Thread by @stacyfmitchell

On Friday, the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Jeff Bezos & told him to hand over a huge cache of documents as part of its investigation of monopoly power in digital markets.

It’s a remarkably long list. Here are a few items that stood out to me. 1/

judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrat…

Profit-and-loss statements for 11 Amazon divisions. This will show whether Amazon sells below cost in one division (like Retail) and cross-subsidizes the loses from another division (like AWS). A kind of predatory pricing behavior. 2/

Correspondence related to how Amazon’s search and buy box algorithms account for whether sellers purchase other Amazon services, such as fulfillment. Does Amazon, in effect, make succeeding on the site contingent on buying other services? A kind of tying. 3/

Information on changes in sellers fees. (Fees have risen sharply in recent years, an indication that Amazon has durable market power and that sellers have no place else to go.) 4/

Executive correspondence about negotiations with book publishers, including Hachette. (In 2014, Amazon suspended sales of Hachette titles to strongarm the publisher. Amazon sells nearly 50% of all books in the US — a share that undoubtedly covers monopoly power.) 5/

This is important: Correspondence about Amazon’s recent move to tell some brands that they can only sell on Marketplace (not as vendors) and others that they can only sell as vendors (not on Marketplace). (By dictating this, Amazon can max its margins at the brands’ expense.) 6/

What data does Amazon require smart device makers to share with it as a condition of integrating with Alexa? (Amazon could use this data to launch competing products with a built-in advantage). 7/

This is big: “Spreadsheets, charts, documents, or discussion” tracking data on AWS customers, including their usage of third-party software services. (The issue here is whether Amazon uses this data to develop its own native AWS software that displaces popular third parties.) 8/

This one is interesting: Information on the sharing of data across divisions – data gathered from Alexa-integrated partners used by non-Alexa teams, Marketplace seller data used by non-marketplace teams, etc. 9/

Correspondence related to Amazon’s recruitment of international, unauthorized, and counterfeit sellers. (This is potentially huge b/c the secret is that Amazon benefits from its site being a Wild West — that gives it leverage over brands. Smart that the committee sees this.) 10/’

All communication among top execs about Amazon's acquisition of: AbeBooks, Audible, Blink, The Book Depositor, Eero, Kiva, Pillpack, Quidsi, Ring, Sizmek, Whole Foods, and Zappos. (If these deals harmed competition or were intended to do so, they could be unwound.) 11/

To sum up: The @HouseJudiciary is smart and deadly serious about this investigation.

For decades we’ve lived in this ideology of powerful corporations superseding democratic government.

I’m taking this as a sign that we might finally flip that around. 12/12