Amazon in India

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mazon.com is one of the world's largest technology companies that focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing software, and streaming. Amazon is considered one of the Big 5 tech companies in the United States with their 2020 revenue exceeding 386 billion dollars. Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff bezos in his garage in Seattle. Bezos served as Amazon's CEO before stepping down in 2021. As Amazon has continued its rapid expansion, this expansion has been met with some pushback and controversy. In 2019, Amazon came under fire when sellers in India had reported predatory pricing from the e-commerce giant, and that Amazon was not treating all sellers equally as they had claimed before.

People in India protesting Amazon and Jeff Bezos

History

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in his garage in Seattle after leaving his job in finance. Bezos set out to build the world's first online bookstore. In the first 30 days of the company, Amazon.com sold books in 46 different countries, and in two months reached $20,000 in sales per week. The company went public in 1997 and raised $54 million, and within two years outgrew competitors despite analysts concerns. At the end of 1999, Amazon had shipped over 20 million items to over 150 countries. In 2000, Amazon changed the game by allowing independent sellers to sell items alongside Amazon's own listings. In 2003, the company turned a profit for the first time. In 2007, Amazon released its Kindle e-reader. In 2011, released the Kindle Fire its tablet. Amazon created a cloud computing and video streaming service in 2006 and a studio that develops movies and TV shows in 2010. Finally, they created a fine art marketplace in 2013. Amazon made two of its biggest acquisitions when it Acquired Zappos and Whole Foods. In 2015, Amazon beat out Walmart as the world's most valuable retailer. When Amazon's market cap reached $250 billion, Jeff Bezos became the richest man in the world.

Jeff Bezos

Early Life

Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother, Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, was a teenager when she had Jeff and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen left after being married for less than a year. When Bezos was 4 years old, his mother remarried Mike Bezos who is a Cuban immigrant. Bezos recalls messing with electrical contraptions around his house as a child. He moved to Miami with his family as a teenager and graduated valedictorian of his high school.

College and Early Career

Bezos graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University where he studied computer science and electrical engineering.

After graduating, Bezos worked on Wall Street at firms including Fitel, Bankers Trust and D.E. Bezos became D.E. Shaw's youngest vice president ever. It was at this job that Bezos met his wife, MacKenzie. Ultimately, Bezos and his wife decided to leave their finance jobs and move to seattle to found Amazon.

In 2018, Jeff Bezos became the richest man in the world. During his tenure, Bezos purchased businesses like Zappos, Whole Foods and The Washington Post.

Philanthropy

Bezos also started the Day One Fund which focuses on "funding existing non-profits that help homeless families, and creating a network of new, non-profit tier-one preschools in low-income communities." He later also created the Earth Fund to try and combat the effects of climate change.

In 2021, Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon to focus more on his space company, Blue Origin.

Personal Life

Bezos met his wife, MacKenzie Tuttle, when they worked at D.E. Shaw in NYC. Bezos was as a senior VP and MacKenzie was an administrative assistant. They dated for just three months before getting engaged and married in 1993. Bezos and MacKenzie had four children, three sons and an adopted daughter.

MacKenzie is credited as being an important part of the success of Amazon. She helped create Amazon's first business plan and was the company's first accountant.

In 2019 Bezos and MacKenzie got divorced as details emerged of an affair between Bezos and his now partner, Lauren Sanchez. As part of the divorce settlement, Bezos' stake in Amazon was cut from 16 percent to 12 percent, putting his stake at nearly $110 billion and MacKenzie's at more than $37 billion, making her one of the richest women in the US. She also pledged to give away at least half of her wealth, part of the Giving Pledge made by the Gates and Buffet families.

Controversy

Anti-Competitive

1-Click Patent

Amazon has been criticized for allegedly using patents as a competitive roadblock. The most well-known example is the "1-Click patent". In December 1999, the Free Software Foundation announced a boycott of Amazon due to their use of the 1-click patent against rival Barnes & Noble's website. In September 2002, the boycott was called off. The company was given a patent on February 22, 2000, for an Internet-based consumer referral system, also known as an "affiliate program." Tim O'Reilly and Charlie Jackson, both industry leaders, spoke out against the patent, and O'Reilly wrote an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, criticizing the 1-click patent and the affiliate program patent, and stated that Bezos was attempting to limit the development of ecommerce. The USPTO ordered a re-examination of the "1-Click" invention on May 12, 2006.

