New Delhi — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Requested the dissolution of Amazon.com Inc., and after a Reuters investigation revealed that an e-commerce giant copied a product in India and tampered with search results, India Retailer demanded an investigation by the company’s government.
NS Reuters report After reviewing thousands of internal Amazon documents, U.S. companies systematically create knockoffs and manipulate search results to boost their private label in one of the company’s largest growth markets, India. I found out that I carried out the campaign.
Wednesday’s report, at least in India, manipulating search results to endorse Amazon’s products, and copying other sellers’ products is part of Amazon’s formal strategy, at least two people. Showed that senior management in India reviewed it.
Reuters’ investigation elicited bipartisan criticism of the Amazon from US lawmakers.
Warren, a longtime critic at Amazon, linked to an article on Twitter and Facebook, saying: Small businesses and entrepreneurs. “
“This is one of the many reasons we need to split it,” she said.
Warren, a prominent Democrat, advocated the dissolution of Amazon and other tech giants when he ran for president in 2019. Since then, as a Massachusetts senator, she has been putting pressure on companies like Amazon.
Ken Buck, a Republican member of the House Anti-Trust Subcommittee, also shared the story on social media: “These documents include tampering with search results and self-priority over competitors for their products. It proves that he is engaged in anti-competitive practices. “
“More worrisome, that’s inconsistent with what Jeff Bezos told Congress,” said Colorado lawmakers. “Amazon and Bezos must be held accountable.”
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on the reaction to the report.
“I believe these claims are virtually incorrect and unfounded,” Amazon said in response to a question to Wednesday’s report. The company did not elaborate. Amazon added that it would display “search results based on relevance to the customer’s search query, regardless of whether such product has a private label offered by the seller.”
Indian retailers, related start-ups
Amazon founder Bezos said in a testimony to a subcommittee last year that employees were banned from using individual seller data to support their branded businesses. In 2019, another Amazon executive testified that the company would not use such data to create its own branded products or modify search results to prioritize them.
Amazon’s documentation, reviewed by Reuters, shows how its Indian brand team secretly used internal data from Indian units to copy products sold by other companies and deliver them on the platform.
The company, as in one of its 2016 strategic reports, by rigging search results on the Indian platform so that the product appears in the “first few … search results”, such as Amazon Basics, etc. Promoted sales of private brands.
A group representing millions of Indian retailers said Thursday that the national government had to launch an Amazon investigation.
“Amazon is putting a huge disadvantage on small manufacturers. They are eating cakes that are not intended for them,” Praveen Khandelwal of the All-Indian Traders Federation told Reuters. The group says it represents 80 million retailers in the country.
Indian retailers claim that foreign e-commerce companies like Amazon and Wal-Mart’s Flipkart are indulging in unfair business practices that hurt small businesses.
The Alliance of Digital India Foundation, a non-profit organization that represents some of India’s largest start-ups, said the practices detailed in Reuters’ report were “very sad” and “honesty in India’s start-up ecosystem.” He questioned “Amazon’s credibility as a start-up company.”
so Blog postThe group urged the Government of India to take action on “Amazon’s predatory playbook of copying, rigging and killing Indian brands.”
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