Jeff Bezos urged Amazon to flood search results with junk ads, FTC alleges
Publishing timestamp: 2023-11-02 13:21:19
Summary
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has alleged in an unredacted portion of its antitrust lawsuit against Amazon that the company flooded its search results with irrelevant "defect" ads at the direction of Founder Jeff Bezos. This allegedly helped increase Amazon's profits while steering shoppers towards higher-priced goods. The FTC and 17 states originally sued Amazon in September for allegedly using its monopoly power to increase prices and degrade the shopping experience. The newly revealed details in the complaint highlight the impact of Amazon's growing advertising business on shoppers and sellers. The article also mentions that Amazon's ads strategy worsened the shopping experience for users and pushed shoppers towards higher-priced items. The FTC alleges that this strategy not only degraded the platform for shoppers but also for third-party sellers.
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Keywords: politics, technology, business news, microsoft corp, alphabet inc, jeff bezos, environment, social media, amazon.com inc, breaking news: technology, meta platforms inc, products and services, ftc solar inc, breaking news: politics, mobile,