WASHINGTON: US Senator Josh Hawley urged the Justice Department on April 28 to open a criminal probe of Amazon.com Inc, saying the online retailer was building a monopoly using "predatory data practices" on vendors using its platform.
Hawley, a Republican who has been critical of big tech platforms like Alphabet's Google, expressed concern about a report in The Wall Street Journal that Amazon collects data about products sold by third parties on its site in order to create Amazon branded copies, saying it went far beyond what brick and mortar stores are able to do.