Tag: Amazon
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The Amazon DSA Designation Appeal: the General Court Rejects Amazon’s Broad Fundamental-Rights Challenge
The last few months have seen a series of Digital Services Act (DSA) judgments by the General Court (GC) of the European Union, the first three of which were examined in an earlier blog post. The latest in this series of judgments, handed down on 19 November 2025, is Amazon EU v Commission (Case T-367/23),…
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UK digital markets regime under attack, but still on course
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill is now in the Report Stage in Parliament before it heads to the second chamber, the House of Lords. Trawling through the 87 pages of proposed amendments this week, I was tempted to reach for a hackneyed Winston Churchill quote: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and…
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The FTC’s landmark case against Amazon tackles the central issue of e-commerce market power
Since Lina Khan – famously an Amazon critic – was appointed chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a significant lawsuit against Amazon has been expected. The lawsuit was finally launched on Tuesday, brought jointly by the FTC and 17 state attorneys general. The FTC says that Amazon has raised its fees and commissions, cluttered…
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Amazon/iRobot: Does Amazon have an incentive to preference its own products?
We have previously posted about Amazon’s acquisition of the robot vacuum cleaner (“RVC”) brand, iRobot, for $1.7 billion. The case has now been cleared by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) at Phase 1, and referred to Phase 2 for an in-depth investigation by the European Commission. We therefore have another case of diverging…
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Fashionably late: The UK digital markets legislation starts its passage through Parliament
More than four years after the Furman Report, the British Government has laid its Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill before Parliament. However, what is perhaps more remarkable than the delays is how closely the Bill sticks to the CMA’s original recommendations. One can always quibble over some of the drafting, but overall this is…
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Spinning Amazon’s Flywheel: How Amazon’s Business Model Harms Competition
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that we’ve been writing more about Amazon. We believe competition law has not yet fully grappled with its multifaceted business model, which has the Prime membership bundle of products at its core. Damien Geradin and I are therefore pleased to share our detailed paper on Amazon’s business…
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The Responsible Online Commerce Coalition (ROCC): Businesses team up to ensure a level playing field in e-commerce
Amazon’s revenues reached half a trillion dollars in 2022, having increased tenfold in a decade. There are few companies as fascinating and impressive as Amazon and arguably no other company occupies such a central position in the modern retail economy in the US and Europe. Its famous e-commerce platform represents more than half of e-commerce…
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Amazon settles EU allegations regarding third-party sellers on Amazon Marketplace: some progress made but much remains to be done
The European Commission has accepted a set of legally-binding commitments offered by Amazon to settle two long-running antitrust investigations into whether Amazon has abused its dominant position in e-commerce. In doing so, the Commission will not issue a formal infringement decision and will not impose a fine. This is a significant outcome for these…
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Amazon/iRobot: The flywheel spins once more
It was reported last week that the US Federal Trade Commission has started investigating Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot, the maker of Roomba smart vacuum cleaners. It seems to us that the UK and EU authorities will also have jurisdiction to investigate. Why should anyone (apart from iRobot’s shareholders) care about a large retailer…
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UK and Germany double up on Amazon
Some days you just can’t get a break. Amazon was the recipient of not one but two pieces of bad news yesterday, with the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announcing that it has launched an investigation under the Competition Act 1998 into possible abuses of dominance by Amazon, and the German Federal Cartel Office…