How Amazon's Reign Leaves Shoppers and Sellers in the Shadows

VIII. AMAZON’S CONDUCT HARMS COMPETITION AND CONSUMERS

433. Amazon’s unfair and monopolistic conduct has broken the competitive process. Amazon’s anticompetitive conduct closes off each major avenue of competition—including price, product selection, quality, and innovation—in both relevant markets. Amazon’s monopolistic conduct also harms consumers in both markets, shoppers and sellers alike, by depriving them of the benefits of open, fair competition and allowing Amazon to exploit its monopoly power without facing the competitive checks of a free enterprise system.

434. The presence of scale economies and network effects in both relevant markets means that a firm must be able to gain scale in order to compete effectively. But Amazon has artificially suppressed rivals’ ability to attract business, gain momentum, and grow.

435. Amazon’s conduct interrupts, impedes, and distorts the normal give-and-take of a healthy market by blocking off every major avenue of competition—including price, product selection, quality, and innovation—that rivals and potential rivals would ordinarily use to compete on the merits for shoppers’ and sellers’ business in the relevant markets for online superstores and online marketplace services.

436. For example, Amazon’s anti-discounting conduct leverages both its first-party Retail and its third-party Marketplace business units to suppress competition. Amazon’s firstparty anti-discounting algorithm disciplines rivals from undercutting Amazon’s prices, and Amazon punishes third-party sellers for offering lower prices on other platforms. Without the ability to attract either shoppers or sellers through lower prices, rivals are unable to gain a critical mass of customers and meaningfully compete against Amazon. At the same time, Amazon’s coercive fulfillment conduct both artificially stunts the growth of independent fulfillment providers and artificially raises the costs that sellers face when seeking to multihome. This limits seller multihoming and thereby suppresses Amazon’s rivals’ ability to compete for sellers by offering better terms and for shoppers by offering additional product selection.

437. Together, Amazon’s exclusionary course of conduct works to suppress competition in both relevant markets, foreclosing even an innovative, high-quality rival or potential rival from competing on the merits.

438. Amazon’s conduct also harms consumers in both relevant markets. For example, Amazon’s conduct has artificially inflated prices for both shoppers and sellers, degraded the quality of online superstores for shoppers and of online marketplace services for sellers, reduced output in both relevant markets, hindered shoppers from comparison-shopping for the best deals, suppressed the flow of useful price and quality information to shoppers, stifled sellers’ ability to gain additional business by offering lower prices, restricted sellers’ freedom to choose to multihome across their preferred sales channels, reduced consumer choice for both shoppers and sellers by yielding a less diverse set of competitive options, and stripped consumers in both relevant markets of the benefits of innovation.

439. Amazon’s anticompetitive conduct is not reasonably necessary to achieve any cognizable procompetitive benefits. The anticompetitive harm from those practices outweighs any procompetitive benefits, and Amazon could reasonably achieve any procompetitive goals through less restrictive alternatives.

440. Amazon’s unlawful conduct has caused cumulative and compounding harm over time. Through its years-long course of illegal conduct, Amazon has deeply entrenched its monopolies in both relevant markets and further widened the gulf between Amazon and everyone else. Particularly given the importance of scale economies and network effects in these markets, Amazon’s conduct has yielded a distorted and stunted competitive landscape.

441. Left unchecked, Amazon will continue to harm competition and maintain its monopoly power over the online superstore market and the market for online marketplace services, causing myriad and widespread harms to shoppers, sellers, and the public—and depriving Americans of the benefits of fair and free competition.