EU antitrust authority mulls accelerating Amazon probe

EU antitrust authority mulls accelerating Amazon probe

After rivals of Amazon raised concerns over the slow pace of investigation into its affairs by European Union (EU) antitrust regulators, the latter are mulling accelerating the probe by dividing it into two sections and stressing on the stronger one.

With EU antitrust regulators investigating the online shopping giant for more than a year now, competitors fear that they will continue to face losses apart from possible weakening of the probe due to technological advances.

In the event EU antitrust regulators break the investigation into two, they would be following a precedent set during an earlier investigation into Google.

Since Amazon provides an online marketplace for traders as well as its own products, either of its twin roles might emerge the stronger part. On the other hand, EU antitrust regulators might end up reviewing Amazon's use of data to drive sales.

However, no decision has been made yet. Whichever way the probe gets split, the weaker half will not be discarded altogether and EU antitrust regulators will focus first on the stronger section followed by the weaker one, a ploy, which too, was used in the earlier Google probe.