Sources: AGs from NY and CA are partnering with the FTC to investigate Amazon's online marketplace, with plans to interview witnesses in coming weeks
Context & Ripple Effects
The FTC has been building its Amazon file since at least September 2019, when its antitrust officials began interviewing merchants on the marketplace about dominance abuse, and widened the aperture that December by questioning software companies about AWS. California then opened its own inquiry in June, centered on Amazon retailing its own products against third-party sellers.
First-order effects
- Amazon now faces a coordinated federal-state front rather than separate probes: New York and California AGs are pooling witness interviews with the FTC, so testimony given to one team feeds the others' case files.
Second-order effects
- California's self-preferencing angle — Amazon selling its own goods against third-party sellers — becomes a shared theory of harm across jurisdictions, raising pressure on Amazon's private-label and buy-box practices marketplace-wide.
Third-order effects
- A multi-state pattern alongside the FTC points toward structural remedies aimed at the core marketplace itself — separating Amazon's retail role from its platform role — rather than fines that leave the flywheel intact.
The trend: State attorneys general are converging with the FTC on Big Tech platform cases, turning what began as scattered state inquiries into a joint federal-state antitrust push.