The company recently agreed to pay USD 30 million to settle a pair of privacy lawsuits involving its Ring doorbell cameras and Alexa smart speakers. This will not be the first case the FTC has filed against Amazon under Khan. Some states have pushed back against making Prime, a popular consumer service, a focal point of the case.

The exact allegations will determine who joins.

The FTC has told some states that it plans to share more information by the end of July to help them determine whether to join the suit. Were an FTC tribunal to hear the case, its own commissioners would serve as prosecutors and judges, which would clearly make Khan more susceptible to claims of bias.Īnd while there is no large, formal multi-state alliance investigating Amazon, unlike in similar lawsuits against Facebook and Google, that does not preclude states from now joining the FTC’s case. The agency has not ruled on the request, but filing a case in the federal court will help sidestep the issue. With that in mind, Amazon has sought Khan’s recusal both for her past statements against the company and over investigative work into the tech sector while a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee. Shortly after Khan joined the agency, she diverted additional resources to the Amazon probe. However, he sidelined the inquiry in favour of a different investigation into Meta. The Amazon investigation first started during the Trump administration under former chair Joe Simons. Amazon briefly allowed sellers to use other logistics providers and still receive prioritised listings, but reversed that policy several years ago, although it recently announced it is restarting that programme.Īmazon’s rapidly growing digital advertising business will also likely be targeted, with the FTC concerned that the company forces merchants to buy ads in order to receive more favourable placements in search results. The FTC is also expected to claim that Amazon steers sellers to its own logistics services, which include shipping and warehousing, by rewarding them with better placement on its website, and punishing them when they use alternative providers. The agency will probably file the suit in the federal court rather than its own in-house tribunal.Īs part of its probe, the FTC has interviewed dozens of witnesses both inside and outside Amazon, including CEO Andy Jassy and former CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, collecting and collating millions of documents from Amazon and third parties over the last three years to build its case. The complaint is likely to include challenges to its Amazon Prime product, with the FTC maintaining that the company’s policies forbid vendors from offering lower prices on competing websites and that its terms and conditions force merchants to use Amazon’s logistics and advertising services. Khan rose to prominence as a big-tech sceptic with a 2017 academic paper specifically identifying Amazon as a modern monopolist needing to be reined in. The lawsuit is likely to be filed as soon as August, and will likely challenge a host of Amazon’s business practices and, if successful, could lead to a court-ordered restructuring of Jeff Bezos’ USD 1.3 trillion empire and define the legacy of FTC chair Lina Khan. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is putting the finishing touches to its long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, setting the scene for what is likely to be one of the most aggressive moves in the Biden administration’s efforts to tame the power of tech giants. The online retailer’s business practices are being called into question on both sides of the Atlantic. The online retailer’s business practices are being called into question on both sides of the Atlant.

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