Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen Alejandro86 for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, Nov. 3, according to a document disclosed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Amazon earned more than $1 billion through a secret algorithm called Project Nessie (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 7.32 billion yuan).

FTC filed a lawsuit in September, but did not disclose details. The US District Court in Seattle released details of the lawsuit on Thursday, saying that Amazon had secretly developed the Project Nessie algorithm to identify products that other ecommerce platforms would follow if Amazon raised prices.

Amazon began testing the Nessie algorithm as early as 2010 to observe the follow-up of other e-commerce platforms after raising product prices, according to the lawsuit.

The document also shows that Amazon will suspend the algorithm during the Prime Day promotion or during the Christmas shopping season, mainly because consumers will pay attention to the prices of products on multiple platforms during this period and may find something fishy.

Amazon will restart the Nessie algorithm after the event and expand the scope of its products to make up for the decline in profits during e-commerce promotions.

The lawsuit documents show that Amazon has raised prices for more than 8 million items worth nearly $194 million since April 2018, but was suspended in 2019.

Doug Herrington, an Amazon retail executive, asked how to use "old friend Nessie" in January 2022, with some new positioning logic "to boost Amazon retail profits."

FTC's indictment also accused Amazon of trying to conceal information about operations from antitrust law enforcement officials by using the "burn after reading" feature of the Signal messaging app, and said the company destroyed communications between June 2019 and early 2022.

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