In partnership with
TODAY’S MAZE
Happy Monday! Just before Xmas, China's regulatory landscape for e-commerce just shifted dramatically. New finalized rules mandate transparency and directly ban the use of consumer data for setting differentiated prices on major online platforms.
This compliance mandate forces platforms to overhaul their pricing algorithms, protecting smaller sellers and shifting focus away from aggressive price wars. Will these regulations stabilize merchant margins or just push data collection practices further underground?
In today’s MarketMaze:
China targets pricing algorithms
Google Sues Scraper, Ignores Its Own AI
Tesla Robotaxi fleet scales
In today’s MarketMaze focus:
Amazon Business shifts sales focus
FedEx grounding causes cost shock
Google faces EU AI probe
+Handpicked recent news you need to know
LET’S ENTER THE MAZE!
- Artur Stańczuk, MarketMaze Founder
MAZE STORY
The Maze: China’s top regulators finalized sweeping rules targeting opaque pricing practices across the platform economy, forcing major compliance changes for large e-commerce providers by April 2026. These regulations mandate specific disclosures and directly prohibit using consumer data to set different prices for the same goods without user knowledge.
Article 15 of the new rules bans platforms from using data on consumer willingness, ability to pay, or consumption habits to set different prices for the same product, strengthening compliance with the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL).
Platforms must stop coercing merchants to reduce prices through punitive measures like restricting traffic, reducing subsidies, or degrading algorithms, which protects smaller sellers’ operating conditions.
Any additions or changes to merchant fees require prominent homepage disclosure and a minimum seven-day public comment period before platforms implement material fee changes.
Why it matters: These regulations create immediate needs for ecommerce teams to audit existing pricing algorithms and transparency systems to ensure PIPL compliance before the April deadline. Limiting platforms' coercive power allows merchants to stabilize margins and shift focus from aggressive price wars to long-term value creation and customer retention.
FROM OUR PARTNERS
Attention is scarce. Learn how to earn it.
Every leader faces the same challenge: getting people to actually absorb what you're saying - in a world of overflowing inboxes, half-read Slacks, and meetings about meetings.
Smart Brevity is the methodology Axios HQ built to solve this. It's a system for communicating with clarity, respect, and precision — whether you're writing to your board, your team, or your entire organization.
Join our free 60-minute Open House to learn how it works and see it in action.
Runs monthly - grab a spot that works for you.
DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Europe is not converging on one payment behavior, it is fragmenting. Cash still accounts for 52% of POS payments, cards sit at 39%, and mobile at 6%, but national differences are massive. The average hides two very different Europes.
In 2024, cash usage hovered near 25% in the Netherlands and Finland, while Slovenia and Malta stayed close to two thirds, driven by habit and merchant setup.
Cards dominate daily spend in Northern Europe, while mobile payments already exceed 10% in markets with strong wallet and terminal adoption.
Payments are cultural infrastructure. Defaults that feel frictionless in Amsterdam can feel broken in Rome.
Why it matters: Checkout is not universal plumbing. Ecommerce UX must localize by country or it silently leaks conversion and trust at scale.
FROM OUR PARTNERS
Banish bad ads for good
Google AdSense's Auto ads lets you designate ad-free zones, giving you full control over your site’s layout and ensuring a seamless experience for your visitors. You decide what matters to your users and maintain your site's aesthetic. Google AdSense helps you balance earning with user experience, making it the better way to earn.
MAZE STORY
The Maze: Google filed a lawsuit accusing SerpApi of violating the DMCA by circumventing SearchGuard to scrape licensed content from search results, yet the action highlights Google’s ongoing contradiction as it extracts massive amounts of publisher content to train its own AI models. The complaint seeks statutory damages and an injunction that could fundamentally disrupt the SERP data industry.
SerpApi’s automated query volume increased by up to 25,000% over the last two years, creating astronomical potential liability given the statutory damage range of $200 to $2,500 per violation.
The complaint alleges SerpApi bypassed SearchGuard by creating fake browsers and misrepresenting device information, even as Google faces a Penske Media Corporation antitrust lawsuit for coercing publishers into providing unpaid content for its AI systems.
This aggressive protection of licensed content contrasts sharply with Google's broader operations, where it now tends to scrape 15 pages for every one visitor sent to original publishers, according to recent Cloudflare data.
Why it matters: If the court affirms SearchGuard as a DMCA-protected measure, it makes monitoring competitor pricing and rank tracking extremely costly for ecommerce teams relying on external SERP APIs. Operators must diversify data collection strategies because Google’s monopoly power allows it to control access to essential competitive intelligence while continuing to profit from unpaid publisher content.
