LONDON — Amazon and Meta settled separate U.K. antitrust investigations by agreeing to stop practices that give them an unfair advantage over merchants and customers using their platforms, the watchdog said Friday.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it accepted the committments from the U.S. tech companies to close the investigations into their online marketplaces.whether Amazon was harming competition and hurting consumers by giving preference to merchants paying for extras like storage, packaging and delivery.
It also looked into how Amazon chooses suppliers for the so-called buy box, which shows customers one-click “buy now” or “add to basket” options and the collection and use of data.Amazon used an algorithm to essentially raise prices on other sites, the FTC saysThe CMA said Amazon will no longer be able to use data from third-party sellers to give itself an edge. Sellers can negotiate their own delivery rates with independent delivery services and they’ll get a fair shot at the buy box, it said.
Regulators were examining whether the way Facebook Marketplace is embedded into the social network allowed it an advantage in reaching customers and shutting out competing sites. “Going forward, competitors of Facebook Marketplace that advertise on Meta platforms can ‘opt out’ of their data being used to improve Facebook Marketplace,” the CMA said.Meta said it welcomed the decision to close the case. The EU has accused Meta of antitrust breaches in a