The American Innovation and Choice Online Act, introduced in October 2021 by Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley, expresses a desire to level the playing field between online marketplaces and small businesses. As the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon has long been criticized for its dominance of the e-commerce market. In recent years, the company has come under fire for its practices in areas ranging from worker safety to antitrust concerns. Now, Congress is going after the conglomerate marketplace itself, accusing them of “prioritizing their own products on their platforms, using their market power to edge out competitors, and limiting consumers’ choice.”
This bill is set to directly limit Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and other large tech companies’ ability to show bias in the search engine. It would alter the search results algorithm to allow more competition of smaller businesses for the Buy Box and SEO ranking, and fulfillment of Prime orders through Amazon. In essence, the search engine would prioritize the most relevant results, rather than deferring to what is most beneficial for the bigger companies.
The AICO Act would change the way that Prime orders are fulfilled, opening up the process to other logistics providers and extending sellers’ carrier options. Under the current system, known as “Fulfillment by Amazon” (FBA), only Amazon itself can fill Prime orders (Amazon’s Seller-Fulfilled Prime service, which permits sellers to process orders through the shipping company of their choosing, is not currently accepting new registrations). The new bill would allow other carriers to compete for this business, potentially undercutting Amazon’s fulfillment capabilities in the process.