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The problem is not the practice itself; it's that Amazon representatives told Congress they did not do it. They lied, that's the problem. If they had said yes,

The problem is not the practice itself; it's that Amazon representatives told Congress they did not do it. They lied, that's the problem. If they had said yes, we do indeed analyze what is happening in our marketplace to decide which products to launch, they wouldn't have gotten this letter.

dehrmann 5y ago
Are the quibbling over where Amazon looks at individual seller data or aggregated per-SKU data?
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Are the quibbling over where Amazon looks at individual seller data or aggregated per-SKU data? No. They're "quibbling" over whether Amazon executives perjured themselves. Perjury doesn't have a "but, like, is it really a big deal" test.
  - RHSeeger 5y ago
    Given that nearly every important member of the government that has testified before congress has flat out lied to congress... this seems like selective enforcement. How about going after all the members of the military and intelligence command structures that told blatant lies when testifying.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > nearly every important member of the government that has testified before congress has flat out lied to congress This is rubbish. There is a litany of recent, memorable cases. But they rarely met the legal threshold of contempt of Congress, and in the cases that did, there was seldom political will to prioritise its prosecution. Congress, by design, is a political creature. We don't want the President (DoJ) rounding up people who speak to a co-equal branch of government because he--unilaterally--thinks they might have lied.
  - dehrmann 5y ago
    From the article, > Bezos said the company prohibits its employees from using data on individual sellers to benefit its own private-label product lines. I could see someone hearing that and not realizing that per-SKU aggregation, or even clustered similar products, wouldn't break this rule.
warmfuzzykitten 5y ago
There are other possibilities than "they lied". The most likely explanation is that the branch in India used tactics that were specifically forbidden by corporate policy formulated in the United States, that corporate management was unaware that it took place, and is now plenty embarrassed to hear that it did. It's not necessarily true, by the way, that they wouldn't have gotten flack from Congress if they'd initially testified that they use sales and product data only they possess to find out which third-party products are both profitable and vulnerable to lower-cost competition, use it again to design competing house brands that are identical to the third party products down to the smallest detail, and follow that up by using their website to promote the knockoff products as preferable to the third party products they've ripped off. This is not a standard industry practice and would likely not be defensible as "It's just a house brand, like Safeway Soup. What's the big deal?"

dehrmann 5y ago

Are the quibbling over where Amazon looks at individual seller data or aggregated per-SKU data?

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Are the quibbling over where Amazon looks at individual seller data or aggregated per-SKU data? No. They're "quibbling" over whether Amazon executives perjured themselves. Perjury doesn't have a "but, like, is it really a big deal" test.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  Given that nearly every important member of the government that has testified before congress has flat out lied to congress... this seems like selective enforcement. How about going after all the members of the military and intelligence command structures that told blatant lies when testifying.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > nearly every important member of the government that has testified before congress has flat out lied to congress This is rubbish. There is a litany of recent, memorable cases. But they rarely met the legal threshold of contempt of Congress, and in the cases that did, there was seldom political will to prioritise its prosecution. Congress, by design, is a political creature. We don't want the President (DoJ) rounding up people who speak to a co-equal branch of government because he--unilaterally--thinks they might have lied.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  From the article, > Bezos said the company prohibits its employees from using data on individual sellers to benefit its own private-label product lines. I could see someone hearing that and not realizing that per-SKU aggregation, or even clustered similar products, wouldn't break this rule.

warmfuzzykitten 5y ago

There are other possibilities than "they lied". The most likely explanation is that the branch in India used tactics that were specifically forbidden by corporate policy formulated in the United States, that corporate management was unaware that it took place, and is now plenty embarrassed to hear that it did. It's not necessarily true, by the way, that they wouldn't have gotten flack from Congress if they'd initially testified that they use sales and product data only they possess to find out which third-party products are both profitable and vulnerable to lower-cost competition, use it again to design competing house brands that are identical to the third party products down to the smallest detail, and follow that up by using their website to promote the knockoff products as preferable to the third party products they've ripped off. This is not a standard industry practice and would likely not be defensible as "It's just a house brand, like Safeway Soup. What's the big deal?"