Margrethe Vestager on Amazon and Competition in E-Commerce
“Amazon has a dual role: As a retailer, it sells goods itself, as a marketplace, it offers independent retailers the opportunity to sell their products directly to customers. In doing so, Amazon continuously collects data. Our analyses suggest that Amazon collects competition-relevant information in all these transactions. E-commerce has brought many advantages for competition in trade, selection and price formation. But in all this, data plays a central role. We therefore need to ensure that large platforms do not undo these advantages through anti-competitive behaviour.”
– Margrethe Vestager, Vice President of the EU Commission, in “We do not consider people as a raw material”, Handelsblatt, 26., 27., 28. June 2020, No. 121