DATA TREASURE
The Maze: Parcel market share is an operations scoreboard. Royal Mail remains the UK volume leader and is regaining share by fixing reliability, expanding out of home delivery, and restoring trust. Logistics performance, not branding, decides winners.
Royal Mail fell from 38% share in 2013 to 25% in 2022, then stabilized as strikes eased, profits returned, and OOH networks expanded to ~24,000 points.
Amazon plateaued around 15–17% after rapid growth, while scale alliances like Evri and DHL reshape the race for second place.
InPost jumped to ~8% share after acquiring Yodel, combining lockers with home delivery to unlock density and lower last mile costs.
Why it matters: Ecommerce promises are only as strong as delivery. In mature markets, the best network wins more than the best pricing.
MAZE STORY
The Maze: Tesla drastically scaled its California “Robotaxi” fleet, registering 1,655 vehicles and 798 human drivers in just months, positioning the company as a logistical contender, even while relying on supervised Full Self-Driving technology. This aggressive ramp-up contrasts with rivals like Waymo, which recently stalled during a San Francisco power outage, highlighting different technology approaches in the autonomous vehicle race.
Registered vehicles now significantly exceed the 28 cars and 128 drivers used when the service launched in August, although competitor Waymo maintains a registered fleet of 1,955 vehicles in California.
Despite rapid growth, user reports of wait times spanning 10 to 40 minutes reveal inventory shortages during peak commuting hours, prompting Tesla to recruit factory workers for driving roles.
The fleet operates under a basic transportation permit, requiring human safety operators and contrasting with rival Waymo, which previously recalled software for over 1,200 cars after collisions with gates or chains.
Why it matters: The race to scale autonomous fleets will fundamentally reshape last-mile delivery economics by potentially eliminating high driver costs, forcing logistics operators to accelerate their own automation timelines. Executives should monitor Tesla’s data-centric approach against Waymo’s mapping system, as the dominant technology will define the efficiency and resilience of future large-scale delivery networks.
BRIEFING
🏬 Everything else in Ecommerce
🇪🇺 New EU regulations are forcing fashion brands and their logistics partners to urgently address a 'data deficit' to provide mandated sustainability transparency (CSRD, EPR, DPP) across the supply chain.
🇺🇸 Job seekers are facing the 'Great Frustration' of slow hiring, widespread ghosting, and increasing difficulty passing AI résumé filters, complicating workforce planning for operators heading into 2026.
🇺🇸 Google, Apple, Microsoft, and ServiceNow advised visa-holding employees against international travel due to a new US social media vetting regulation that triggers processing delays stretching up to a year.
🇬🇧 Major UK retailers like Asda, Lidl, and Morrisons were forced to source branded turkeys from mainland Europe to maintain Christmas supply after avian flu severely curtailed domestic production.
🇺🇸 The coupon platform Honey was accused in an investigation of systematically leaking private discount codes from small businesses and improperly collecting data from minors.
🇮🇳 Value fashion chains in India have more than doubled their physical store count over five years, signaling robust growth in the discount retail segment and reshaping high streets.
🇺🇸 Nike CEO Elliott Hill launched a 'win now' strategy involving leadership restructuring, price hikes, and mending wholesale partnerships to reverse the sportswear giant's recent decline.
🌍 Google’s December core update triggered severe ranking volatility and an immediate collapse in Discover traffic for many news sites and publishers right before the holiday season.
🌍 Impact.com integrated with Evertune to introduce an AI Brand Monitoring feature, enabling performance marketers to measure and optimize brand visibility across LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini.
🌍 The embedded finance playbook is shifting towards aggressive integration and scaling through acquisitions, driven by AI and real-time payments accelerating the convergence of financial functionality.
SHARE THE MAZE
Your network thinks you’re as smart as the content you share. Share smarter stuff and help us grow. Win–win. Here’s what you get when friends join the Maze:
Here is your unique referral link to share with friends:
and link to the hub to check your progress.
THAT’S IT FOR TODAY!
You’re the reason our team spends hundreds of hours every week researching and writing this email. Please let us know what you thought of today’s email to help us create better emails for you.
What do you think of this issue?
If you enjoyed it please share it with a friend, or share it on LinkedIn and tag me (Artur Stańczuk), I’d love to engage and amplify!
If this was forwarded by a friend you can subscribe below for $0 👇
See you next time in the maze!
MarketMaze team
