LONDON: Amazon, seeking to resolve two European Union antitrust investigations, has promised to treat third-party merchants on its website fairly, the bloc’s competition watchdog said Thursday.
The US online retail giant offered to make a number of commitments to ease competition concerns, and the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, said it will now seek feedback on them from “interested parties.”
The commission launched an investigation four years ago over concerns Amazon breached EU competition rules by using data from merchants selling products on its platform to gain an unfair advantage over them.
It also opened a separate investigation into whether Amazon favors its own retail business and merchants that use its logistics and delivery system over other sellers.
The investigations are part of the bloc’s wider efforts to curb the power of big technology companies. Amazon also is facing similar scrutiny in the US
Amazon said that while it disagreed with several of the conclusions, it has “engaged constructively with the commission to address their concerns and preserve our ability to serve European customers and the more than 185,000 European small- and medium-sized businesses selling through our stores.”
The company also said it has “serious concerns” about new EU digital regulations, known as the Digital Markets Act, that it said are “unfairly targeting Amazon and a few other US companies.” The act, part of the EU’s overhaul of its digital rulebook, aims to prevent tech giants from becoming dominant by making them treat smaller rivals fairly under threat of hefty fines.
Under the commission’s investigation, Amazon had faced a possible fine of up to 10 percent of its annual worldwide revenue, which could have amounted to billions of dollars.
Britain’s competition watchdog opened a similar probe into Amazon last week, looking into concerns that the online retailer is abusing its dominance to undermine rivals.
The EU commission suspected Amazon of distorting competition by accessing and analyzing real-time data from independent vendors selling goods on its platform to help decide which new products of its own to launch and how to price and market them.
To address the problem, Amazon has promised to refrain from using “non-public data” from the vendors’ activities to compete with them through its own sales of branded goods or “private label” products.
To settle the second investigation, Amazon committed to allowing sellers on its Prime membership service to use any logistics and delivery company of their choosing and to set “non-discriminatory” criteria for who gets chosen to sell on Prime.
The company also promised to give equal treatment to all sellers when ranking their product offers for the site’s “buy box,” which lets shoppers add items directly to their shopping baskets. The box features a single seller’s product even though multiple merchants might offer the item, so Amazon also is promising to show a second, competing offer to give consumers more choice.
If accepted, Amazon’s commitments would remain in force for five years. The commission is receiving feedback on the proposals until Sept. 9.
Amazon’s dominance is also a concern across the Atlantic. In April, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating how the company disclosed some of its business practices, including how it handles seller data.
A month prior, federal lawmakers had asked the Justice Department for a criminal probe into the tech giant’s testimony over its competitive practices. In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the House Judiciary Committee accused Amazon of attempting to “influence, obstruct or impede” a congressional investigation into the company’s market dominance, a charge the company denies.
Simultaneously, federal lawmakers are leading a push to pass bipartisan legislation aiming to rein in anticompetitive practices from Amazon, Google, Meta and Apple.
Amazon offers concessions to head off EU antitrust cases
https://arab.news/mt6ck
Amazon offers concessions to head off EU antitrust cases
- The US online retail giant, seeking to resolve two European Union antitrust investigations, offered to make a number of commitments to ease competition concerns.
To infinity and beyond: Grendizer’s 50 years of inspiring Arabs
- 50 years after its creation, the Grendizer anime series continues to capture Arab imagination
- Arab News Japan speaks to creator Go Nagai, Middle Eastern fans and retells the story behind the UFO Robot tasked with protecting our planet
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
