Sources: the FTC has revamped its Amazon antitrust probe, shaking up the investigative team, re-interviewing potential witnesses, and asking about the MGM deal
Context & Ripple Effects
This probe has been building for years: FTC officials started interviewing marketplace merchants back in 2019, New York and California AGs joined forces with the commission on the marketplace investigation in 2020, and the agency moved from an initial review of the proposed MGM acquisition to an in-depth investigation of that deal within weeks in mid-2021.
What changed with this report is the shape of the investigation itself: a reconstituted team, fresh witness interviews, and the MGM deal folded into the same case file rather than handled separately. That points to an agency consolidating scattered threads into one coherent theory of harm against Amazon.
First-order effects
- Amazon now faces a single, broadened probe that treats the MGM acquisition as part of its marketplace conduct rather than a standalone merger question — widening what any eventual complaint would have to cover.
- Witnesses first interviewed as far back as the 2019 merchant outreach are being brought back, meaning earlier testimony is being re-tested against a revised investigative approach.
Second-order effects
- MGM's integration into Amazon's ecosystem proceeds under a live federal investigation, raising the stakes for how Amazon structures Prime content bundling — the very practice the FTC was later reported to be scrutinizing when preparing its lawsuit.
- A rebuilt team signals the case is being readied for litigation rather than quietly closed, forcing Amazon's outside counsel and lobbying posture to plan for a complaint on multiple fronts at once.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, FTC Big Tech probes are becoming multi-year efforts that survive staff turnover and absorb adjacent deals into one case — consistent with the commission later carrying Lina Khan's Microsoft probe forward under Chair Andrew Ferguson, suggesting institutional continuity of scrutiny across leadership changes.
- Merger review and conduct enforcement converging into unified investigations would make large platform acquisitions carry antitrust risk well beyond closing day.
The trend: FTC antitrust work against Big Tech is shifting from discrete merger reviews and conduct inquiries toward consolidated, multi-year cases that outlast team changes and fold acquisitions like MGM into broader market-power theories.