To answer your first question, since I don't think it was rhetorical, I'm aware of at least 1 case where amazon stopped selling competing products (1).
I also just searched for "aaa batteries" and the first hit, after the AmazonBasics ad, were AmazonBasics batteries.
I'm not saying either of these are anti-competitive. I understand that more goes into it than just that. Just offering these little facts in case anyone else is curious.
(I do think that with both Amazon's increasing dominance and seemingly increasing aggressiveness, they're heading for legal issues).
Sounds about right. But first they'd have to establish that Amazon has market dominance in the entire EU. Which I don't think they have. So there's that.
Then they would investigate if they abuse this dominance to stifle competition. Which I think your batteries example would qualify for. They'd probably look a bit further though because I dunno, if it's just batteries :-p So they'd gather more evidence and if they find enough, they too will get an antitrust case.
Just that, market dominance in itself is not illegal, so if Amazon, unlike Google (knowingly!!) did, uses that dominance responsibly, no problem.
What I got from the article, the investigation has been very reasonable and it's beyond doubt that Google went way over the line.
People may question whether this EU regulation is right (but I believe it is), but from the looks of it, at least it's fair: With great market dominance comes great responsibility.
I also just searched for "aaa batteries" and the first hit, after the AmazonBasics ad, were AmazonBasics batteries.
I'm not saying either of these are anti-competitive. I understand that more goes into it than just that. Just offering these little facts in case anyone else is curious.
(I do think that with both Amazon's increasing dominance and seemingly increasing aggressiveness, they're heading for legal issues).
(1) https://www.recode.net/2016/5/31/11826394/amazon-apple-tv-go...