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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →An updated complaint made public on November 2, 2023, added previously redacted allegations to the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against Amazon. The filing described alleged directions by then-CEO Jeff Bezos about advertising, Amazon’s Project Nessie pricing system, anti-discounting tactics, fulfillment policy and deleted communications. Those are allegations in a civil complaint—not findings that Amazon or Bezos violated the law.
The named defendant is Amazon.com, Inc., not Bezos personally. The case was filed by the FTC with 18 states and Puerto Rico in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, case 2:23-cv-01495.
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What changed on November 2, 2023?
The FTC filed its original complaint on September 26, 2023, with substantial redactions. The November 2 revised redacted complaint disclosed additional passages while leaving some material confidential. It expanded the public account of how the agency says Amazon protected its position in online retail and marketplace services.
The allegations covered several connected practices rather than one isolated product: paid advertising and search visibility, responses to rival discounts, Project Nessie’s pricing experiments, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Seller Fulfilled Prime, and the importance of Amazon’s Buy Box. The FTC’s case page identifies the complaint, parties and subsequent filings: FTC Amazon e-commerce case page. The public revised complaint is available at the FTC’s November 2023 filing.
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These theories are distinct from the FTC’s separate case alleging that Amazon enrolled consumers in Prime without consent and obstructed cancellation. That proceeding is listed at the FTC’s Prime case page.
What the FTC alleged about Jeff Bezos
The newly public text, as reported by GeekWire, alleged that Amazon moved its storefront toward more paid advertising after directions from Bezos, who was then chief executive. The FTC said Bezos instructed executives to tolerate more irrelevant or low-quality advertisements—described internally as advertising “defects”—because the added advertising revenue was worth a decline in search quality.
Under the FTC’s theory, more sponsored placements could push organic results lower, make sellers buy ads to remain visible and expose shoppers to less relevant or potentially more expensive products. Amazon disputed that characterization. Its response said the FTC’s description was misleading and that Amazon’s ranking system considered relevance, customer reviews, availability, price and delivery speed, not simply payment.
The complaint used alleged executive statements and decisions as evidence against Amazon. It did not charge Bezos in a personal antitrust action.
Project Nessie, explained
Project Nessie was described in the complaint as an internal Amazon pricing system used approximately from 2014 or 2015 through 2019; the exact starting year varies in different portions of the filing. The FTC alleged that Nessie tested whether rival online stores followed Amazon’s price increases, then identified products for which a higher price was likely to spread.
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- Amazon raised the price of a selected product.
- Nessie predicted whether another retailer would match the increase.
- If rivals followed, Amazon kept the higher price.
- Amazon could earn more margin even if sales volume fell.
- Other retailers’ prices could also rise if their pricing systems matched Amazon.
For example, an illustrative version of the alleged mechanism would be Amazon moving a product from $20 to $22, predicting a rival would follow, and retaining $22 when that happened. This example explains the FTC’s theory; it is not a documented product transaction from the complaint.
The complaint said Nessie operated across many thousands of products and that Amazon accepted a temporary disadvantage versus a rival when the probability of the rival following was high. It also said the system was paused during periods including heightened scrutiny, holidays and Prime Day, and alleged Amazon considered improving and reactivating it. The filing does not establish that Nessie was later reactivated.
What money did the FTC attribute to Nessie?
The figures below come from the complaint’s description of Amazon internal calculations or FTC allegations. They are not court-awarded damages, a finding of consumer overpayment or an independent audit.
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| Figure | What the complaint attributed it to |
|---|---|
| More than $1 billion | Additional Amazon profit from 2016 through 2018 allegedly generated by Nessie. |
| Approximately $363 million | Alleged incremental profit in 2015, despite lower gross sales revenue on affected products. |
| Approximately $334 million | Amazon’s alleged estimate of Nessie’s added annual profit in 2018. |
| More than 8 million items | Products purchased in April 2018 at prices allegedly set by Nessie; those purchases totaled almost $194 million. |
| More than 400 million views | Times shoppers allegedly viewed affected prices in 2018. |
The FTC also suggested that rival-retailer effects could have caused additional consumer costs, but the complaint did not quantify a total amount across the market. The primary source for the timing and calculations is paragraphs 416–431 of the revised complaint.
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Amazon’s explanation of Nessie
Amazon rejected the FTC’s description of Nessie as a price-raising scheme. In a statement reproduced by GeekWire, Amazon said the tool was intended to prevent price matching from producing unusually low, unsustainable prices. The company said it ran only for a few years on a subset of products and was discontinued because it did not work as intended.
