California has sued Amazon over claims it punishes third-party sellers who offer their products more cheaply on other websites, in the latest legal action against the $1.3tn tech giant by prosecutors and regulators in the US and Europe.
Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney-general, accused the ecommerce group of violating the state’s competition law by “severely penalising” sellers by reducing their prominence on product listing pages and search results if they offered lower prices on other platforms.
The complaint, which follows a more than two-year-long investigation, alleges that Amazon is able to strong-arm merchants into accepting onerous terms and higher selling fees on the marketplace due to its dominance of ecommerce in the US.