Amazon appeases Germany’s watchdog

FRANKFURT, July 17 (Reuters): Amazon has reached a deal with Germany's anti-trust authority to overhaul its terms of service for third-party merchants, acting to appease regulators as the European Union announced its own investigation of the e-commerce giant.

Germany's Federal Cartel Office said on Wednesday it was dropping its seven-month investigation after Amazon agreed to amend a business services agreement that applies to hundreds of thousands of merchants trading on its platform.

Within hours, however, EU antitrust regulators said they would open their own investigation into whether the world's largest online retailer's terms of service and use of merchant data violated competition rules.

The changes will apply not only to Germany, Amazon's No. 2 market after the United States, but also to its marketplaces in Britain, France, Italy and Spain.