Amazon EU Antitrust

We are quite used to this by now, tech companies getting fined, especially in Europe. This time it was Amazon's turn to take the heat. The European Competition Commission said it suspects Amazon of violating antitrust rules by using data from third party sellers to boost their own products. Basically, Amazon was checking what items were selling best from their third party retailers and then selling those items themselves. Often the Amazon version would be top of the search list.

I suppose being the platform and the retailer does have its conflicts. But do you blame Amazon? The third party retailers could always go somewhere else? I am sounding ruthless here and I do see place for some regulation.

Amazon has countered saying that they only represent 1% of the global retail market. How on earth could they be a monopoly with that kind of market share? If you zoom in though, their online retail market share is a lot larger.

Our view on these regulations remains the same. The size and scale of big tech is unprecedented. Between the companies themselves and the regulators, they will have to develop a middle ground through trial and error. But life will carry on. Big tech has more than enough cash to handle legal fees and fines. They will continue to grow and adapt to the regulatory environment - as they have done in the past.