by News Desk
TOKYO (The Japan News/ANN) - The Fair Trade Commission has stated that certain acts, take advantage of their superior bargaining position regarding clients who use their websites, including unilaterally raising commission fees for businesses.
The Fair Trade Commission has stated that certain acts in which giant U.S. information technology companies called “platforms,” such as Google and Amazon.com, take advantage of their superior bargaining position regarding clients who use their websites, including unilaterally raising commission fees for businesses that have opened online stores in the markets operated by these IT giants, could be problematic in terms of the Antimonopoly Law.
The FTC made the point in its report released Thursday on a fact-finding survey of the U.S. IT giants and their customers.
The four U.S. firms — Google LLC, Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., which are collectively known as “GAFA” — have built up their huge platforms (foundations to provide digital services) by offering online shopping and app sales sites and collecting users from all over the world.
The report stated that the IT giants provide services convenient for consumers based on collecting and using huge volumes of data, but the increasing concentration of the data on specified firms could lead to a market oligopoly.
In addition, the report specified the following three types of actions by these IT giants that could violate the Antimonopoly Law:
■ Those to put clients at a disadvantage
■ Those to remove competing operators
■ Those to restrict clients’ operations
The FTC aims to urge these giant IT firms to voluntarily improve their practices by showing them types of actions that could be problematic in terms of the law, according to sources.
Concretely, the antitrust watchdog expressed its view in the report that the activities of these IT giants to unilaterally raise commission fees on clients or change business regulations could violate the prohibition against “abuse of superior bargaining position” under the Antimonopoly Law and could put clients at a disadvantage.
As an example of activities to restrict clients’ operations, the report mentioned a practice by the giant IT firms to ask businesses, after they have opened online stores in the markets operated by these IT giants, to display products at lower prices than those on other sites.
The FTC has conducted questionnaire surveys since January this year on the giant IT firms, their clients and general consumers. It also has carried out interview surveys on the IT giants and other Japanese platforms, including Rakuten and Yahoo Japan.
