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The European Union's top competition cop says her preliminary investigation into Amazon's data practices is in "quite advanced" stages.

Margrethe Vestager[1] - who has emerged as the world's toughest Big Tech regulator - is racing against the clock to determine whether to bring a formal antitrust case against the e-commerce giant before her term as commissioner ends in October. Her team is probing whether Amazon[2] uses the data it collects from businesses that sell products on its platform to inform its own product sales and undercut its competitors. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

"Since it's not given that I can continue for the commissioner for competition, I would like to take more decisive steps before I have to go," Vestager told a small group of reporters at South by Southwest. "We're pushing it for obvious reasons."

As Europe seeks to crack down on Big Tech, Vestager is especially focused on the competition issues that arise when companies are both marketplaces that host other sellers -- and retailers competing to peddle their own products. Vestager wants to make sure the biggest players that drive the digital economy - a la Amazon - are not abusing their market dominance and hurting consumers as they use data from competitors to inform their own business decisions.

A formal case against Amazon could set the tone for how policymakers across the world - even in the US - might treat the issue.

It extends far beyond one e-commerce giant, Vestager said. "Amazon is not the only one," she said. "Google[3] also has this nature because they also are being the navigation tool to find a lot of businesses, businesses that they themselves compete with."...

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