From The Verge: Amazon and European Union regulators have reached an agreement over two long-running antitrust cases, the European Commission has announced, which it’s hoped will help make third-party sellers more competitive on Amazon’s marketplace. The agreement means Amazon will avoid fines that had the potential to stretch into the billions of dollars, but it has agreed to make a series of legally binding commitments that it will have to abide by for up to seven years.
The commitments come in three broad parts that are consistent with those that were made public in July this year. First, Amazon has agreed not to use nonpublic data from independent sellers on its Marketplace platform to make decisions like which products to launch or what prices to sell them at. Amazon has faced criticism from independent brands, who’ve accused the retailer of creating suspiciously similar versions of their own products like shoes or bags.
Second, Amazon is adjusting the design of its “buy box,” the section of the product page with buttons to add an item to your cart or buy it immediately. The EU says that, in the future, this box will no longer preference Amazon’s own offers and that the e-commerce giant will also add a second box to highlight an alternative deal with a different price or delivery option. “As Amazon cannot populate both Buy Boxes with its own retail offers, this will give more visibility to independent sellers,” the EU’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager said.
Finally, Amazon has agreed to reduce the restrictions around third-party retailers selling via Prime. Sellers will be able to use any carrier company they want rather than having to use Amazon’s logistics services and will be able to communicate with customers without going through Amazon, among other changes.
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