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The Federal Trade Commission and 17 states sued Amazon on Tuesday, setting up a long-awaited antitrust fight with the e-commerce giant that could alter the way Americans shop for everything from toilet paper to electronics online.

The 172-page suit, the federal government’s most significant challenge to the power of the online store, accused Amazon of protecting a monopoly over swaths of online retail by squeezing merchants and favoring its own services.

For consumers, that meant “artificially higher prices” as merchants were blocked from selling their products for less on other sites, and a worse shopping experience as Amazon boosted its own products and peppered its search results with ads, the lawsuit said. The retailer’s tactics made it impossible for its rivals to compete, the agency and states said.

“A single company, Amazon, has seized control over much of the online retail economy,” said the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. “It exploits its monopolies in ways that enrich Amazon but harm its customers: both the tens of millions of American households who regularly shop on Amazon’s online superstore and the hundreds of thousands of businesses who rely on Amazon to reach them.”

The lawsuit put the influence and reach of Amazon, a $1.3 trillion behemoth, squarely in the spotlight after years of mounting scrutiny. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, the onetime upstart online bookseller has grown into a sprawling conglomerate with tentacles in retail, Hollywood and the foundational infrastructure of the internet.

Much of the Seattle-based company’s power has emanated from its online marketplace, sometimes known as an “everything store” for the range of products it sells and the speed with which it delivers them. Amazon’s sway over online commerce has shaped the lives of merchants around the world, set the working conditions for more than one million warehouse workers and pushed the U.S. Postal Service to deliver on Sundays.

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Acer
Remind me to check back in 5 to 7 years when this monster finally gets resolved.

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rz
This will probably get pushed to the other side, but any sentence with the words “hope” and “Trump gets re-elected” are an oxymoron.

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hal
I get that AMZ has monopolistic tendencies, but amz has only pushed prices lower afaic.

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rz
This will probably get pushed to the other side, but any sentence with the words “hope” and “Trump gets re-elected” are an oxymoron.

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mrbigstuff
Yeah, lots of items are more expensive than brick and mortar stores probably for convenience sake. And for the fact that folks don't check prices much.

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mikebw

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Acer
Remind me to check back in 5 to 7 years when this monster finally gets resolved.

Maybe!

I hope they don't set a precedent around making it illegal for stores to produce their own brand versions of popular products though. I know Amazon has done a lot of that with their Basics brand, much like Costco's Kirkland label. I don't see the problem with it really.