More than 90 percent of vendors that do business with a certain giant information technology company said the company unilaterally modified their contracts, according to an interim report on a fact-finding survey by the Fair Trade Commission that was released Tuesday.
Meanwhile, about 40 percent of respondents pointed out that an IT giant favorably displayed its own products in search results.
With the report indicating the existence of opaque trade practices, the government intends to advance discussions on strengthening regulation of the sector, sources said.
The survey, which began in January, mainly focused on the trade practices of Amazon.com Inc., Rakuten Inc. and Yahoo Japan Corp., which run online commerce sites, as well as Google LLC and Apple Inc., which run sites that sell apps.
The interim report describes the results of surveys and hearings mainly with companies that do business with these five firms. Individuals who use online services were also asked about their attitudes toward data handling and other matters.
About 800 sellers and others responded primarily about Amazon, Rakuten and Yahoo.
About 50 to about 90 percent of respondents said the companies changed their contracts unilaterally.
Regarding product searches and how items are displayed, about 50 to about 70 percent said the criteria for determining the order of search results and other things were opaque.
In addition, up to about 40 percent of respondents said IT giants favorably displayed their own products, and up to about 60 percent said they were required to pay IT giants to obtain favorable placement for their products in search results.
Regarding app sales, about 60 app developers and others responded primarily about Apple and Google. About 70 to about 80 percent said the companies changed their contracts unilaterally.
A survey of 2,000 individuals found that about 80 percent were concerned about data collection by IT giants.
Based on the results of the survey, the government is expected to intensify discussions on matters such as how to increase the transparency of transaction rules. This being an interim report, the survey is ongoing.
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