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The
company's withholding of the information sets the scene for a
possible repeat of Australia's 2021 showdown with Facebook Inc
and Alphabet Inc's Google, which resulted in those firms paying
content royalties to the media.
The regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission (ACCC), mentioned Amazon's stance in a report issued
on Thursday that was part of the same five-year review of
big-tech regulation that involved Facebook and Google.
The ACCC said in the report that it had surveyed 80 online
merchants and that nearly half believed large marketplace
platforms skewed searches and website presentation to favour
in-house products.
Amazon had told the regulator it did not give an advantage to
its own products but "the ACCC sought details about inputs of
Amazon's algorithms, which were not provided", the report said.
As a result, "the ACCC does not have information about how
Amazon's algorithms produce search results", the report said.
Amazon Australia director of public policy Michael Cooley said
in a statement that the company's offers were "the ones we think
customers will prefer, regardless of whether it is from Amazon
or one of our seller partners".
"We provide data directly to Seller Partners to help them manage
their businesses, and give key insights," he added, without
specifying which data the company provided.
Questionnaire results published with the report included several
comments accusing Amazon of giving preference to its own
products. One unnamed respondent wrote: "Amazon products are
always listed first and then second-hand products are available
in small print at the bottom of the listing".
The ACCC noted that, unlike other large online retail markets,
such as those of the United States and Britain, Australia's was
not dominated by Amazon. The company did not start operations in
the country until 2017.
Its sales in the year to June 2021 were just a quarter of the
A$5.3 billion ($3.8 billion) generated by eBay Inc, the ACCC
said.
Still, the regulator said that allowing large platforms to give
their own products preferential treatment might influence
purchasing decisions and damage competition. The platforms
should be made to disclose any activities which favoured their
own products, it said in the report.
"Hybrid marketplaces, like other vertically-integrated digital
platforms, face conflicts of interest and may act in ways that
advantage their own products with potentially adverse effects,"
ACCC chairperson Gina Cass-Gottlieb said in a statement
accompanying the report.
"We have concerns about particular examples of self-preferencing
by hybrid marketplaces in Australia, which mirror similar
concerns raised by overseas regulators."
($1 = 1.4053 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Byron Kaye in Sydney and Jaskiran Singh in
Bengaluru; Editing by Jan Harvey)
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