The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the attorneys’ general of 17 states today filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon over its e-commerce business, accusing the company of being a “monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power.”
The FTC was joined by attorneys’ general of New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.
What Amazon is accused of doing
“Amazon is a monopolist that uses its power to hike prices on American shoppers and charge sky-high fees on hundreds of thousands of online sellers,” said John Newman, Deputy Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, in the agency’s press release.
One of the complaints filed by the governments targets Amazon’s “sponsored products” on its e-commerce store website, which users know well appear on the top of search results and often push down the actual results, similar to what is seen on Google, but with often many mor…