Amazon.com Inc. and other technology giants are squarely in the sights of antitrust regulators and lawmakers, both at home and abroad. In the U.S., the drive to curb their power comes right from the top, with President Joe Biden urging the Federal Trade Commission to act.
New FTC chair Lina Kahn is a prominent Amazon critic and she is already positioning the commission to go after Amazon by rejecting the prevailing U.S. legal doctrine that a company can only be prosecuted for antitrust violations if it can be shown to be harming consumers. Meanwhile, a bill before Congress could lead to the breakup of Big Tech companies, forcing Amazon, for example, to spin off key parts of its business such as the Amazon Marketplace or the highly profitable Amazon Web Services.
There are three main ways Amazon could be impacted by this heightened antitrust attention.
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