On Wednesday, the world’s richest man, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos traveled (virtually) to Capitol Hill to testify before Congress for the first time, and with the CEOs of Apple, Google and Facebook, answered questions about the anti-competitive nature of their companies. . Behavior.
During the five-hour Q&A session, Bezos faced a wide variety of questions, ranging from Amazon’s debatable use of external vendor knowledge to final eyes on counterfeit products and ongoing negotiations in the company’s media department. I think, as the company’s founder, president and CEO, Bezos would know Amazon better than anyone. However, it turns out that you don’t seem to know much about the day-to-day operations of your own business, at least according to your testimony.
For example, when Rep. Pramila Jayapal asked if Amazon had ever used the knowledge of a third-party seller to create competing products under its own label, Bezos said, “I can’t answer yes or no to that question.
“We have a policy that opposes the vendor’s specific knowledge to help our personal label business,” he added. “But I can’t say for sure that this policy has never been violated.”
Pressed to respond to amazon’s knowledge-appropriate accusations revealed in a Wall Street Journal investigation in April, Bezos said he still knew the details. “We continue to examine this very carefully.”
In a separate exchange with Rep. David Cicilline, Bezos moved away from questions about seller data, rejecting the legislators’ assertions that Amazon’s dual role as a platform operator and distributor on the same platform is fundamentally anti-competitive.
“Isn’t it an inherent clash of interests for Amazon to produce and sell products that compete with third-party vendors, especially when setting game regulations on Amazon?” Cicillin asked in Bezos.
He said, “Consumers ultimately make purchasing decisions, what value to buy and buy.”
Later at the hearing, Rep. Lucy McBath asked Bezos if Amazon had a legal sale of stolen goods on her platform. Again, you may simply give a transparent answer. “Not that I know of, ” said Bezos. “There are more than one million distributors on Amazon. I’m sure the stolen products were sold on Amazon.”
When asked what identity Amazon requests from third-party resellers before allowing them to sell on the site, Bezos didn’t know either. “I think [we require a genuine call and genuine direction]. Let me come back to you later with an express answer,” Bezos told McBath. When asked if Amazon required distributors to have a phone number in their files, Bezos simply replied, “I don’t know.”
Although Bezos is widely known to the public as an Amazon manager, he is not as deeply concerned about the company’s retail business as many other people think. In fact, in addition to Bezos, Amazon has two other CEOs who oversee the company’s two main pillars: Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s retail CEO, and Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
Bezos’ wisdom about Amazon’s new business isn’t much stronger. When asked through Rep. Jamie Raskin about Amazon’s ongoing negotiations with AT-T on whether to make its new streaming service, HBO Max, available on Amazon Fire devices, Bezos said he “didn’t know the main points of those negotiations.”
“You can at least see foreigners who would look like a structural clash of interests,” Raskin explained why the negotiation is in the public interest, “as if he were using people’s access to living rooms basically, he uses it. To get leveraged to get the artistic content you want. »
Bezos introduced himself to get the congressman’s data later, “because I’m familiar enough with that.”
“I can just believe that there can be scenarios if we only communicate in the summary where it might be misplaced and scenarios where it would be a very general and very appropriate matter,” he said vaguely.
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