BuzzFeed: “Amazon’s third-party marketplace and its millions of sellers across the world have grown into a billion-dollar sales stream for the company since the marketplace first launched in 2000. But as Amazon sells competing products at significantly lower prices and expands its private-label brands, some of the site’s third-party sellers say the retail giant is squeezing them out. “Sellers are in this ‘frenemy’ position where they’re very dependent on these companies but also competing with them,” Lina Khan, a legal policy director with the nonprofit think tank Open Markets Institute, told BuzzFeed News. Sellers have recently become more worried about Amazon directly competing with them, according to a Feedvisor survey of 1,200 third-party merchants released last month. The Amazon seller consulting agency found that competing with Amazon has become a more pressing concern over the last two years. Amazon competition was sellers’ third-biggest concern last year and rose to be their top concern this year, according to Feedvisor. Merchants told BuzzFeed News they fear that the Seattle-based company uses its marketplace to test sales of new items, and then it sells similar or identical items at a lower price than third-party sellers could offer…”