EU regulators request information on Amazon’s algorithms
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2024
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
Online sales in the U.S. surpassed $14 billion during Amazon Prime Day last week, according to Adobe Analytics. Amazon’s heft and promotional power continue to drive sales, even for rivals, during the shopping jamboree. But in Europe, an important market for the e-commerce giant, lawmakers have become increasingly sensitive to Amazon’s relations with its rivals, as well as its partners and customers. They’ve requested that Amazon hand over information about its product recommendation algorithms, along with data on ads, by Friday. It’s part of compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of tech regulations that took effect in recent years. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino discussed it with Theo Wayt, who covers Amazon for The Information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Amazon in Europe might have a slightly different accent. |
| 0:05.0 | From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Megan McCarty Carino. Now. Amazon Prime Day drove 14 billion dollars in online sales last week according to Adobe Analytics |
| 0:27.3 | and Amazon said the promotional event broke previous records but as its e-commerce dominance continues, the company's operations in Europe |
| 0:35.2 | could be changing. Lawmakers there requested that Amazon hand over |
| 0:39.3 | information about its product recommendation algorithms along with data on ads by this Friday. |
| 0:46.1 | It's part of compliance with a sweeping set of tech laws that have taken effect in the EU in recent |
| 0:51.2 | years. |
| 0:52.2 | The O-weight covers Amazon for the information and has been following this story. |
| 0:56.0 | I think that, you know, for Amazon in particular, |
| 0:59.0 | it can be quite complicated to comply with these kind of rules because they have streaming, they have Alexa, they have a million different, you know, tons of different parts of their businesses and a lot of those businesses run by sharing data between them. |
| 1:16.0 | So for example, in the US, if you have tried video on your TV and you get a commercial on there. |
| 1:24.0 | Amazon can decide what commercial you see based on partially, you know, what you've |
| 1:29.5 | purchased on Amazon.com or what you've searched for. |
| 1:32.1 | But in the EU, Amazon has to ask your |
| 1:35.0 | permission before they can share that kind of data. And if you say no, that makes |
| 1:40.1 | it difficult for Amazon to show you a relevant ad and therefore probably makes it tentacles between different parts of every big tech company that the EU kind of is trying to, you know, put rules around that it can be very complicated in reality for these companies to comply and to, you know, put the right guardrails in place internally as well. |
| 2:05.9 | Yeah, let's dig a little bit more into the Digital Markets Act, sort of the other side of the coin of this EU regulation aimed at kind of preventing |
| 2:15.8 | anti-competitive behavior. You noted the sort of video ads. What are some other potential changes that Amazon might have to sort of make |
| 2:27.1 | to its business model to comply with the Digital Markets Act? |
| 2:31.6 | So one major concern was, you know, because Amazon is a marketplace |
| 2:36.4 | there are lots of outside companies that sell products on there of course, but |
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