American tech companies are getting on the wrong side of European authorities this week. Recently, Google was in news over allegedly anticompetitive search practices and its policy on controversial street view data retention. This, Germany’s antitrust authorities are investigating the way in which eBay has supported PayPal. John Oates explained earlier today, “eBay.de recently asked sellers with low feedback points to offer PayPal. The company justified the move because it said the number of bad buying experiences is twice as high from sellers with less than 50 feedback points than the average.”
Many people are unhappy with the change and as a result, “[T]he German Federal Cartel Office is investigating complaints made against eBay over this tying policy.”
With eBay advocating use of PayPal, its market share will increase and help eBay earn even more money, they may have a point. eBay is liable to have trouble arguing that there’s no other way it could protect buyers, at least.
Till the final decision, its wait and watch for all the users. German authorities haven’t yet launched a full investigation or given an indication which way they’re leaning. eBay, for its part, is still more in “dialogue” than “sound the alarm” mode.