Canada

Amazon has a Canadian website, but up until 2010, they could not have any offices, warehouses, call centers or fulfillment centers in the country because of a law banning foreign booksellers. Instead, Amazon setup warehouses just outside Canada and struck a deal with Canadian postal services. Amazon was eventually sued by the Canadian Booksellers Association claiming that Amazon was attempting to bypass Canadian law. The lawsuit was eventually dropped.

In 2017, Amazon was required to pay over $1 Million by the Competition Bureau for failure to provide transparent pricing. They alleged that Amazon was artificially raising the prices of listings on their site in order to make their other listing prices seem even cheaper.

Apple partnership

In 2018, Amazon and Apple reached a controversial deal regarding who was authorized to sell refurbished Apple products on Amazon. The deal stated that only Apple Authorized Retailers or vendors who purchased $2.5 million in refurbished products from Apple every 90 days, via the Amazon Rewards program, were allowed to sell Apple products on Amazon. The FTC eventually investigated Amazon regarding the deal.

Marketplace participant and owner

Amazon has long been criticized for being both the owner and participant of their marketplace which gives them access to a lot more data than other sellers on the platform. This data can tell Amazon what products to produce and at what price. Meanwhile, other sellers have accused Amazon of slowly increasing the cost to sell on their site. Sellers often have no other option as Amazon is still the leader in the e-commerce space,

Direct selling

Amazon found itself under fire in the UK in 2008 when they complained about book publishers selling their books at a discount on their own sites. Amazon claimed they should only have to pay the publishers for what they are selling the books at on their own sites and not the retail price on Amazon. Amazon later drew complaints when they removed titles printed by UK publisher Hachette Livre. This was reportedly to pressure the publisher to lower their prices at a signigcant discount.

Price control

In 2010, Macmillan Publishers asked Amazon to honor the new pricing they had worked out with Apple for all of their e-books, raising it from $9.99 to $15. Amazon not only declined but removed all Macmillan books from their site. Eventually amazon reinstated Macmillan’s deal.

In 2014, a group of authors including Stephen King and John Grisham, made public statements on Amazon’s pricing and claimed that Amazon was “harming the livelihood of the authors on whom it has built its business.” They claimed that Amazon was hurting the sales of books and purposely making them nearly impossible to find and purchase.

Removal of competitors' products

In 2015, Amazon announced it was removing AppleTV and Google Chromecasts listings by all merchants. They claimed it was to prevent “customer confusion” as those products did not support Amazon Prime Video. This is in contrast with the fact that Amazon intentionally did not offer its software to Apple and Google for their products. Apple and Google claimed Amazon was trying to hinder the sale of competitor products. Eventually Amazon reached a deal with both of these companies to offer Prime Video on their products. Amazon is also known to suppress the listings of competitor products and promote its own products higher up in search results. This also causes other retailers to spend more money on advertising and SEO on Amazon’s site. In 2019, PayPal acquired Honey, a browser extension that automatically applied coupons on e-commerce sites including Amazon. Amazon’s site began to display a warning to shoppers to uninstall the extension as they claimed it was a security risk.

BookSurge

In 2008, book publishers questioned Amazon’s monopoly status when their publishing division contacted other publishers to let them know they had to sign an exclusive agreement with Amazon to be sold on their site. Publishers were later told that the only Print on Demand (POD) books sold by Amazon would be ones printed by their own company.

Mistreatment of Employees

Union Busting

Amazon has opposed efforts by workers to organize in trade unions in both the United States and the United Kingdom and has actively engaged in union busting. Unite the Union has stated that Amazon workers "are not currently free to join a union without fear and without obstruction and propaganda being deployed against them." In September 2020, 37 European trade unions co-signed an open letter calling for the European Commission to investigate Amazon, saying the company "has led the raid on workers' rights, using its data-monopoly power to crush efforts by workers to improve their conditions. Now it is ramping up its espionage operations".

Warehouse Conditions

Amazon has repeatedly come under fire for inhumane conditions in their warehouses. Some have reported to reach temperatures above 100 degrees.

Working Conditions for Delivery Drivers

Many Amazon drivers have reported working conditions that include: missing wages, lack of overtime pay and intimidation. In addition, drivers reported unrealistic time constraints that lead to speeding and in inability to eat or go to the bathroom. Amazon recently introduced an Artificial Intelligence software to monitor and track its employees. This received criticism when drivers were being reported or even fired solely off of the AI tracking software with no human interaction.