European Union antitrust authorities have begun a preliminary investigation into Amazon.com Inc.’s treatment of other merchants that sell products using its platform, opening a new regulatory front against an American tech giant.
EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Wednesday that investigators recently sent out questionnaires to merchants that sell through Amazon AMZN, -0.75% . The probe focuses on whether Amazon is gaining a competitive advantage from data it gathers on every transaction and from every merchant on its platform, Vestager said.
“The question here is about the data,” Vestager said, adding that the investigation was in its “very early days” and that her office has “no conclusions” about whether to open a formal probe.
As the EU’s antitrust chief, Vestager has emerged as one of the world’s major technology regulators, helping inspire investigations into tech companies from Brazil to the U.S. Most recently, she fined Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, +0.61% GOOG, +0.85% Google twice, for a total of €6.76 billion ($7.9 billion), for allegedly abusing the dominance of its search engine and Android operating system to favor its own services — decisions the company has either appealed or said it would appeal.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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