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Swedish hypermarket Eko has opened its first online platform to sell products. But the company is not offering what people might expect: The online store is called E by Night and sells sex toys and related products. For Eko, the decision to venture into this market came naturally, when they recognized the increased interest in these products in Sweden. Eko wants to change how people think about and percieve adult toys.

European antitrust regulators have fined Google a record breaking €4.34 billion for abusing the Android mobile operating system’s dominance. This fine comes from the fact that Google has imposed three types of restrictions on Android device manufacturers and network operators to ensure that traffic on Android devices goes to the Google search engine. These practises deny rivals the chance to innovate and compete. European consumers are thusly denied the benefits of effective competition in the mobile sphere. Under EU antitrust rules, this is illegal.

Amazon kicked off its 2018 Prime Day on 16 August amidst protests, boycotts, strikes and outages, showing that not everyone is smiling on the Seattle-based giant of online retail. Prime Day is one of Amazon’s largest promotions of the year, one on which they offer deals to subscribers of their Prime service. Proposed cuts to wages and health benefits caused some European Amazon employees to strike on Prime Day, hoping to draw more attention to Amazon’s lacklustre understanding of European workers’ conditions – which are very different when compared to the US.

The pharmaceutical business is one of the most lucrative sectors around with over $300 billion being spent on prescription drugs in the U.S. alone. Amazon is vying for this huge market, buying PillPack. DocMorris, the Dutch mail-order pharmacy, is winning ground in the German market, buying up companies there. What does this mean for the pharmaceutical industry?

E-commerce is showing double-digit growth in Europe – again! Europeans are shopping online more and more. The choice of product and the ease of receiving these products (they’re shipped to your door!) is luring people away from bricks-and-mortar stores like never before. Many of the smart stationary stores have opened their own web stores over the last few years, and some of them are quite good, bolstering the stationary stores’ business.

Amazon is making the day longer. They’re stretching it to 36 hours for this year’s Prime Day, giving consumers 12 hours extra to take advantage of their best deals. It starts in two weeks’ time at noon on 16 July. That’s one week later than usual, probably due to the World Cup Semi Finals which are taking place on the usual Prime Day.

It came as a surprise that the DIY marketplace DaWanda is closing its doors on 30 August 2018. They are advising merchants on their platform to switch to Etsy – for which they have developed an import tool. DaWanda planned to let the e-commerce world know of its plan to close up shop on Monday, 2 July, but the news came out over the weekend moving into July.