Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is willing to testify to the House Judiciary Committee about Amazon’s competitive practices.
Last month, the committee asked Bezos to testify as part of an antitrust investigation into an alleged scheme at Amazon to use third-party seller data to inform its own business decisions and release competing products. Amazon executives had denied the practice in sworn testimony last year, but a Wall Street Journal investigation exposed the alleged strategy.
The committee’s leadership threatened to subpoena Bezos if he refused. Amazon had initially said it would offer an “appropriate” executive to testify, but not necessarily Bezos.
Amazon confirmed to Digital Trends that Bezos would be available for testimony with other tech CEOs before the committee this summer.
Antitrust investigations into Big Tech have been gaining steam in the last year, with members of the House, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission engaging in a range of inquiries into whether companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple have leveraged their positions to unfairly squash competition. Both Democrats and Republicans have voiced desires to rein in these tech giants’ power.
Recently, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) called for a criminal investigation into Amazon, saying that the company “abuses its position as an online platform and collects detailed data about merchandise so Amazon can create copycat products under an Amazon brand,” adding that, “Internal documents and the testimony of more than 20 former Amazon employees support this finding.”
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