Italy fines Amazon record $1.3 bln for abuse of market dominance

[Hydrogen]

MILAN, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Italy's antitrust watchdog said on Thursday it had fined Amazon 1.13 billion euros ($1.28 billion) for alleged abuse of market dominance, in one of the biggest penalties imposed on a U.S. tech giant in Europe.

Amazon said it "strongly disagreed" with the Italian regulator's decision and would appeal.

Global regulatory scrutiny of tech giants has been increasing after a string of scandals over privacy and misinformation, as well as complaints from some businesses that they abuse their market power.

As well as Amazon, Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O), Facebook Inc (FB.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) have drawn heightened scrutiny in Europe.

Italy's watchdog said in a statement that Amazon had leveraged its dominant position in the Italian market for intermediation services on marketplaces to favour the adoption of its own logistics service - Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) - by sellers active on Amazon.it.

The authority said Amazon tied to the use of FBA access to a set of exclusive benefits, including the Prime label, that help increase visibility and boost sales on Amazon.it.

"Amazon prevents third-party sellers from associating the Prime label with offers not managed with FBA," it said.

The Prime label makes it easier to sell to the more than 7 million most loyal and high-spending consumers members of Amazon’s loyalty program.

The antitrust authority also said it would impose corrective steps that will be subject to review by a monitoring trustee.

Amazon said FBA "is a completely optional service" and that the majority of third-party sellers on Amazon do not use it.

"When sellers choose FBA, they do so because it is efficient, convenient and competitive in terms of price", the U.S. group said in a statement.

"The proposed fine and remedies are unjustified and disproportionate", it added.

The EU Commission said it had cooperated closely with the Italian competition authority on the case, within the framework of the European Competition Network, to ensure consistency with its two own ongoing investigations into Amazon's business practices.

The first was opened in July 2019 to assess whether Amazon's use of sensitive data from independent retailers who sell on its marketplace was in breach of EU competition rules.

The second, in late 2020, focussed on the possible preferential treatment of Amazon's own retail offers and those of marketplace sellers that use Amazon's logistics and delivery services.

"This investigation complements today’s decision of the Italian competition authority which addresses Amazon’s conduct in the Italian logistics markets," the Commission said on Thursday.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/italys-antitrust-fines-amazon-113-bln-euros-alleged-abuse-market-dominance-2021-12-09/

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$1.3 billion seems like a large fine for an EU nation like italy which is not known for enforcing anti trust laws locally, much less on an international scale.

Surveillance and censorship by platforms like facebook drew negative sentiment against big tech. But I do not know if that negative sentiment extends to cover amazon. Jeff Bezos seemed like the most hated thing about amazon but Bezos resigned from his position as amazon CEO a long time ago. With Bezos gone, do people retain a legitimate reason to hate amazon? Jack Dorsey has also resigned from his former position as twitter CEO. There are rumors and speculation that Elon Musk may do something similar and resign from his positions in tesla, space x and solar city.

There is a lot happening in the world today. I don't know if people care to pay attention. Or would prefer to forget. There are definitely many interesting trends emerging for anyone interested in business, finance and economics.

[Lucius]

I know that I read somewhere that Amazon paid a large fine of as much as $888 million this year (Luxembourg), which obviously encouraged others to act in that direction. It doesn't surprise me, because people complain a lot about Amazon misusing their personal information, and they obviously don't see too many problems with being monopolists in a certain market.

On July 16, 2021, the Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection (CNDP) issued the biggest fine ever for the violation of the GDPR in the amount of  €746 million ($888 million) to Amazon.com Inc.
The fine was issued as a result of a complaint filed by 10,000 people against Amazon in May 2018, through a French privacy rights group that promotes and defends fundamental freedoms in the digital world- La Quadrature du Net.

Although at first glance the total amount seems very large, it is still a company that can afford it without any difficulties - I believe that they are aware of what they are doing and that such fines are not really a problem for them. What they earn by breaking the rules is far greater than any fine they will ever pay.

[fiulpro]

Fact is : Most big companies have probelms with Privacy hands down and at the same time most of them creates small loopholes for them to benefit it from. Causing the general public to have probelms.

Amazon is directly using the data of their sales, the companies who are selling their products on them to compete with them. Not only that they also did cause a probelms for book authors and many other people as well.

Amazon wants to dominate the market, they want to put their brand first, they are not even sparing the readers as well. Small sellers would have it very bad ofc. Even though Jeff Benzos resigned, it doesn't really keep it off the hook from taking the blame. Even workers are going on strikes as well.

Hopefully this fine will teach them the value of privacy and integrity and how they should support the small sellers instead of rebranding everything and destroying people who are working with them in the first place.

[hugeblack]

Personally, look at the strictness in the value of the fine to make these companies change some of their strategies, for example, a while ago, we heard about a million or ten, so that most companies pay the fine without even starting court procedures, but when the amounts become a little high, companies may start to think carefully before trying to keep competitors away .

