On Friday, a worldwide trade union for the services industry requested European antitrust authorities to expand their probe into Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) to see if the business was involved in counterfeiting and rigging search results on its platform.
The UNI Global Union’s demand was sparked by a Reuters report last week based on internal Amazon documents that revealed the e-commerce company ran a systematic campaign of copying products and manipulating search results in India, a key growth market, to boost its own private brands such as AmazonBasics.
The European Commission’s European arm stated in a letter dated Oct. 22 to President Ursula von der Leyen, which was also copied to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, that authorities there must investigate if Amazon engaged in “similarly detrimental behavior within the European Union.”
“As new discoveries about the scope of Amazon’s operations threaten that level playing field, more action is needed to guarantee it is held accountable at every turn,” the letter added.
Amazon’s private-brands team in India secretly exploited internal data from its India unit to mimic products sold by other companies and then market them on its platform, according to papers examined by Reuters. According to the documents, the corporation allegedly boosted sales of its proprietary brands by manipulating search results on its India platform.
Amazon responded to the allegations by stating that “these claims are factually inaccurate and unfounded.” The firm did not provide any additional information. According to the corporation, the way search results are displayed does not favor private-label products.
Following the study, famous Amazon critic Senator Elizabeth Warren urged for the business to be broken up, while a group representing millions of brick-and-mortar retailers in India has requested the government to take action against Amazon.
