BRUSSELS -- European authorities say they have opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Amazon over the e-commerce giant's treatment of smaller merchants on its website.
EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Wednesday that she wants to examine how Amazon uses data it gathers through transactions, including those involving rival sellers, on its platform.
Vestager said "the question here is about the data."
She added that EU regulators have started gathering information on the issue and have sent "quite a number of questionnaires" to merchants in order to understand the issue.
It's the latest move by the European Union to subject big tech companies to increasing scrutiny, amid worries that they are becoming too dominant.
