One of Amazon’s first-ever employees, who was part of the founding team that set up the company in 1994, has said he supports the idea of splitting the company up.
“There’s clearly a public good to have something that functions like the Amazon Marketplace,” he said.
“If this didn’t exist, you’d want it to be built. What’s not valuable, and what’s not good is that the company that operates the marketplace is also a retailer. They have complete access to every single piece of data and can use that to shape their own retail marketplace.”
It comes after allegations that the multinational technology company is exploiting some merchants by using data from its third-party sellers to identify which products are best sellers and then selling those brands itself or creating its own private label products through similar means.
“They’re not breaking any agreements. They’re just violating what most people would assume was how this is going to work: ‘I sell stuff though your system [and] you’re not going to steal our sales,'” Davis said.
The report included more than 60 interviews with current and former employees, sellers, suppliers, and consultants who alleged that the retailer “squeezes” businesses for more money and punishes them if their items are available for even a “penny less elsewhere.”
“For nearly two decades, Amazon has used its control of its marketplace to strengthen its own hand as a retailer. This should not be allowed to continue,” he wrote.
“Today’s big tech companies have too much power—too much power over our economy, our society and our democracy. They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation.”
“I want to make sure that the next generation of great American tech companies can flourish. To do that, we need to stop this generation of big tech companies from throwing around their political power to shape the rules in their favor and throwing around their economic power to snuff out or buy up every potential competitor,” she added.
Like most retailers, Amazon monitors overall sales. Amazon provides information about the popularity of each product they have in stores for everyone to see.
The Epoch Times reached out to Amazon for comment and received the following reply:
“Sellers are responsible for nearly 60% of sales in our stores. They are incredibly important to us and our customers and we invest billions of dollars—from infrastructure to tools, services, and features—to help them succeed. Amazon only succeeds when sellers succeed and claims to the contrary are wrong. Sellers have full control of their business and make the decisions that are best for them, including the products they choose to sell, pricing, and how they choose to fulfill orders.”
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