Amazon Executive Compares the Company’s Advertising to Parable of Scorpion and Frog

1. Amazon has (redacted)

229. Amazon (redacted)

230. (Redacted)

231. In theory, relevant advertisements can be useful to shoppers in some instances. Importantly, Amazon (redacted)

232. (Redacted)

233. (Redacted) Another senior Amazon executive reportedly compared Amazon’s advertising and search divisions to the parable of the scorpion and the frog: it was in the advertising division’s nature as the proverbial “scorpion“ to poison organic search results.

234. (Redacted)

235. By flooding its search results page with paid advertisements, Amazon (Redacted)

236. As one Amazon executive explained (Redacted) Moreover, because Amazon’s anti-discounting conduct punishes sellers who offer prices at rival online stores with lower fees, many sellers set their price on Amazon-high fees and all-as the price floor across the internet.

237. (Redacted) According to public reports, Amazon engineers found that "[w]hen sponsored ads were prominently displayed, there was a small, statistically detectable short-term decline in the number of customers who ended up making a purchase." (Redacted) While fewer shoppers were finding what they wanted, advertisements were making more money- "[ a] lot of it."

238. (Redacted) Despite degrading shoppers’ experiences, Amazon continue to have double growth in overall sales, not losing meaningful numbers of shoppers to rivals.

239. (Redacted)

240. Amazon's ability to profitably worsen its service for customers is a hallmark of monopoly power.