Senator Calls for Amazon’s Breakup

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for the breakup of Amazon (Seattle) after Reuters discovered the company created knock-off products and manipulated product searches in India, The Hill reports.

Responding to the Reuters report on Twitter, Warren said it shows “what we feared about Amazon’s monopoly power – that the company is willing and able to rig its platform to benefit its bottom line while stiffing small businesses and entrepreneurs. This is one of the many reasons we need to break it up.”

The scheme came to light after Reuters obtained internal emails and strategy-related documents from Amazon showing that its private-brands team in India created the knockoff goods, offered them on Amazon.in, and rigged the search algorithm so the copied products would show up in the first two or three results. While the company’s policy prohibits such campaigns, former CEO Jeff Bezos testified before Congress last year saying he could not guarantee that Amazon has adhered to the policy.

Read more at The Hill.