Amazon has agreed to make major changes to its business practices to settle antitrust investigations that found the ecommerce giant gave itself an unfair advantage over rival merchants, European Union regulators said Tuesday.
Amazon promised to give products from rival sellers equal visibility in the 鈥渂uy box,鈥� a premium piece of real estate on its website that leads to higher sales, EU鈥檚 executive Commission said.
The company also pledged to stop using 鈥渘on-public data鈥� from independent sellers on its platform to provide insights into its own products to compete against those merchants. Amazon also agreed not to discriminate against sellers in its Prime membership service and let Prime members freely choose any delivery service.
The agreement allows Amazon to avoid a legal battle with the E.U.鈥檚 top antitrust watchdog that could have ended with huge fines, worth up to 10% of its annual worldwide revenue.
鈥淲e are pleased that we have addressed the European Commission鈥檚 concerns and resolved these matters," Amazon said in a prepared statement.
The agreement, which only applies to Amazon鈥檚 business practices in Europe, follows concessions the company offered in July to resolve two EU antitrust investigations. Under the agreement announced Tuesday, Amazon made improvements to those initial proposals.
Associated Press, The Associated Press
