EU targets Google, Amazon with new unfair practices digital rules
Tech industry welcomes lenient regulatory approach
Brussels — Google, Amazon and other tech firms will have to tell companies how they rank their own or rival products on their platforms under new rules agreed by EU negotiators aimed at stopping unfair practices by online platforms and app stores. Proposed by the European Commission in April 2018, the platform-to-business (P2B) law is targeted at Google Play, Apple App Store, Microsoft Store, Amazon Marketplace, eBay and Fnac Marketplace. Facebook, Instagram, Skyscanner and Google Shopping, Google Search, Seznam.cz, Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo, Bing are also among the 7,000 online companies covered by the proposed rules. Google was hit with a €2.42bn EU antitrust fine in 2017 for favouring its own price comparison shopping service, while regulators are examining whether Amazon uses merchants’ data illegally to make copycat products. The rules include a blacklist of unfair trading practices, require companies to set up an internal system to handle complaints and allow businesses to group toge...
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