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Amazon spied on its competition for years and that's how we discovered it

Julián Castillo's avatar

By Julian Castillo

Apr 22, 2024, 16:46 PM EDT

Amazon, the e-commerce giant, has been surprised in a corporate espionage network directed towards its closest competitors. An exhaustive investigation carried out by The Wall Street Journal has revealed that for years, Amazon has operated a secret company called Big River Services International.

through her has dedicated himself to selling products on rival platforms such as eBay and Shopify, all with the purpose of obtaining inside information about the internal functioning of said platforms.

Operation Big River Services

The Big River Services International operation has been described as an apparent independent company which sells a wide range of products through e-commerce marketplaces under various brand names.

However, what was not mentioned on their website is that It was actually a subsidiary of Amazon, designed to collect information about your competitors. This clandestine company, born from an internal Amazon project called “Project Curiosity” in 2015, used its sales in different countries to obtain data on prices, logistics and other details of interest about Amazon’s competitors.

Big River Services International’s modus operandi was quite clever. Company employees attended rival seller conferences and met with competitors without revealing their true identity as Amazon employees. They used external email addresses and took extraordinary measures to keep their relationship with Amazon secret., even going to the extent of disseminating printed reports instead of sending them by email. All of this, backed up by an internal crisis management document that provided advice on how to respond should their cover-up be discovered.

Questionable practices

The revelation of these unethical practices has generated a deep stir in the technology and commercial industry.. Amazon, which has always claimed to be customer-obsessed and focused on delivering the best online shopping experience, is now under scrutiny for its questionable tactics to maintain its dominant market position. Although the company has tried to minimize the seriousness of these actions, stating that Benchmarking is a common practice in businessthe magnitude of their corporate espionage cannot be underestimated.

Big River Services International’s strategy, although sophisticated in its execution, raises serious ethical and legal concerns. While it is true that collecting information on competitors is a common practice in the business world, the fact that Amazon has created a covert company to spy on its rivals raises questions about the ethical limits of the business game. Furthermore, these actions could have legal consequences, since Corporate espionage and misappropriation of trade secrets are practices that can result in lawsuits and sanctions.

This scandal also sheds light on the ongoing debate about power and influence of large technology companies like Amazon. As these companies continue to expand their reach and dominance in different sectors of the economy, it is crucial that adequate controls and regulations are put in place to ensure fair and equitable competition in the market. Allegations of anti-competitive behavior and unethical business practices only reinforce the need for greater oversight and transparency in the technology sector.

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