The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Amazon’s plans to acquire two companies: vacuum maker iRobot and healthcare company One Medical. The Wall Street Journal reported that on Friday, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by One Medical’s owner, 1Life, revealed the FTC requested additional information about the deal from One Medical and Amazon.
The moves align with Amazon’s monopolization strategy, specifically the One Medical acquisition; the e-commerce giant may have pulled the plug on Amazon Care—which healthcare professionals had raised concerns about for some time—but by all accounts, Amazon is still keen on entering the industry.
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Back in July, Amazon announced it intended to buy One Medical for $3.9 billion, the latest in a flurry of multibillion-dollar deals, including the $8.5 billion acquisition of Hollywood studio MGM this year and the $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods in 2017.
“We think health care is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention,” Neil Lindsay, senior vp of Amazon Health Services, said in a statement announcing the acquisition. “We love inventing to make what should be easy easier and we want to be one of the companies that helps dramatically improve the health care experience over the next several years.”
Politico reported that the FTC review of iRobot raises a number of concerns, including “whether the data generated about a consumer’s home by iRobot’s Roomba vacuum will give it an unfair advantage over a wide variety of other retailers.”
These are just the latest of Amazon’s acquisitions to fall under FTC scrutiny. Earlier this year, the FTC sought to review the acquisition of MGM Studios on grounds it could be anticompetitive. Though the deal closed in March, the FTC warned it could still block the deal.
In August, Amazon filed a complaint with the FTC about an ongoing antitrust probe of its Prime subscription program, claiming it has become “unduly burdensome.” Last year in June, Amazon begged the FTC to recuse Chairwoman Lina Khan from antitrust investigations into the company, citing her legal scholarship as bias that might prevent an “open mind” to its pro-monopoly arguments.
If all this scrutiny of Amazon’s acquisitions seems strange, that’s just because we’re so used to the FTC rubber-stamping similar deals in the past. What we’re seeing is simply the agency doing its job.
Correction: This article previously stated that the FTC tried to “block” Amazon’s acquisition of MGM Studios. The FTC was only reviewing the acquisition. Motherboard regrets the error.
