If Amazon is guilty of anti-trust practices, who did it learn them from?

The European Union has announced plans to file anti-trust charges against Amazon for its treatment of third-party companies on its platform, the result of an investigation it opened about a year ago. California is also to investigate the e-commerce giant for the same reasons.

How does Amazon treat so-called third-party sellers on its platform? First of all, it should be noted that the importance of these independent sellers, as can be seen in the graph above, has been growing over time, to the point where they now outnumber the products sold by the company itself. This platform strategy is, to a large extent, powered the company’s growth over the last two decades. Increasingly, vendors around the world are taking advantage of the platform Amazon offers them, with tools ranging from fulfillment and inventory management to payment methods, shipping logistics, etc., making them more attractive to buyers than if they were trying to sell on their own web sites.

Amazon is aggressive with them: in addition to controlling their prices by offering better conditions if they sell exclusively on its platform or even penalizing them if they offer better prices on other sites, the company also controls the logistic partners they use, making them an asset in its battle to dominate the field. But above all, the…