EU Struggles To Build Antitrust Case Against Amazon (ft.com) 50
Regulators in Brussels are struggling to gather enough evidence to bring antitrust charges against Amazon, despite working on the landmark case for nearly two years,
Financial Times reported Thursday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. From a report: In July 2019, EU regulators accused the online retailer of manipulating its algorithm to boost its own products "artificially" over its rivals'. As a result, they alleged, users often end up buying lower-quality products at a higher price. But EU officials are still struggling to understand how Amazon's algorithm works, despite sending a series of detailed questions to the company about the criteria used to boost a product's visibility, according to people familiar with the matter.
These people added that officials are also unlikely to be able to view the online retailer's proprietary code directly to build their case, owing to legal barriers around trade secrets. Antitrust investigators frequently face hurdles in navigating the "black boxes" of technology companies' code. "Cases involving algorithms are complex," said a Brussels-based legal expert. "But the EU doesn't have to dictate how a computer code works. It is for the company that uses the algorithm to deliver a fair result." However multiple people noted that the EU's case against Amazon is proceeding more slowly than other comparable investigations. The bloc is already set to bring charges against Apple over alleged abuse of its dominant platform in music streaming, for instance, after a two-year-long probe.
Financial Times reported Thursday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. From a report: In July 2019, EU regulators accused the online retailer of manipulating its algorithm to boost its own products "artificially" over its rivals'. As a result, they alleged, users often end up buying lower-quality products at a higher price. But EU officials are still struggling to understand how Amazon's algorithm works, despite sending a series of detailed questions to the company about the criteria used to boost a product's visibility, according to people familiar with the matter.
These people added that officials are also unlikely to be able to view the online retailer's proprietary code directly to build their case, owing to legal barriers around trade secrets. Antitrust investigators frequently face hurdles in navigating the "black boxes" of technology companies' code. "Cases involving algorithms are complex," said a Brussels-based legal expert. "But the EU doesn't have to dictate how a computer code works. It is for the company that uses the algorithm to deliver a fair result." However multiple people noted that the EU's case against Amazon is proceeding more slowly than other comparable investigations. The bloc is already set to bring charges against Apple over alleged abuse of its dominant platform in music streaming, for instance, after a two-year-long probe.
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It is all there EU. Just look harder. Yes, Bezos and crew have been very good at dodging all sorts of bullets so far but they can't keep it up forever.
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Amazon prioritization is easy - there are three classes of products:
Sponsored - where the seller pays to be at the top of the result listing, labeled as 'sponsored' in results, Amazon collects ad revenue plus transaction fees from seller
Amazon Products - House brand products that meet search criteria, typically marked as "Amazon Basics" in my experience, presumed to be higher profit margin products
Affiliate products - products that meet the search criteria and are offered by third-party sellers, Amazon coll
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It is all there EU. Just look harder. Yes, Bezos and crew have been very good at dodging all sorts of bullets so far but they can't keep it up forever.
And if it's too hard to find, make something up.
Dodging bullets aside, should it not be extremely easy to do a statistical analysis? You don't need to have the "difficult" algorithm in hand, you soimply look at how much Amazon promotes itself over whoever you consider to be damaged by Amazon.
Do a lot of searches, and if it promoting "it's own products over others, would not Amazon's "own" products show up more often or whatever the EU decides is the criminal act?
I mean they claim it - do they not ha
Well that's easy (Score:2, Insightful)
But EU officials are still struggling to understand how Amazon's algorithm works, despite sending a series of detailed questions to the company about the criteria used to boost a product's visibility
Can't build a case because they won't provide helpful explanations? Hit them with obstruction of justice then.
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There's no legal requirement for Amazon to provide answers that are 'helpful' to the EU building their case against Amazon.
True, I suppose: they are only legally required to provide such answers if they want to do business in Europe.
Failing to provide evidence required by law is illegal.
Re:Well that's easy (Score:5, Informative)
No, they're not required to provide such answers if they want to do business in EU. You may be required to answer truthfully to inquiries about factual things, i.e. "give me this specific data because it's relevant to this specific case we're building", but you're not required to tell the inquirer what they should be asking for to build their case. They have to find out on their own.
This is because that would fall under protection from self-incrimination, which is a cornerstone of modern Western judicial systems, be they inquisitorial like in France or adversarial like in Germany. For US residents who think that "EU" is the same thing as "Europe", this would be covered under Fifth Amendment of your Constitution.
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Ah, the dangerous half knowledge guy strikes again. Only countries heavily influenced by or copying from the English have an adversarial judical system nowadays. Germany is not one of these. The only European countries that have that are the UK and its former colonies Ireland, Malta and Cyprus.
