Everything Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just said to Congress in 13 minutes

more than a million sellers and so i'm sure that there have been stolen goods really sold on amazon really mr b i'm sorry there's not you don't believe that there is that surprises me no i just that i'm with over a million sellers i'm sure that it has happened um i will tell you a former amazon employee in third party sales and recruitment told this committee quote there's a rule but there's nobody enforcing or spot checking they just say don't help yourself to the data it's a candy shop everyone can have access to anything they want do category managers have access to non-public data about third-party products and businesses uh i here's what i can tell you um that we do have certain safeguards in place we train people on the policy we expect people to follow that policy the same way we would any other it's a voluntary policy as far as i'm aware no other retailers so there's no action at all there's no actual enforcement there's no actual enforcement of that policy so it's voluntary and there's no actual enforcement so maybe that answers sorry no i think i think i may have misspoke i'm trying to say that the amazons the fact that we have such a policy is voluntary i think no other retailer even has such a policy well that's enforcement of that policy we would treat that like any internal policy and if we found that someone violated it we would take action against them you have access to data that your competitors do not have so you might allow third-party sellers onto your platform but if you're continuously monitoring the data to make sure that they're never going to get big enough that they can compete with you that is actually the concern that the committee has and you know i think your company started in my district i want to thank you for that i want to thank you for the work that you've done and say that the whole goal of this committee's work is to make sure that there are more amazons that there are more apples that there are more companies that get to innovate and small businesses get to thrive and that is what we're trying to get at that is why we need to regulate these marketplaces so that no company has a platform so dominant that it is essentially a monopoly thank you mr chairman we heard from a small apparel company that makes themselves what they call useful apparel for people who work on their feet and with their hands like construction workers and firefighters this particular business discovered and started selling a unique item that had been never been a top seller for the brand they were making about sixty thousand dollars a year on just this one item one day they woke up and found that amazon had started listing the exact same product causing their sales to go to zero overnight amazon had undercut their price setting it below what the manufacturer would generally allow it to be sold so that even if they wanted to they couldn't match the price here's how the apparel company described working with amazon and i quote amazon strings you along for a while because it feels so good to get that paycheck every week and in the past for lack of a better term we called it amazon heroin because you just kept going and you had to get your next fix your next check but at the end of the day you find out that this person who was seemingly benefiting you making you feel good was just ultimately going to be your downfall end quote so mr bezos this is one of your partners why on earth would they compare your company to a drug dealer sir i have great respect for you in this committee but i completely disagree with that characterization what we have done is create uh in the store a place if you go back in time we sold only our own inventory it was a very controversial decision inside the company to invite third-party sellers to come into what is really our most valuable retail real estate our product detail pages we did that because we were convinced that it would be better for the consumer it would be better for them to have all of that selection and i think we were right yeah and i think it's worked out well we're claiming my time unfortunately this is one of them i'm claiming my time mr bezos this is one of many small companies that have told us during this year-long investigation that they were mistreated abused and tossed aside by amazon the evidence we've collected shows that amazon is only interested in exploiting its monopoly power over the e-commerce marketplace to further expand and protect this power this investigation makes clear that amazon's dual role as a platform operator and competing seller on that platform is fundamentally anti-competitive and congress must take action mr basils are are stolen goods sold on amazon congresswoman not to my knowledge although you know this were more they're more than a million sellers and so i'm sure that there have been stolen goods really sold on amazon really mr babe i'm sorry there's not you don't believe that there is that surprises me no i just said i'm with over a million sellers i'm sure that it has happened um but certainly i don't think it's a large part of what we're selling okay so mr bazel's basically then you're saying yes i guess so mr basil thank you thank you so much you said that sellers have many other attractive options to reach customers but that's not at all what we found in our investigation according to emarketer a source amazon cited in submissions to this committee amazon has nearly seven times the market share of its closest e-commerce competitor one seller told us that and i quote amazon continues to be the only show in town no matter how angry sellers get they have nowhere else to go so are you saying that these people aren't being truthful when they say that amazon is the only game in town yeah congresswoman with great respect i i do disagree with that i believe that there are a lot of options uh and some of them are not even listed on that chart i just looked at it briefly but i didn't see uh some that i know of for example so i think there are a lot of things thank you all my time is short if amazon didn't have monopoly power over these sellers do you think they would choose to stay in a relationship that's characterized by bullying fear and panic with all respect congresswoman i i i do not accept the premise of your question