New York attorney general reportedly joining California AG in Amazon investigation
States said to be teaming up with Federal Trade Commission
The New York Attorney General's office will join the California Attorney General's office and the Federal Trade Commission's investigation into Amazon's online marketplace, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Sources familiar with the matter told the outlet that the three agencies will work together to interview witnesses over the coming weeks on joint conference calls.
New York and California's AG offices and the Federal Trade Commission all declined to comment to FOX Business on any potential investigations. Amazon did not immediately return FOX Business' request for comment.
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Amazon is one of four big tech companies facing scrutiny for allegedly abusing their market power.
Last week, the company's CEO Jeff Bezos appeared alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for an antirust hearing on Capitol Hill.
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| GOOGL | ALPHABET INC. | 168.95 | -0.28 | -0.17% |
| FB | NO DATA AVAILABLE | - | - | - |
At the hearing, Bezos told lawmakers that he believes that there are many options for small, third-party sellers besides Amazon and that he is "very proud" of what the company has done for third-party sellers on the marketplace.
"Third-party sellers, in aggregate, are doing extremely well on Amazon," Bezos said. "Twenty years ago, it was zero, and today its 60 percent of sales."
Photo courtesy of Amazon
While Bezos acknowledged that Amazon is competing with third-party sellers, he argued that "in some ways, they are competing with each other."
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In addition, Bezos was pressed on not doing enough to stop counterfeiting on Amazon's marketplace, which he said was a "problem that does not help us earn trust with our customers" as well as leveraging counterfeit products to control third party sellers, which he said was "unacceptable" if true.
He also argued that third-party sellers' complaints about being unfairly delisted from the platform are not a systemic issue.
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Emarketer estimated in March that Amazon's 2020 U.S. retail e-commerce sales will rise 17.2 percent to $260.86 billion—4 percentage points higher than the expected overall growth rate for U.S. retail e-commerce sales. As a result, Amazon’s market share is expected to increase from 37.3 percent in 2019 to 38.7 percent this year.
Emarketer added that it expects this momentum to continue into 2021 with Amazon reaching 39.7 percent market share.
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