Retailers all but beg FTC to take action against Google, Amazon

Enlarge / Mountain View, Calif.—May 21, 2018: Exterior view of a Googleplex building, the corporate headquarters of Google and parent company Alphabet. (credit: Getty Images | zphotos)

A group of the biggest retailers in the country, including Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Apple, and T-Mobile, is asking federal regulators to do something about the outsized power digital competitors Amazon and Google have in the marketplace.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association, a trade group representing dozens of major retail chains, submitted lengthy comments this week (PDF) to the Federal Trade Commission urging an update of antitrust policy for the “information infrastructure” era, in business-to-business interactions as well as equal access to consumers, and for the FTC to “take the next step with investigations and actions against companies impeding free market competition.”

The organization wants the FTC to act “not to complain about competition” from companies such as Facebook, Google, or Amazon, “but to ask for more competition,” RILA VP of Innovation Nicholas Ahrens said in a written statement. “Modern antitrust investigation and enforcement needs to be driven by a greater recognition that control over information can drive anti-competitive effects just as much as market power and price control.”