that is not how we operate the business and in fact we we work very hard to provide fantastic tools for sellers and that's why they've been successful thank you for that do you believe that the chinese government steals technology from us companies mr bezos you're on mute mr bezos i believe you're on mute i'm sorry i've seen i have heard many reports of that and i i haven't seen it personally but i've heard many reports of it so of all the different products that amazon carries you haven't seen that in any of the the companies that sell products on amazon or your company yourself oh well certainly there are uh knockoff products if that's what you mean and there are counterfeit products and all of that but the chinese if the answer is the chinese government stealing technology that's the thing i've read reports of uh and but don't have uh personal experience with amazon is a trillion dollar company but amazon customers are not guaranteed that the products purchased on your platform are authentic amazon acts like it's not responsible for counterfeits being sold by third-party sellers on its platform and we've heard that amazon puts the burden and cost on brand owners to police amazon's site even though amazon makes money when a counterfeit good is sold on its site more than half of amazon's sales come from third-party seller accounts why isn't amazon more aggressive in ensuring that counterfeit goods are not sold on its platform and why isn't amazon responsible for keeping all counterfeit products off of its platform i think this is an incredibly important issue and one that we work very hard on counterfeits are a scourge they are a problem that is not uh does not help us earn trust with customers it's bad for customers it's bad for honest third-party sellers we do a lot to prevent counterfeiting we have a team of more than a thousand people that does this we invest hundreds of millions of dollars in systems that do this we have something called project xero which helps brands serialize uh individual products which really helps with counterfeiting we have i'm glad that you're playing with those as well i'm glad that you have those features in place but why isn't amazon responsible for keeping all counterfeit products off of its platform we certainly work to do so uh congressman and we and we do so not just for our own retail products but for third-party products as well so mr bezos does amazon use confidential information that companies share via aws to build competing services uh no sir not that i'm aware of uh aws does often you know they do keep expanding their services aws started uh you know what 15 years ago we invented this entire category let me just clarify that mr bezos uh i appreciate that sorry i don't apologize for interrupting but um last week one of amazon's former engineers posted online that he and his team quote proactively identified growing businesses on aws that they built competing products and that they targeted those products to the businesses customers and there's been public reporting on that strategy so i guess i wonder if you can comment on that and how you would account for uh for those statements well i think um there may be categories i know some databases of different kinds and so on where we see that it's an important product for customers and we make our own product offering in that arena and but it doesn't mean we stop servicing the uh the other companies that are also making those products we have competitors using aws and we work very hard to make them successful netflix is one example hulu is another and so on your own documents make clear that the price war against diapers.com worked and within a few months it was struggling and so then amazon bought it after buying your leading competitor here amazon cut promotions like amazon.mom and the steep discounts it used to lure customers away from diapers.com and then increase the prices of diapers for new moms and dads mr bezos did you personally sign off on the plan to raise prices after amazon limited its competition i don't remember uh that at all um what i remember is that we we we matched competitive prizes and we i believe we followed diapers.com again this is 11 years ago so you're asking a lot of my memory but i believe we followed diapers.com i can also tell you after we bought diapers.com okay we put just more than 300 million dollars sorry um so you said that amazon focuses excessively on customers so how would customers especially single moms new families how would they benefit when the prices were driven up by the fact that you eliminated your main competitor well i don't agree with great respect i don't agree with the premise uh at the same time you should recognize in context diapers is a very large uh product category sold in many many places not just at amazon online diaper marketing we do have um the evidence we've collected suggests that the predatory practices weren't unique here in 2013 it was reported that you instructed amazon employees to approach discussions with certain business partners and i quote the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle is the gazelle project still in place and does amazon pursue similar predatory campaigns in other parts of its business i i i cannot uh comment on that because i don't remember it uh what i can tell you is that we are very very focused on the customer as you started and of course i'm sorry mr bezos so i'm almost out of time i'm concerned too because especially with the current pandemic one of the biggest needs i'm seeing at the food drives and the giveaways that we're having to run in my district is that families um don't have diapers and we have to collect them to give them out so it certainly is something that uh has a really hard impact on families and i'm really concerned that pricing might have been driven up here by this tactic and i yield back

Channel: CNET

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Keywords: CNET, Technology, News, Tech, vs, smartphone, phone, iphone, big tech ceo, big tech ceo hearing, congress, government, live stream, house judiciary, house judiciary committee, congressional testimony, testimony, google, highlights, supercut, jeff bezos, amazon, amazon ceo, jeff bezos congress, jeff bezos testimony, jeff bezos congressional hearing

Id: F4-Ke0PDmKU

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020