Read the article folks. Amazon is claiming they don't meet the definition in Europe, where there are other online retailers with more sales in those countries that are not flagged as 'Very Large Online Platforms'. Amazon is simply claiming that them getting that designation and other online retailers of the same or larger sizes are not is unfair and Amazon shouldn't receive that tag in those countries.
Amazon's argument seems to boil down to "we sell products, not ads, so the law shouldn't apply to us." The EC response seems to be "what you would like the law to say is not what it says."
Regardless, the fact that Amazon doesn't like the law means it was written to protect consumers from corporations. In the states, we've completely forgotten that government is supposed to do precisely that.
I don't remember the numbers but their ads division has been showing massive growth over the past several years, they make billions selling ads these days.
In the US, the Government does not represent the people, but those who buy elections. The people who buy elections have no incentive to change anything, and nothing will change in absence of a violent communist revoution
That is what they are saying which is pretty disingenuous. The entire point of the law is to target multinationals which cannot be reined in by national legislation.
Boo hoo, the poor tiny Amazon doesn't want to take responsibility.
Did the EU even define the term "Very Large Online Platforms"? I think this is the bill, but it doesn't ever define the term. Amazon may be right, purely because the legislators are incompetent idiots.
average monthly active recipients of their service in the Union, calculated as an average over the period of the past six months
And the definition of active recipient:
(p) ‘active recipient of an online platform’ means a recipient of the service that has engaged with an online platform by either requesting the online platform to host information or being exposed to information hosted by the online platform and disseminated through its online interface;
So you just need 45 million EU citizens looking at a platform to qualify as a VLOP. Amazon probably qualifies, but it would be easy for them to prove they were unfairly discriminated against as well.