Sen Eliz Warren Urges Amazon Breakup- Copied Products, Rigged Results India: Reuters Investigation

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- Senator Elizabeth Warren called for a break-up of Amazon after a Reuters investigation showed the e-commerce giant had copied products and rigged search results in India. Reuters, Oct. 14, 2021.
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- Amazon Copied Products & Rigged Search Results To Promote Its Own Brands, Documents Show, Oct. 13, 2021.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/
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- U.S. Senator Warren Urges Amazon Breakup, India Retailers Want Probe After Reuters Story, Oct. 15, 2021.
https://www.reuters.com/business/us-senator-warren-urges-amazon-breakup-india-retailers-want-probe-after-reuters-2021-10-14/

.. - INDIA RETAILERS, START-UPS CONCERNED: In sworn testimony before the subcommittee last year, Amazon founder Bezos said the company prohibits its employees from using data on individual sellers to help its private-label business. In 2019 another Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favour them.

The Amazon documents reviewed by Reuters showed how the company's private-brands team in India secretly exploited internal data from its India unit to copy products sold by other companies, then offered them on its platform. The company promoted sales of its private brands like AmazonBasics by rigging search results on its platform in India so that its products would appear, as one 2016 strategy report put it, “in the first 2 or three … search results.”...
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- Cheat 'em to beat 'em: Amazon India caught rigging the game against successful retailers. Amazon India's found stealing designs and artificially boosting its visibility in search results. Techspot, 10/17/21.
https://www.techspot.com/news/91787-amazon-india-brand-team-steals-designs-artificially-boosts.html

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1. Video Report:

- Amazon copied products and rigged search results; anti-competitive practices under scrutiny.

Thousands of pages of internal Amazon documents examined by Reuters – including emails, strategy papers and business plans – show the company ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoffs and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines in India, one of the company's largest growth markets. Reuters, Oct. 13, 2021.