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Report: Amazon Internal Documents Show Company Copied Popular Products, Rigged Search Results
A recent report claims that internal Amazon documents show that the company created knockoff items and manipulated search results to promote its own product lines in India.
Reuters reports that according to internal documents, e-commerce giant Amazon has been developing knockoff products and manipulating search results to promote its own product lines. Reuters reports that the documents show that Amazon’s private-brands team in India exploited internal data obtained from its marketplace in the country to identify popular products sold by other companies and then create copies to compete against them.
Jeff Bezos India speech (Amazon/YouTube)
AURORA, CO – MAY 03: A worker moves packed boxes at the Amazon fullfillment center May 3, 2018 in Aurora, Colorado. The million square foot facility, employing 1,000 fulltime employees, has over 2 million products ready to ship to customers globally. (Photo by Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images)
The private-brand team also reportedly altered Amazon’s search results so that Amazon-owned brands would appear “in the first 2 or three … search results” according to a strategy report from 2016. Some of the brands that were copied including the popular shirt brand John Miller, which is owned by a company whose CEO Kishore Biyani is known as India’s “retail king.”
Amazon reportedly chose to “follow the measurements” of John Miller shirts down to the exact neck circumference and sleeve length, essentially creating Amazon-branded copies.
Internal documents show that Amazon employees studied proprietary data from other brands on Amazon.in with the aim of identifying and targeting goods that could be used as a “reference” or “benchmark” products that Amazon could “replicate.”
This is far from the first time Amazon has been accused of similar practices. In 2020, Breitbart News reported that the e-commerce giant set up meetings with startup firms to discuss their products with the pretense of potentially investing in the companies, only later to launch competing products in similar markets.
In April of 2020 Amazon was accused of doing exactly what the latest documents from Reuters appear to show, that the company was using data and sales figures to target products sold by third parties and then creating their own versions.
Read more at Reuters here.
The richest Americans became 40% richer during the pandemic
The Forbes 400 – who have each accumulated at least $2.9bn – added $4.5tn to their wealth
The 400 richest Americans added $4.5tn to their wealth last year, a 40% rise, even as the pandemic shuttered large parts of the US, according to Forbes magazine’s latest tally of the country’s richest people.
The Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, retained top spot for a fourth consecutive year with a net worth of $201bn, followed by Elon Musk of Tesla and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, with net worths of $190.5bn and $134.5bn respectively.
The ranks of the super rich were swollen by 44 newcomers, the highest number since 2007, among them Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, bitcoin billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Noubar Afeyan, co-founder of the Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna.
Miriam Adelson, wife of the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, was the richest newcomer, with $30.4bn. The youngest newcomer was the 29-year-old cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, the second-richest new entrant, with an estimated $22.5bn.
To make the list, people now have to have a minimum net worth of $2.9bn, up $800m from a year ago.
The pandemic initially triggered a record-setting wave of layoffs. The job market has recovered significantly but the economic impact of the coronavirus is still shaking large parts of the US economy. States are bracing for an avalanche of evictions after the expiration of federal protections.
Stock markets and property prices have continued to soar, trends that have disproportionately padded the wealth of the richest.
“Despite the uncertainty and the ever-changing market economy, the 2021 Forbes 400 shows that America’s wealthiest have grown far richer,” said Kerry Dolan, assistant managing editor, wealth at Forbes.
But not all of the wealthy have had a good pandemic. Former president Donald Trump has dropped off the Forbes 400 for the first time. Trump’s estimated $2.5bn fortune is $400m short of this year’s cutoff, according to Forbes.
The magazine calculates that the pandemic hit to Trump’s portfolio of big-city properties shrank his fortune by $600m. Trump had an opportunity to offload those assets at the start of his presidency.
“If Trump is looking for someone to blame, he can start with himself,” said Forbes.
Richest 25 Americans reportedly paid ‘true tax rate’ of 3.4% as wealth rocketed
ProPublica investigation shows how little US super-rich, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, reportedly paid between 2014 and 2018
The 25 richest Americans, including Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Elon Musk, paid a “true tax rate” of just 3.4% between 2014 and 2018, according to an investigation by ProPublica, despite their collective net worth rising by more than $400bn in the same period.
The report by the non-profit news organization exposes the US tax system as income and wealth inequality continues to widen.
ProPublica used Internal Revenue Service data to dive into the tax returns of some of America’s wealthiest and most prominent people. It found that in 2007 Bezos, the founder of Amazon and already a billionaire, paid no federal taxes. In 2011, when he had a net worth of $18bn, he was again able to pay no federal taxes – and even received a $4,000 tax credit for his children.
Last year, Bezos’s net worth topped $200bn.
ProPublica created what it called a “true tax rate” for the wealthiest 25 Americans by comparing federal income tax paid between 2014 and 2018 to how their net worth increased on Forbes’ well-regarded rich list over the same period.
“The results are stark,” ProPublica wrote. “According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401bn from 2014 to 2018.
“They paid a total of $13.6bn in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.”
By contrast, the median American household paid 14% in federal taxes, ProPublica reported. The top income tax rate is 37% on incomes over $523,600 for single filers, having been reduced from 39.6% under Donald Trump.
ProPublica found that Buffett, founder of the investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, paid $23.7m in taxes from 2014 to 2018, on a total reported income of $125m. But Buffett’s wealth grew by $24.3bn, meaning he had a “true tax rate” of 0.1%.
Bezos’s wealth grew by $99bn over the four-year period, but he paid a true tax rate of 0.98%, according to ProPublica. Musk and Michael Bloomberg paid 3.27% and 1.3% respectively.
The billionaires are not accused of illegal activity. But the rates expose the failures of America’s tax laws to levy increases in wealth derived from assets in the way wages – the prime source of income for most Americans – are taxed.
“America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people,” ProPublica reported. “Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by US laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.”
ProPublica did not not disclose how it had obtained the IRS information. It said reporters had spent months analyzing the data and would release more reports.
Bezos, the richest person in the world, “declined to receive questions”, ProPublica said.
Musk, who Forbes estimates is worth $151bn, had first replied to a query “with a lone punctuation mark: ‘?’”, ProPublica said, adding that he had not replied to further queries.
Bloomberg, who according to Forbes has a net worth of $59bn, told ProPublica he had paid the taxes he owed. A spokesman cited the billionaire’s philanthropic giving. “Taken together, what Mike gives to charity and pays in taxes amounts to approximately 75% of his annual income,” the spokesman said.
ProPublica said Buffett had defended his practices in an email.
“I continue to believe that the tax code should be changed substantially,” Buffett told ProPublica. He said that “huge dynastic wealth is not desirable for our society”.
Buffett, worth $96bn, has said 99% of his wealth will go to philanthropy “during my lifetime or at death”. In 2020, he donated about $2.9bn in Berkshire Hathaway stock to five charities, CNBC reported.
“I believe the money will be of more use to society if disbursed philanthropically than if it is used to slightly reduce an ever-increasing US debt,” Buffett said.
Joe Biden has proposed raising the top rate of income tax and increasing capital gains tax, though that would probably have little effect on the true tax rate paid by billionaires. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have pushed a “wealth tax” that would introduce a 3% tax on the net worth of the ultra rich. There seems little hope it will pass into law.
At least some of America’s richest people want to better tax wealth. Patriotic Millionaires, a group campaigning to increase taxes on the rich, said the ProPublica report demonstrated “how the richest 400 Americans end up owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined”.
“The ultra-wealthy get to pick and choose when and how they’re taxed,” Patriotic Millionaires said. “This is exactly why we need a strong, unavoidable wealth tax now.”
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