The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has started interviewing sellers on Amazon.com Inc.'s platform as part of its investigation into the e-commerce giant's power over competition, Bloomberg News reported Sept. 11, citing three merchants.
The vendors reportedly said the FTC's team, which included several attorneys and at least one economist, asked what percentage of their revenue came from Amazon compared to other online marketplaces. The more sales they make from Amazon, the more vulnerable they are to the company's demands and policy changes.
The interviews, which go on for about 90 minutes, show that the FTC is in the early stages of a serious inquiry, antitrust experts reportedly told Bloomberg. The agency is studying how Amazon works, identifying which markets it dominates and looking for practices that are against the law.
"They're trying to learn as much as they can about the industry from people who aren't the target of their investigation," Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jennifer Rie reportedly added. "They're in a background phase."
Rie explained that it is likely the FTC wants to learn about the inner workings of the company before narrowing its investigation.
Amazon, which has not disclosed any FTC probe, declined to comment on the matter, the report said. However, it did refer the news agency back to a statement that Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Jeff Wilke had made in June. "We believe that most substantial entities in the economy deserve scrutiny," Wilke reportedly had said. "Our job is to build the kind of company that passes that scrutiny with flying colors."
The FTC also declined to comment, the report added.
The development comes after The Wall Street Journal reported that a group of state attorneys general pledged to launch an antitrust investigation into big technology companies, such as Amazon, Apple Inc., Google LLC and Facebook Inc. In June, the FTC and the Department of Justice agreed to split jurisdiction of their antitrust inquiries into the tech firms.