Dude, you really are a textbook example of Dunning-Kruger.
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"I don't know what adversarial justice system is, so I'll make wide sweeping assumptions and make really stupid claims based on it. And then accuse you of doing it".
Ok. Good luck with that. Germany's justice system is still adversarial.
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No, they're not required to provide such answers if they want to do business in EU. You may be required to answer truthfully to inquiries about factual things, i.e. "give me this specific data because it's relevant to this specific case we're building", but you're not required to tell the inquirer what they should be asking for to build their case. They have to find out on their own.
Nope.
If Amazon is deliberately stonewalling by hiding the documentation they asked for, that is illegal. Period. End of story.
And Amazon saying "oh, we don't actually have any documentation on how our algorithms work. You figure it out" is stonewalling.
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There's a difference between not providing data that was requested and being asked to argue the prosecutions case against you for them. Either you're being obtuse on purpose
It is Amazon that is being obtuse on purpose. They know how their algorithms work. They are stonewalling because they are lying.
or you've had the good fortune of living under a system that prohibits the government from acting against you for not incriminating yourself at their behest.
Or you've had the good fortune to not understand that corporations are completely immoral and act in their own self interest, and when a government investigates a corporation for antitrust, it's more than likely that it's not the government who is the bad guy here.
Oh, and by the way, corporations are not people. The law that says people should not be forced to incriminate themselv
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>If Amazon is deliberately stonewalling by hiding the documentation they asked for, that is illegal. Period. End of story.
Have you considered taking a course in reading comprehension? Because that is indeed what I said above. And that is indeed NOT what Amazon is doing in this case.
>And Amazon saying "oh, we don't actually have any documentation on how our algorithms work. You figure it out" is stonewalling.
Did they hide the documentation, or did bureaucracy in question lack the competence to comprehe
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>If Amazon is deliberately stonewalling by hiding the documentation they asked for, that is illegal. Period. End of story.
Have you considered taking a course in reading comprehension? Because that is indeed what I said above.
Good. We agree. Why are we arguing?
And that is indeed NOT what Amazon is doing in this case.
An assertion made with no evidence.
Corporations are amoral. Of course they are stonewalling on producing their documentation.
Your charming naïveté in thinking that Amazon is incompetent and doesn't know how their algorithms work is not actually charming.
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>An assertion made with no evidence.
Mirror mirror on the wall...
>Your charming naïveté in thinking that Amazon is incompetent and doesn't know how their algorithms work is not actually charming.
Your inability to comprehend even basic written text, such as reference of incompetence being pointed toward EU bureaucrats rather than Amazon employees on the other hand is the opposite of charming.
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Evidence requested was provided, its just that the courts don't understand the evidence they requested.
In America we have the presumption of innocence, which would require the court to prove Amazon committed the crime they are accused of. It is not up to Amazon to explain how computer programs work to the court.
Did the prosecutors have any actual evidence of a crime, or did they have a suspicion of a crime, and need Amazon to not only give them the evidence proving the crime, but to explain it to the prosec
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Why is there a case if they didn't have any evidence to start with?
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Why is there a case if they didn't have any evidence to start with?
The European Union's motto is "Evidence? We don't need no Steenking evidence!" They just know, and that's all they need.
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But EU officials are still struggling to understand how Amazon's algorithm works, despite sending a series of detailed questions to the company about the criteria used to boost a product's visibility
Can't build a case because they won't provide helpful explanations? Hit them with obstruction of justice then.
Rudy Giuliani is on the case for the EU.
Killian documents (Score:2)
Where's the European Amazon? (Score:1, Insightful)
So, I can't help but notice rather than innovate and build their own Amazon, the EU instead is trying to tear down an American company. Again.
Where is Europe's Amazon? Why can't they run their lives without using Amazon? They should be out-competing the Americans and offering better service, better employee benefits, no slave labor in the warehouses, you name it. We all know how superior Europeans are when it comes to ethical behavior, they tell us all the time. Besides, this new theoretical company
Re:Where's the European Amazon? (Score:5, Insightful)
If there were solid attempts to build their own competing service (or sub services as Amazon does a heck of a lot of crap) and they find that they cannot get a foot hold because Amazon was in the way, then I would say they have a good case for anti-trust. But for the most part Europe is rather lagging in the Tech-Services economy.
Sure we have German Engineering, Swiss Manufacturing... But Technology-Service in the EU Economy are just satellite offices for American or Asian Firms.
