California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a lawsuit against Amazon on Wednesday, accusing the Seattle-based e-commerce giant of anticompetitive behavior in its dealings with third-party merchants.
"For years, California consumers have paid more for their online purchases because of Amazon's anticompetitive contracting practices," Bonta said in a statement issued prior to a Wednesday news conference. "Amazon coerces merchants into agreements that keep prices artificially high, knowing full well that they can't afford to say no. With other e-commerce platforms unable to compete on price, consumers turn to Amazon as a one-stop-shop for all their purchases."
The result, he added, is continued market dominance for a trillion-dollar-plus company that only got bigger during the pandemic — "allowing the company to make increasingly untenable demands on its merchants and costing consumers more at checkout across California."
