The Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against Amazon alleging anti-competitive practices is largely full of things we already generally know: higher prices, pressure to use Amazon’s services, and so on. But then we get to a sea of revisions and the mysterious “Project Nessie.” What is it, and could it be as troubling as the unedited sections make it seem?
The project, product, or process is referenced more than a dozen times in the FTC complaint. It’s one of those situations where the revisions might make it seem scarier than it actually is.
probably.
The first reference comes on page 6:
Amazon has too [redacted] Through a [redacted] An operation called “Project Nessie”. [redacted] The Nessie project has already been extracted from Amazon [redacted] Of American families.
What does he extract? money? Data? Something measurable, otherwise the document wouldn’t say “finished.” While I wouldn’t put it past Amazon, the context doesn’t refer to anything physical or private, like video or biometrics.
Amazon blog post From 2018 Spotted by GeekWire He describes Nessie as “a system used to monitor spikes or trends on Amazon.com.” However, much of the timeline in the lawsuit has occurred since then, so this definition (such as it is) may not be accurate, if it ever was.
Then, on page 11, among discussions of “counter-adversary” tactics, we have:
Amazon has considered Project Nessie [redacted]: I have given birth to more than one [redacted] In Amazon’s excess profit.
In addition to imposing excessive fees on its customers…
So Nisei leads to profit, but not necessarily directly, although the last sentence suggests this.
A little proofreading: A previous sentence describes Nessie as “[redacted] “Algorithm”, where the dark text is no more than five or six characters long (note the “a” and not the “an”). Price? Profit? Sales? “Search” would also be appropriate.
The last Nessie reference in the lawsuit is the entirety of Section 7, which is four pages devoted solely to the Nessie project.
The Nessie project is an algorithm [redacted]. Realizing that this scheme belies his public claim that he “seeks[s] “To be the most customer-centric company on Earth.” [redacted].
How painful. He later refers to “Part VI.A.3 above” in the middle of a revised paragraph; The section is about how Amazon “maintains its monopolies by suppressing price competition using its first-party anti-discount algorithm.”
Amazon understands the importance of conservation Imagine Its prices are lower than competitors. But behind closed doors, Amazon executives are active [redacted].
instead of, [redacted] “Prices will rise.”
Unfortunately, the rest has almost completely disappeared, as you can see:
So what should we do with this mysterious Nessie project? It is their top-secret internal algorithm and associated processes that make them make so much money, most likely via price manipulation or research.
Are these small, seemingly arbitrary price changes we see on items – up a few cents today, down a few cents tomorrow – a Nessie project in progress, raising or lowering the price as needed based on the vast amount of sales data they have access to to? This seems the most likely explanation, and being able to dictate price based on what the customer is likely to pay would be highly profitable and fits the description of “misleading” the customer-first narrative.
Or could it be that this search — which we know Amazon heavily manipulates to favor some sellers — is also being modified in some unknown way? It can also be something else entirely, or more obscure or technical.
One thing’s for sure: Amazon doesn’t like to talk about it. (I have contacted the company for comment and have not yet received a response.)
Will we find out what it is? It seems unlikely that this lawsuit and the entire trial won’t shed at least a little light on it.
But we may know that sooner than that. Of course, Amazon has the right to request that confidential information be redacted from a public document. But the company must soon submit documents justifying its numerous and wide-ranging revisions, which will be evaluated and removed if found deficient. So, we’ll likely learn more about Project Nessie, whatever type it may be, in a few weeks.