Why the EU-Amazon Fight Was Inevitable

Just ten days ago, industry and regulators in Europe feared that the Commission's probe into Amazon had gone dormant.

But while the timing of the probe announced Thursday by Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, may have been a surprise, the Commission's interest in the topic is certainly not. A series of high-profile bust-ups in recent years over e-book pricing have drawn the attention of regulators. And at the heart of this dispute is a simple question that has big ramifications for the future of digital publishing.

Who should set the price of e-books: the publishers or Amazon?