Also, many countries fear that the influence of these companies will increase, as the matter is not related to the CEOs, but to the behavior of the institution as a whole, and therefore Jeff Bezos' resignation will not affect much.

[TheNineClub]

This fine alone for Amazon might not be much, but if other EU countries follow suit, it could become a serious problem for the company. And not just them, but could be a landslide towards putting other mega-companies on a short leash. I am not so hopeful that it would come to that, but one can hope. I wonder how Tesla will do with its new factory in Berlin. I wouldn't put Tesla in the same basket like the ones mentioned in the post, but as I have been hearing, there is a culture clash when it comes to American companies trying to implement their way of doing business in Europe.

[arallmuus]

$1.3 billion seems like a large finebribe

There you go, I fixed it for you. So its pretty much like a bribe to let Amazon continue to do what they have done so far after they paid that large sum of money huh. Im not sure if I am following this correctly but they are fined because they dominate the market shares? thats like saying, 'hey give us some of the profit you made from our country' lol thats funny

Jeff Bezos seemed like the most hated thing about amazon but Bezos resigned from his position as amazon CEO a long time ago. With Bezos gone, do people retain a legitimate reason to hate amazon?

I mean Amazon literally owned most of the market shares in their business yet they paid quite small amount of taxes so there is a whole lot of reaon for people to hate them.

Jack Dorsey has also resigned from his former position as twitter CEO. There are rumors and speculation that Elon Musk may do something similar and resign from his positions in tesla, space x and solar city.

Yeah let Musk resign from his position as the CEO so he can dedicate his whole day to shill doge or some other coins in twitter all day. that seems a lot of fun lol. There is alot of things that happening 'behind the scene' for us to know what exactly happen but I personally dont think that Musk will resign from his position as the CEO

[paxmao]

This is just one of those taxes that are imposed on companies that do not really pay the taxes that are expected from them. To be honest, on this Europe, US and China are not that different: they let the companies get fat and implement all short of tax avoidance schemes and, instead of going through the costly process of investigating them and taking them to court on tax basis or setting more clear regulations to it, they "judge" and impose santions. Effective, expected anyway by the companies and less that it should actually be obtained if taxed properly.

[wxa7115]

$1.3 billion seems like a large fine for an EU nation like italy which is not known for enforcing anti trust laws locally, much less on an international scale.

Surveillance and censorship by platforms like facebook drew negative sentiment against big tech. But I do not know if that negative sentiment extends to cover amazon. Jeff Bezos seemed like the most hated thing about amazon but Bezos resigned from his position as amazon CEO a long time ago. With Bezos gone, do people retain a legitimate reason to hate amazon? Jack Dorsey has also resigned from his former position as twitter CEO. There are rumors and speculation that Elon Musk may do something similar and resign from his positions in tesla, space x and solar city.

There is a lot happening in the world today. I don't know if people care to pay attention. Or would prefer to forget. There are definitely many interesting trends emerging for anyone interested in business, finance and economics.

We have known that big tech companies are a monopoly but governments were either afraid to do something about it or were getting benefits out of them, however they have gotten so big and their position on the market is so dominant that it is not possible to ignore anymore what is happening.

So the resignation of their most prominent figures is not going to be enough, fines like this one are not going to be enough either as Amazon can easily pay something like this, what is needed is that those monopolies are broken apart in many different and smaller companies and to not allow them to fuse together again, we will have see if there is the political will to do this but I doubt it.

[Fortify]

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$1.3 billion seems like a large fine for an EU nation like italy which is not known for enforcing anti trust laws locally, much less on an international scale.

Surveillance and censorship by platforms like facebook drew negative sentiment against big tech. But I do not know if that negative sentiment extends to cover amazon. Jeff Bezos seemed like the most hated thing about amazon but Bezos resigned from his position as amazon CEO a long time ago. With Bezos gone, do people retain a legitimate reason to hate amazon? Jack Dorsey has also resigned from his former position as twitter CEO. There are rumors and speculation that Elon Musk may do something similar and resign from his positions in tesla, space x and solar city.

There is a lot happening in the world today. I don't know if people care to pay attention. Or would prefer to forget. There are definitely many interesting trends emerging for anyone interested in business, finance and economics.

While I see America as being a bastion of innovation and producing some amazing companies, it seems that all too often the courts or US government is unwilling to take necessary action if it benefits their own internal coffers. Tax laws and monopoly laws in most countries are unfit for the modern era, yet there are huge political battles to maintain the status quo to the detriment of the average person all over the world. Let's not act like these billionaire owners deserve or need a single penny more - they're already set up for a thousand lifetimes of extreme extravagance. Capitalism is the best way to do it, but it can be regulated to benefit the wider society and far too often spineless politicians do not take strong enough action for the general good.