New legislation targets Amazon private brands

Congress is looking into Amazon and its private label practices again. 

The Wall Street Journal has reported that a new bipartisan bill could seek Amazon to separate its business into two websites, one for the third-party marketplace and another for its first-party products including its own brands of more than 158,000 products and its tech items like Fire TV and more. If not separated, Amazon could be asked to remove its private label assets.

The bill is called the Ending Platform Monopolies Act and is targeting Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, all of which testified during a hearing last year before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. During that hearing Bezos said he couldn’t give a clear guarantee or confirmation that the e-tailer has used third-party data to enhance its private label products. The hearing was a result of the House Judiciary Committee responding to an article run by the Wall Street Journal that investigated Amazon’s practices around third-party seller data and how it allegedly informs how Amazon develops its private brands.

The latest bill could be proposed soon, per the article, and has both Republican and Democrat representatives signed to it. The bill aims to address the ability of big technology companies leveraging their online platforms in favor of their own products in different ways.

Read the full article here.