Europeans have the people and skills to compete, but they seem to lack any real drive to have parts of the economy to be strongly based on this sector.
What Europe is doing is much like how America now is putting a lot of pressure on Asian firms who are manufacturing a lot of tech for us. America is lagging in competing in that market, but America never put much effort in the past 20 years into actually doing anything about it either. Other than just complaining how Asian Manufacturing is taking American Jobs.
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Well you are going off track leading to more conspiracy logic here.
For your second part. America Tends to give Europe a degree of latitude because they actually give us a good amount of latitude and allow America do many of its bad things as well.
With negotiation done right between two countries, when both sides leave the table feeling unhappy, that is a sign of a good negotiation. Being that the EU offers many industrial goods, as well a large financial business sector. the EU is hardly powerless in negot
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Yes, closing our bases in Germany will definitely go a long way towards achieving peace in the middle-east, and soon after shutting down our bases in Japan, African warlords will put down their weapons and go back to farming.
Are you, in any way, serious?
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You realize those wars are to the benefit of western corporations that want to exploit African resources, right? I was pretty sure this was common knowledge.
Without the bases in Germany the US would be unable to wage war in the Middle East. I thought this was also common knowledge. It certainly is among Europeans. The bases aren't there for their protection against TEH ROOSHINS. They're there to enable war after war in countries that don't threaten us.
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You realize those wars are to the benefit of western corporations that want to exploit African resources, right? I was pretty sure this was common knowledge.
Without the bases in Germany the US would be unable to wage war in the Middle East. I thought this was also common knowledge. It certainly is among Europeans. The bases aren't there for their protection against TEH ROOSHINS. They're there to enable war after war in countries that don't threaten us.
They might be there to stop europeans pulling off more genocidal wars. Of which there are a lot of examples.
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You are so smart.
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They should be out-competing the Americans and offering better service, better employee benefits, no slave labor in the warehouses, you name it.
They should compete by being more expensive? Nice plan! Should they also compete by being better at tax avoidance, and not paying their way too?
We all know how superior Europeans are when it comes to ethical behavior [snip important context]
You said it not me. Then again we both know you're unethical because you keep telling lies about me, and refuse to retract the
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Re:Where's the European Amazon? (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember plenty of European online stores similar to Amazon in the past. They never went anywhere and have since gone bankrupt. Because they paid taxes unlike Amazon.
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So, I can't help but notice rather than innovate and build their own Amazon, the EU instead is trying to tear down an American company. Again.
It certainly would seem that way. Europe seems to be pretty short on innovation these days.
Where is Europe's Amazon? Why can't they run their lives without using Amazon? They should be out-competing the Americans and offering better service, better employee benefits, no slave labor in the warehouses, you name it.
I think it's in the same place as their apparently hard to prove case against Amazon. As I've noted before, it would seem simple beyond simple to show the results of the presumed evil algorithm.
We all know how superior Europeans are when it comes to ethical behavior, they tell us all the time.
I've become a student of history over the past decade. Europeans have proven themselves to be among the least ethical people on earth. They're rather nasty in fact, being responsible for probably more deaths than any other g
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So, I can't help but notice rather than innovate and build their own Amazon, the EU instead is trying to tear down an American company. Again.
Where is Europe's Amazon? Why can't they run their lives without using Amazon?
Don't be so fucking stupid.
Where's the other US Amazon? Why are Americans not looking at Amazon and saying "I'll have a slice of that pie"?
What's the US government doing, not making a competitor to Amazon?
What moron moded you "insightful"?
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very hard to prove (Score:2)
Human behavior is a huge random variable in these purchase decisions. How many of these purchasers are informed enough to be aware of slight quality differences between products? How many of them actually care? For sure spend hours researching and buy the product that best fills your need, but really, how many people are going to spend hours examining a $20 purchase?
Code wouldn't matter (Score:3)
Here is my speculation :
- A vendor (including Amazon) feeds a new product into the database
- The vendor has a trust metric which has been established over time using machine learning that considers the user ratings, the quantity of products sold, the quantity of products returned, the number of times Amazon had to pay a customer money and collect from the vendor, the amount of time the vendor used to pay the requested refund money, very likely also D&B (or similar) ratings, the amount of time it required for the vendor to provide customer service, the amount of time the vendor required to answer inquiries to Amazon... etc...
- The product has a trust metric. This is something that is also learned by similar factors related to the performance of the manufacturer, the brand, how it's delivered to Amazon, the cost to Amazon to stock the item, the average amount of time a product stays in inventory, whether the product will need to be discounted to move remaining items, the cost to Amazon of the burden of clearing the inventory, etc...
