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 A little more than an hour
after the deal was announced, Republican Senator
Josh Hawley blasted Amazon.com as a "monopoly
platform" on Twitter, adding, "This sale should
not go through," and that the company shouldn't
be allowed to buy anything.
And Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, who chairs
the Senate's antitrust panel, called for "a
thorough investigation to ensure that this deal
won't risk harming competition."
The announcement also comes just one day after
Washington, DC's attorney general filed a
lawsuit against Amazon.com, alleging the online
retailer broke antitrust law with unfair pricing
strategies.
The $8.45 billion merger would combine the
world's biggest online retailer with a film and
TV studio that has a storied past but has
struggled to keep up with rivals including
Disney.
MGM, which owns the James Bond franchise and
made "The Handmaid's Tale," also made classic
films like the "Rocky" series and "Princess
Bride." But look at the top ten grossing films
of 2018 and 2019 and MGM is absent, according to
boxofficemojo. As is Amazon.
Amazon's Prime Video, which is bundled with
subscriptions to Amazon's service that promises
quick deliveries of purchases, also faces
well-financed rivals including Netflix Inc, Walt
Disney Co's Disney+, HBO Max and Apple Inc's
Apple TV+. The companies are increasing
investments in international markets, aiming to
capture the pandemic-led expansion of
binge-watching shows online.
Given the state of competition in the two
markets, antitrust agencies which police mergers
for anticompetitive behavior would likely
struggle to convince a court that the deal will
mean higher prices or less innovation.
"It seems like the market shares aren't big
enough to attract the attention of today's
antitrust enforcers," said Chris Sagers, a
professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
with a focus on antitrust, who noted that
because of its size, "people will be concerned
because it's Amazon."
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 Amazon declined to comment on
this story but in an October 2020 blog post
noted that "large companies are not dominant by
definition, and the presumption that success can
only be the result of anti-competitive behavior
is simply wrong." Amazon has
come under criticism for buying competitors,
like online shoe seller Zappos in 2009 and
Diapers.com in 2010, and that criticism is
likely to continue.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, when she was running
for president, explicitly called for federal
regulators to undo "anti-competitive mergers,"
including Amazon's purchases of Whole Foods and
Zappos.
"Amazon is prioritizing monopolizing content for
the streaming service while completely failing
to address the real concerns of workers, small
businesses, and regulators," said Alex Harman, a
competition policy advocate for Public Citizen.
Antitrust experts have been studying Amazon's
purchase of the Whole Foods supermarket chain in
2017 for clues about how the MGM deal might be
handled. That merger was quickly approved by
U.S. competition regulators even though Amazon
was at that time much criticized for allegedly
using its market power to dominate different
retail sectors.
 "For political reasons, they might spend more
time with this acquisition than they did with
Whole Foods but for practical reasons it might
end up the same," said Andre Barlow, antitrust
expert with Doyle, Barlow and Mazard.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Writing by Chris
Sanders; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
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