That leaves a central dispute:
| FTC’s framing | Amazon’s framing |
|---|---|
| A system that selectively raised prices when rivals were likely to follow, potentially lifting prices beyond Amazon. | A price-management tool intended to avoid unsustainably low prices caused by automatic matching. |
| The alleged profit and rival-following behavior show anticompetitive effects. | The tool was limited, unsuccessful as designed and not evidence of unlawful conduct. |
An internal tool and a profit estimate, by themselves, do not decide an antitrust case. A court must assess market definition, monopoly power, competitive effects, causation, intent and whether the conduct unlawfully excluded rivals rather than reflected competition.
How the anti-discounting allegation differs from Nessie
The FTC separately alleged that Amazon used an algorithmic approach to respond rapidly when rival retailers discounted products. The agency’s theory was that copying or neutralizing lower prices reduced the chance that a rival’s discount would attract customers, build scale or gain market share.
That is different from Project Nessie. The anti-discounting allegation concerns Amazon responding to a competitor’s lower price. Nessie, as alleged, concerns Amazon raising its own price when it predicted competitors would follow. Both theories involve pricing, but they describe different systems and conduct.
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Fulfillment, Seller Fulfilled Prime and marketplace dependence
The filing alleged that Amazon limited or paused new enrollment in Seller Fulfilled Prime because independent fulfillment providers could let sellers qualify for Prime without using FBA. The FTC argued that restricting this route could make it harder for rival logistics companies to scale and for competing marketplaces to attract sellers offering fast delivery.
The complaint cited internal concerns that Seller Fulfilled Prime could weaken FBA’s advantage. It also alleged that Amazon stopped new enrollment in 2019 despite data showing strong performance by some sellers using independent providers. Amazon disputed the comparison and said delivery results for the program were inadequate in 2018.
The FTC tied fulfillment to marketplace leverage. Its complaint said that in the first quarter of 2021 Amazon had more than 560,000 active U.S. Marketplace sellers, that sellers supplied more than 80% of unique items offered, and that nearly 98% of purchases used the “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons in the Buy Box. The agency used those figures to argue that Buy Box placement, Prime eligibility and access to FBA were commercially decisive.
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Advertising, Buy Box and the FTC’s broader theory
The FTC’s broader monopolization theory was that Amazon used interlocking rules and incentives across its retail and marketplace businesses. The alleged mechanisms included:
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- making paid advertising increasingly important for search visibility;
- using policies that allegedly discouraged sellers from offering lower prices on rival marketplaces;
- conditioning Prime-related advantages on Amazon-controlled fulfillment;
- favoring Amazon’s systems and paid placements in ways that could disadvantage rivals; and
- using Nessie to raise prices when other retailers were likely to copy them.
In this account, the concern was not merely that one price changed. It was that sellers, rival marketplaces, logistics providers and competing retailers could each face incentives or penalties that reinforced Amazon’s position.
What the filing alleged about deleted communications
The updated complaint separately alleged that Amazon executives used Signal’s disappearing-message feature and that more than two years of communications—from about June 2019 through early 2022—were deleted despite preservation instructions from the plaintiffs.
This is an evidence-preservation and discovery allegation. It is not proof that the underlying claims about advertising, pricing or fulfillment are true. Whether messages were required to be preserved and what consequences follow are procedural questions for the court.
What the November filing proves—and what it does not
- It establishes: the FTC publicly filed a more detailed version of its civil complaint, including its account of Amazon’s internal practices and calculations.
- It does not establish: that a court accepted the FTC’s interpretation of Nessie, found Amazon liable, or determined a final amount of consumer harm.
- It does not mean: Bezos was personally sued in this antitrust case.
- It does mean: readers can evaluate more of the factual narrative behind the FTC’s claims, alongside Amazon’s competing explanations.
Procedural status
As of the FTC case page’s October 31, 2024 update, the docket listed an amended complaint, a September 30, 2024 order denying Amazon’s motion to dismiss and a second amended complaint. That update does not by itself resolve the case or convert the 2023 allegations into final findings. The current procedural record should be checked on the FTC case page.
The Bottom Line
The unredacted November 2023 filing gave the public more detail about the FTC’s theory that Amazon used advertising, seller policies, fulfillment controls and pricing systems such as Project Nessie to reinforce its market position. Its profit figures and descriptions remain allegations or attributed internal estimates until the court resolves the factual and legal disputes.
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