Congress is dragging Jeff Bezos to the Hill to explain a routine business strategy

Published July 23, 2020 6:32pm ET



Alongside his fellow Big Tech CEOs, Jeff Bezos will appear before the House Judiciary Committee next Monday to testify about Amazon Marketplace’s business practices with its third-party sellers. The occasion will make for entertaining political theater, but the expected line of inquiry is mostly without merit.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google, and Tim Cook of Apple have all testified before Congress many times, but this will mark the first time that Bezos will appear before the legislative body. In February, House antitrust subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline of Rhode Island told CNBC, “As I think about this marketplace, it’s pretty clear to me that it’s not functioning properly, that there’s not robust competition there.” More specifically, the committee is interested in allegations that the online retail giant uses data about its third-party sellers to compete against them with its own in-house brand.

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