The British antitrust regulator closed the investigation against Amazon and Meta – Companies

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority has announced that it has dropped its investigations into Amazon and Meta. Both US companies were launched by the regulator for abusing their position in the online retail market.

The regulator launched an investigation into Meta in June 2021, looking into reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s company was gaining an unfair advantage over competitors who posted online ads for their products on Meta platforms.

In particular, the company was suspected of collecting information about users’ interactions with third-party sellers’ ads on Meta’s sites, in order to then offer its own products to those same users. The regulator received a denial from the company that it uses such data to improve its own services. In addition, Meta users in the UK will now be able to opt out of the transfer of third-party vendor ad interaction data to the US corporation.

The investigation against Amazon began in July 2022. The regulator was looking into whether Amazon really gave advantages in its marketplace to its own merchants, that is, its own retail business, and that those merchants used its services to store and deliver goods, with priority over others.