I assume that there's also a rating somehow that allows a product to appear as a "sponsored item" which allows vendors to pay to move to the top of the list. I'd also imagine that Amazon avoids using this option themselves... and probably doesn't need to.
Overall, Amazon products will almost always score extremely well because even when using precisely the same metrics that would be fair for comparing two external vendors to one another, Amazon products will consistently outperform them if only because the part of the organization developing and delivering products is far better funded and staffed than the competitors. Also, based on the trust metric values, Amazon can make on the fly corrections and better train their staff and hire additional assistance as needed to perform better.
I would imagine that the machine learning algorithms are actually extremely good and extremely fair but rewards companies who can better score high on metrics when 24/7 support is needed, where high performance financial movements can be made, where D&B ratings are through the roof and in a league of their own, etc...
The problem is, that unless you can compete with Amazon on sheer scale of operation... which... well no one can, you can't outperform Amazon's algorithm which would likely be extremely fair if Amazon wasn't actually a competing OEM.
So back to my original point. Even if the court could obtain the code, the code would be a machine learning monstrosity. It would be entirely dependent on the dataset and the dataset itself would be generated by the machine learning algorithm and likely be formatted in such a way that the recommendation oriented data would be more or less unmineable.
Anyone who shops at Amazon knows that the ML is extremely impressive. It's incredible how accurate the results are. And while it does come up with a LOT of Amazon brand (or subsidiary) products, it seems really quite fair.
I think you'd find that if you were to search regularly and specifically avoid cheap Amazon crap, the algorithm would eventually tune away from their own offerings.
That said, I've been using Google for a LONG time and Google rarely ever gave me Google suggestions on my searches because I actively refuse to follow links like that.
The code isn't the problem (Score:2)
If the EU wants
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Even were Amazon to cease selling goods on the platform tomorrow (and just warehouse other people's goods like before)
What? Amazon originally sold its own goods exclusively, then it started offering affiliate services later.
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Why would an affiliate seller on Amazon think Amazon was a neutral party in the transactions on Amazon? Amazon is a seller, and they have access to sales records for every affiliate in their market. If 6 foot lightning cables with webbed cable and great strain reliefs are selling like crazy for $14.95, and Amazon can offer a similar product (at a healthy markup) why wouldn't they offer the similar item as an "Amazon Basic" option and feature it at the top of product searches?
The affiliates can always find s
Indeed (Score:3)
" EU regulators accused the online retailer of manipulating its algorithm to boost its own products "artificially" over its rivals'. "
Like every supermarket I know.
There I have to get on my knees to get some of the other products.
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" EU regulators accused the online retailer of manipulating its algorithm to boost its own products "artificially" over its rivals'. "
Like every supermarket I know. There I have to get on my knees to get some of the other products.
Funny, I've found the opposite is true: the non-store brands are at the level of one's waist to head (eyes) and it's the store's (and other "generic" brands) that are on the bottom shelf.
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the non-store brands are at the level of one's waist to head (eyes) and it's the store's (and other "generic" brands) that are on the bottom shelf.
This is because things aren't placed at random in grocery stores. They sell shelf space to the manufacturers / distributors of the products, and the better the shelf space -- eye level, end caps, displays at the front of the store, at the checkout -- the more is charged. Generic brands are there to bring in people who are okay with inexpensive goods, that may be perceived to be cheap (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't; lots of name brands make the generic stuff too) and there's no point in putting
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The EU has quite a lot of regulations for how supermarkets are not allowed to cause unfair competition among the brands they sell on their floor. Indeed. This is a good example because Amazon should just follow the same rules or indeed: get the fuck out of the EU.
Amazon doesn't define the rules. Our elected politicians do. Amazon can fuck off if they don't want to follow the rules.
So... (Score:2)
Amazon realizes people buy rechargeable batteries, and then they contract the factories making the Eneloops, and produce a cheaper product with their own brand? (As far as I can recall, batteries were the first Amazon branded items). Over time they look at other categories, and repeat the same process for chargers, towels, and kitchen knives? How it that different than what a supermarket does?
Ah... Yes, they also bought a supermarket chain, and added the food items too (Amazon/Wholefoods brand apples, vs ra
Amazon does not fully know either (Score:2)
EU officials are still struggling to understand how Amazon's algorithm works
I am pretty sure if you asked almost any Amazon official, they would struggle to understand how one of their given algorithms is working, too.
Even the algorithm designers, after a few months.
(And, by the way EU/FT, there are almost certainly many algorithms. Using the singular here is correct only in a useless technical sense.)