California’s attorney general filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon on Wednesday, claiming the retailer stifles competition and increases the prices consumers pay across the internet.
The suit is limited to California, where officials said Amazon had around 25 million customers, but if it succeeds it could have a broad impact across the country.
“If you think about Californians paying even just a little bit more for every product they purchased online over the course of a year, let alone a decade, which is what is at issue here, the collective magnitude of harm here is very far-reaching,” said Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, during a news conference announcing the case.
“The everything store has effectively set a price floor, costing Californians more for just about everything,” he said.
The lawsuit largely focuses on the way Amazon penalizes sellers for listing products at lower prices on other websites. If Amazon spots a product listed for cheaper on a competitor’s website, it often will remove important buttons like “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart” from a product listing page.
