Any kind of intelligence gathering is a natural consequence of size. For companies, it starts at the startup stage with researching target market / competition

Any kind of intelligence gathering is a natural consequence of size. For companies, it starts at the startup stage with researching target market / competition / existing solutions in search of a PMF. Later on companies do more extensive research before launching product lines. At this stage people doing research are still pretty close to the product being launched. As companies get larger, product launch costs and separation between execs and people who do work grows. At this point there is extensive review before execs write the big checks. A lot of times it's outside consulting. At Amazons scale and their quarterly KPI pushing it's not that much of a stretch that they will have a dedicated org which scours internet for any and all intelligence techniques that would give them an edge.