Federal Trade Commission targets Amazon’s Project Nessie in antitrust suit

The Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against Amazon centers on an internal pricing algorithm with a mythical name and very real consequences. Project Nessie, as Amazon employees called it, allegedly operated as a sophisticated system designed to identify products where competitors were likely to match an Amazon price increase, raise the price, and then hold it once rivals fell in line. The FTC claims this tool extracted more than $1 billion in excess profits between 2014 and 2019, with some estimates stretching as high as $1.4 billion. Amazon says the tool was discontinued years ago and never worked the way the government describes. The trial is set for October 2026. How Nessie allegedly worked Project Nessie reportedly identified products where Amazon could raise prices with high confidence that competitors, many of whom use automated repricing software themselves, would follow suit. Once the rivals matched, Amazon kept the higher price in place. In April 2018 alone, Nessie set prices for more than 8 million items that were viewed by shoppers over 400 million times. According to court documents, the algorithm was toggled on and off at least eight times between 2015 and 20...