Self-preferencing is an antitrust concept that describes a platform ranking, surfacing, or otherwise favoring its own products or services above rival offerings on a marketplace it controls. It targets a structural conflict, not a single bad act: a platform that operates the marketplace and also sells its own products inside that marketplace has an incentive to bend the rules in its own favor. The European Commission and the Federal Trade Commission have both moved against this conduct, but through very different legal tools, Brussels through the Digital Markets Act and Washington through an antitrust complaint against Amazon, and understanding self-preferencing means understanding both the conduct itself and why enforcers frame it so differently.
What Self-Preferencing Means
Self-preferencing is an antitrust concept that describes a platform ranking, surfacing, or otherwise favoring its own products or services above rival offerings on a marketplace it controls. There is no single, universally codified legal definition of the term written into statute the way a defined phrase like "monopoly" is. Instead, self-preferencing functions as a recognized theory of harm: a way of explaining why a specific piece of conduct, such as a search-ranking decision or a default-placement choice, can raise competition concerns even when the platform never explicitly blocks a rival from participating.
The mechanism is straightforward once stated plainly. A large digital platform frequently plays two roles at once: it is the operator of a marketplace, search engine, or app store, and it is also a seller or service provider competing inside that same space. Search ranking, default placement, and app store ranking are the levers a platform controls purely by virtue of running the infrastructure. When a platform uses those levers to make its own listings more visible than a rival's, at the expense of merit-based ranking, regulators treat that as a competition problem rather than an ordinary business decision. The theory of harm is not that ranking itself is illegitimate. Every marketplace has to rank something. The concern is that the platform's dual role gives it a standing temptation to rig the ranking in a way an independent, non-competing operator would not.
How the EU Digital Markets Act Treats Self-Preferencing
The European Union addresses self-preferencing through the Digital Markets Act, a regulation that sets out objective criteria for identifying gatekeeper platforms and then binds every designated gatekeeper to a specific list of gatekeeper obligations and prohibitions, one of which targets self-preferencing directly. According to the European Commission's own Digital Markets Act overview, the regulation applies only to platforms formally identified as gatekeepers under its designation criteria, not to every digital business. The Commission has also stated plainly that the Digital Markets Act complements, but does not change, EU competition rules, which continue to apply in full. A designated gatekeeper can face a Digital Markets Act proceeding over one specific obligation and separate competition-law scrutiny over the same or related conduct simultaneously.
The clearest illustration of how this plays out arrived on March 25, 2024, when the Commission opened non-compliance proceedings against Alphabet, Apple, and Meta under the Digital Markets Act, naming Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc., and Meta Platforms as the three designated gatekeepers under review. Three separate concerns were raised in that same announcement, each mapping to a different self-preferencing mechanism:
- The Commission said it was concerned that Alphabet, Google's parent company, was preferencing its own vertical search services, such as Google Shopping and Google Hotels, over similar rival services on Google Search, a direct search-ranking form of self-preferencing.
- The Commission said Digital Markets Act rules require gatekeepers, including Alphabet's Google Play and Apple's App Store, to let app developers steer consumers to offers outside the gatekeeper's app store, free of charge, targeting app store ranking and steering restrictions rather than search results.
- The Commission said it was investigating whether Apple's browser choice screen may be preventing users from truly exercising their choice of services, a default-placement question rather than a ranking one.
The Commission said it intended to conclude those Digital Markets Act proceedings within 12 months of opening them. The Commission opened investigative proceedings; it did not find any of the three companies in breach. A proceeding is the start of a formal review process, not a verdict, and readers should not treat the March 2024 announcement as evidence that Alphabet, Apple, or Meta broke the law.
FTC v. Amazon: Self-Preferencing as Exclusionary Conduct
The United States frames the same underlying conduct differently. On September 26, 2023, the FTC and 17 state attorneys general sued Amazon.com, Inc., alleging Amazon used exclusionary conduct to illegally maintain monopoly power. The case was brought by the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition under then-FTC Chair Lina M. Khan, working jointly with the state attorneys general, and John Newman, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition, said the lawsuit targeted conduct that had stifled competition across a large share of the online retail economy. Unlike the Digital Markets Act's list of standing obligations, this is an antitrust enforcement action: a lawsuit built around specific, alleged facts about Amazon's own marketplace practices in the United States, filed under existing competition law rather than a new ex ante rulebook.
- The complaint alleges Amazon biased search results to preference Amazon's own products over better-quality rival products, a search-ranking allegation that parallels the Google Shopping concern raised under the Digital Markets Act.
- The complaint alleges Amazon's anti-discounting measures could bury discounting sellers so far down in Amazon's own search results that they become effectively invisible to shoppers, a direct parallel to the search-ranking form of self-preferencing raised against Alphabet in Europe.
Both allegations describe the same core mechanism the Digital Markets Act targets in Europe: a platform using its control over ranking and default placement to advantage its own commercial interests. The difference is procedural rather than conceptual. This is an active lawsuit, and the allegations above are claims the FTC has to prove in court, not an established finding against Amazon. The exclusionary conduct framing places the burden on the government to demonstrate that Amazon's ranking practices actually harmed competition, a higher bar than the Digital Markets Act's standing compliance obligations, which apply automatically once a platform is designated as a gatekeeper.
