A protest against multinational technology company Amazon during the Covid-19 pandemic, on Nov. 27, 2020, in Rome, Italy.
Antonio Masiello | Getty Images News | Getty Images
When Italy’s competition regulator slapped a hefty fine of 1.13 billion euros ($1.28 billion) on Amazon last month, it was just the latest salvo in a string of moves against Big Tech.
The watchdog, Autorita Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato, ramped up its actions in the last year with a flurry of rulings against the e-commerce giant, Alphabet’s Google and Facebook owner Meta, to name a few.
In the case of Amazon’s latest fine, the regulator took issue with the firm encouraging Italian sellers to use its own logistics service, Fulfilment by Amazon, which the watchdog said was an abuse of its dominant position. It’s a charge that Amazon denies.
Renaud Foucart, a senior economics lecturer at the U.K.’s Lancaster University, told CNBC that the substantial monetary sanction on this occasion is part of a trend of national regulators acting against Big Tech firms because wider EU-level investigations can be “very…
