Up the Amazon

| By Neill Denny

The Office of Fair Trading has delayed its verdict thrice before delivering what is plainly a wrong decision—to clear the merger betwen Amazon and The Book Depository. Perhaps the bureaucrat’s intention was to show how it agonised over its verdict.

In justifying its bizarre decision, the OFT resolved that taking over The Book Depository would not result in a substantial lessening of competition in the UK, this as TBD only has 2%–4% of the online market. At a basic level this is of course true, that such a small market share swapping ownership can never lead to a “substantial lessening”, but given that Amazon already has 70% to 80% of the market it is a semantic smokescreen of the worst kind. The OFT is ignoring the 800lb gorilla in the room to study the pattern on the carpet.

Even worse, considering that TBD was the biggest online-only competitor to Amazon, and the struggle it had to get to just 4% of the market, a chance like this to shine a spotlight on Amazon is unlikely ever to come again.

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