European Union Probing Amazon's Treatment of Merchants Using Its Platform

By Sam Schechner and Valentina Pop 

European Union antitrust authorities have opened a preliminary investigation into Amazon.com Inc.'s treatment of other merchants that sell products using its platform, starting a new regulatory front against an American tech giant.

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Wednesday that investigators recently sent out questionnaires to merchants who use Amazon to sell goods as part of the preliminary probe. The investigation focuses on whether Amazon is using customer data it gathers via billions of transactions in ways that smaller merchants selling the same products on Amazon might not be able to do, Ms. Vestager said.

"The question here is about the data," Ms. 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.

A spokesman for Amazon didn't have any immediate comment.

Write to Sam Schechner at [e-mail] and Valentina Pop at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 19, 2018 10:49 ET (14:49 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.