Two Legal Approaches to the Same Conduct
The European and American responses target overlapping conduct, but they reach for structurally different legal tools, and that distinction shapes how each is likely to play out for the platforms involved.
| Framework | Legal basis | When it applies | Example claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| EU Digital Markets Act | Ex ante regulatory obligations set in the statute itself | Automatically, once a platform is a designated gatekeeper, before any specific harm is proven | Alphabet preferencing Google Shopping and Google Hotels over rival vertical search services |
| US FTC antitrust action | Ex post enforcement litigation under existing competition law | After alleged harm, through a filed complaint the government must prove | Amazon allegedly biasing search results toward its own products and burying discounting sellers |
The distinction between ex ante and ex post matters practically. Under the Digital Markets Act, a designated gatekeeper has to comply with its gatekeeper obligations on an ongoing basis, and the Commission can open a non-compliance proceeding whenever it suspects a violation, as it did against Alphabet, Apple, and Meta in March 2024. Under the American model illustrated by the FTC's case against Amazon, nothing is presumed until a court rules, and the government has to build and win a case fact by fact. Neither approach is a straightforward substitute for the other; a platform operating in both markets can face a compliance obligation in one and an open lawsuit in the other over closely related conduct.
App Store Ranking and Other Self-Preferencing Mechanisms
Self-preferencing shows up anywhere a platform controls both the shelf and one of the products sitting on it, and search ranking is only the most visible mechanism. The mechanisms named across the Digital Markets Act proceedings and the FTC complaint fall into a short, concrete list.
- Search and vertical-search ranking: the mechanism at issue in the Commission's concern that Alphabet was preferencing Google Shopping and Google Hotels over similar rival services.
- Default marketplace search-result placement: the mechanism named in the FTC's complaint against Amazon, where anti-discounting measures and search-result position can be steered toward the platform's own products or against discounting sellers.
- App store ranking and steering restrictions: the Digital Markets Act obligation requiring gatekeepers to let developers direct consumers to offers outside the app store, free of charge, addressed in the March 2024 proceedings.
- Default choice screens: the mechanism under Digital Markets Act review in the investigation into whether the design of Apple's web browser choice screen, including the Safari choice screen, may be preventing users from truly exercising a choice of services.
Each mechanism above is still an open proceeding or an active allegation, not a settled finding. What connects them is not the interface, a search page, a purchase button, an app listing, or a setup screen, but the structural point: whoever sets the default or the ranking order controls which product a user reaches, and self-preferencing claims focus on how that control gets used. None of these mechanisms is banned outright under the Digital Markets Act or ordinary competition rules; each is scrutinized case by case for whether the platform's own interests displaced a merit-based outcome.
Why Regulators Treat Self-Preferencing as a Competition Problem
The theory of harm behind self-preferencing rests on a simple structural point: a platform that controls the ranking rules and also competes inside them has a standing incentive to bend those rules in its own favor, whether or not it does so in every instance. A short set of terms captures how regulators reason about this.
Dual role. A gatekeeper acts as both the operator of a marketplace, search engine, or app store and a seller or service provider competing within that same space, which is the structural condition that makes self-preferencing possible in the first place.
Ex ante regulation. The Digital Markets Act's approach of writing compliance obligations into the statute in advance for designated gatekeepers, so the rule applies automatically rather than waiting for a proven instance of harm.
Ex post enforcement. The FTC's approach of litigating a specific company's alleged conduct after the fact, under existing antitrust law, as in its case against Amazon, where the exclusionary conduct allegations must still be proven in court.
Designation. The Digital Markets Act's formal process for identifying which platforms qualify as gatekeepers subject to its compliance obligations, meaning the anti-self-preferencing rule does not apply to every digital platform, only to the ones the Commission designates.
The FTC's own framing of competition policy is that it exists to encourage firms to compete on the most favorable terms, promoting efficiency, innovation, and lower prices. That framing is the stated rationale for treating self-preferencing as a reviewable practice rather than an accepted feature of running a large platform: when a company controls the marketplace, the ranking, and one of the sellers, the ordinary competitive pressure to earn a customer's business through quality or price can quietly give way to the much simpler tool of adjusting the ranking. The Digital Markets Act proceedings against Alphabet, Apple, and Meta Platforms remain open investigations, and the FTC's case against Amazon.com, Inc. remains an active lawsuit. What both actions share is a bet that self-preferencing is worth scrutinizing as its own distinct category of conduct, separate from the broader antitrust questions of market power and mergers that surround the same platforms.
References
- European Commission, Digital Markets Act overview
- European Commission, Commission opens non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple, and Meta under the Digital Markets Act
- Federal Trade Commission, FTC Sues Amazon for Illegally Maintaining Monopoly Power
- Federal Trade Commission, Policy Statements
Further reading
Frequently Asked Questions
Is self-preferencing illegal everywhere?
No. Self-preferencing is reviewable, not automatically illegal, and the rules differ by jurisdiction and platform status. Under the EU's Digital Markets Act, only platforms formally designated as gatekeepers are bound by specific anti-self-preferencing obligations. In the United States, self-preferencing is challenged case by case under existing antitrust law, as in the FTC's lawsuit against Amazon, rather than through a standing rule that applies automatically to any platform.
What is the difference between the EU and US approach to self-preferencing?
The EU's Digital Markets Act is an ex ante regulatory regime that sets obligations in advance for designated gatekeeper platforms, applying before any specific harm is proven. The FTC's approach is ex post antitrust enforcement, meaning it litigates a specific company's alleged conduct after the fact under existing competition law. Both target overlapping conduct, but through structurally different legal tools.
What specific conduct did the FTC allege against Amazon?
The FTC's 2023 complaint against Amazon alleges two self-preferencing behaviors in particular. It alleges Amazon biased its own search results to preference Amazon's own products over rival products the company knew were of better quality, and that Amazon's anti-discounting measures could bury discounting sellers so far down in search results that they become effectively invisible to shoppers. These are allegations in an active lawsuit, not an established court finding.
Does the Digital Markets Act replace ordinary EU competition law?
No. The European Commission has stated that the Digital Markets Act complements, but does not change, EU competition rules, which continue to apply in full. A gatekeeper can face both a DMA proceeding for a specific obligation and separate competition-law scrutiny for the same or related conduct.
