hundreds of thousands of products from companies large and small, and harm more than a hundred million consumers.” According to the FTC, Amazon’s alleged monopoly means that the company, among other things, “blocks rivals and sellers from lowering prices, reduces product quality for consumers and stifles innovation.”
It was expected that Amazon would be tackled by the watchdog. The current chair of the FTC, competition lawyer Lina Khan, was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2021. Before that, she also undertook a crusade against the power of ‘Big Tech’. A controversial article she wrote about how Amazon manages to escape proper regulation. Before Biden became president and appointed Khan, then-President Donald Trump’s administration was also tackling tech giants Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook.
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