https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/02/unredacted-ftc-suit-shows-project-nessie-price-raising-algorithm-made-amazon-1-4b/
The mysterious and highly redacted "Project Nessie" seen in FTC antitrust allegations has been revealed to be exactly what we thought it was.
No, the government gets a couple million in fines and Amazon raises their prices to compensate for the next quarter but never lowers the cost so they'll make even more the quarter after.
These kinds of crimes should come with a fine that's 10x what they profited. Then even they manage to hide some of the profit, it's still gonna hurt.
And jail time as well as taking their personal wealth. Or throw them in the middle of the Atlantic, both options are valid.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Unfortunately, when the lawsuit was filed, it was full of redactions, and Nessie was clearly the biggest risk, with every mention and entire pages of the section dedicated to it blocked by black bars.
But the process in court is that these redactions must be first honored and then defended — and clearly the argument of public interest won out over Amazon’s preference.
And so the newly unredacted lawsuit is sporting far fewer stripes, though the occasional proprietary or internal figure is still blocked out.
And if it was strictly about preventing “unsustainable” low prices, it doesn’t make sense that it would only target retailers that would match Amazon’s markups.
That it was “scrapped” is also questionable, since in 2022 the CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores Doug Herrington suggested turning on “our old friend Nessie, perhaps with some new targeting logic” to boost retail profits.
They may, however, have more detailed refutations in store in their own court filings, though on this matter of Nessie, they may well decide that discretion is the better part of public opinion.
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Anti-trust means opposing monopoly, i assume you mean anti-competitive. And one company making price changes for their own prices is not anti-competitive, especially when its price increases. Thats encouraging competition. Competition is other companies aiming to sell to you for better quality or cheaper prices, and Amazon going up in price just gives competitors more opportunity to outdo them on price. That theyre taking the opportunity to raise their own prices isnt on Amazon in any way, unless it was a concerted price gouging scheme.
Amazon owns both the product and the platform. They often are involved in the delivery of the products as well. This gives them quite a bit of control over other companies selling on their platform. They can push whatever product they like to the top of the page. They can copy other products and push the original to the last page of results, and then drop their price until the other company can't compete, and then raise their prices.
They have a lot of control which allows them to be anti competitive. And allegedly they use that
Price fixing, whether explicit or implied from conduct, is absolutely something anti-trust regulations were designed to prevent.