The prosecutor for the US capital Washington launched a lawsuit Tuesday against Amazon, which he accuses of obstructing competition in online commerce.
Read also: In Hollywood, Amazon negotiates the takeover of MGM
"
Amazon's behavior and its market share prove its intention to build a monopoly and indicate a dangerous probability of success
", details the complaint of prosecutor Karl Racine. He criticizes the e-commerce giant for preventing companies from selling their products cheaper elsewhere than on his platform. He is asking for damages and measures to prohibit this kind of practice in the future. "
Amazon has used its dominant position in the Internet distribution market to win at all costs,
" he said indignantly on Twitter. The Seattle group "
maximizes its profits at the expense of sellers and consumers forced to pay artificially high prices, while harming competition and innovation,
" he continues.
"It's exactly the opposite,"
responded an Amazon spokesperson, contacted by AFP.
"Traders determine their prices for the products they sell in our store
.
"
“Amazon is proud to offer low prices on a wide selection, and, like any store, we reserve the right not to promote offers that are not competitively priced
,
”
he said. he adds.
"Remove the ability to harm competition"
The magistrate is targeting in particular a clause in contracts with traders, which prohibited them from offering their goods at lower prices on other sites. Amazon says it stopped this practice in 2019.
“In fact, they quietly replaced this clause with one, equivalent, which says that third-party sellers can be sanctioned or fired from Amazon if they market their products for lower prices. elsewhere, ”he
assures us. He also mentions the
"high commissions"
taken by the firm,
"up to 40% of the price of the product"
.
The complaint calls for
"removing Amazon's ability to harm competition"
, including by resorting to structural measures, which may mean dismantling.
"The attorney general's demands would force Amazon to post higher prices for customers, which is paradoxically contrary to the essential objectives of antitrust laws
,
"
commented the spokesperson for the group.
Judges and parties
The European Commission has been increasing attacks for years against Gafa (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), whose behavior is considered anti-competitive.
But the pressure is also mounting in the United States.
Google and Facebook are the subject of lawsuits launched by federal authorities and coalitions of American states targeting their "monopolies", in particular on advertising.
Read also: Forty US states ask Facebook to give up creating an Instagram for children
Several investigations are also examining the practices of Apple and Amazon, accused of being both judges and parties on their respective platforms. Joe Biden's government seems determined to question the power they have accumulated in their sectors, including thanks to the pandemic, which has made their services even more dominant. The president notably announced his intention to appoint the lawyer Lina Khan, known for her hostility to the monopolies of the tech giants, as head of the American competition agency (FTC). This academic became known in the academic world in 2017, while she was still a student, by publishing an article entitled
"The Amazon Antitrust Paradox"
in the Yale University Law Journal. She considered that the American legislative arsenal was insufficient to fight against the monopolistic practices of groups like the giant of online commerce.
During a hearing at the end of July, the elected Democrat David Cicilline estimated that
“his dual role of host and merchant on the same platform is fundamentally anti-competitive. Congress must take action ”
. The multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder and boss of Amazon, initially a bookstore on the internet, asserts his difference from companies in Silicon Valley, arguing that his group
"only accounts for 1% of the global market for distribution, and 4% in the United States ”
, and that it has created
“ more jobs in the United States in the past decade than any other ”
. The world leader in e-commerce and cloud (remote computing) more than tripled its net profit in the first quarter,to over $ 8 billion.
