The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has closed its probes into the e-commerce practices of Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. after the companies made commitments to address its concerns.

The Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, announced the development today.

Third-party merchants 

The CMA probe into Amazon’s retail practices began last July. It focused on the company’s interactions with third-party merchants, or businesses that sell their products on its e-commerce platform. Amazon detailed last year that such businesses account for more than 60% of the sales on the platform. 

Because Amazon runs the underlying e-commerce infrastructure, it has access to data about third-party merchants’ sales. At the same time, the retail giant competes with many of those businesses by offering rival products. The CMA was concerned that Amazon could use the data it collects about third-party merchants’ sales to give its rival products an unfair edge.

As part of its probe, the CMA determined that Amazon might analyze the sales information in question to determine what new products it should launch. Antitrust officials were also worried the company could use the data to optimize product prices and inventory levels. To address those concerns, Amazon has committed not to use third-party merchants’ sales data to gain an unfair competitive advantage.

The CMA’s probe also identified two other areas of concern. They related to Amazon’s Buy Box feature and Prime shipping policy, respectively.

When multiple Amazon sellers offer the same product, the Buy Box highlights the seller with the most competitive offer in a dedicated interface section. Amazon has committed to ensuring that “all product offers are treated equally” equally when it decides which one to feature in the Buy Box. Furthermore, the company will allow third-party merchants to negotiate shipping rates with delivery companies that ferry e-commerce orders to Prime customers.

Facebook Marketplace

The CMA today also closed a parallel antitrust investigation into Meta’s e-commerce practices. In particular, the probe focused on the company’s Facebook Marketplace classified ads service.

Some companies that operate competing classifieds services run ads on Facebook. The CMA was concerned that Meta could log how users interact with those ads and use the collected data to give Facebook Marketplace an unfair edge. In particular, the regulator posited that Meta might use the information to create Facebook Marketplace listings that compete with offers from third-party classified websites. 

To end the probe, Meta has agreed to implement a new data collection opt-out option. The option will enable classifieds companies to prevent the social networking giant from using their ad data to “operate or improve Facebook Marketplace.” Furthermore, Meta has agreed to limit the use of information about competitors’ ad campaigns in internal product development projects.

Under the terms of their agreements with the CMA, both Amazon and Meta will appoint trustees to monitor that they uphold their antitrust commitments. In the case of Meta, the relevant trustee will also oversee the implementation of new “technical systems and employee training” initiatives designed to address antitrust risks. 

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