A fresh less-redacted copy of the US FTC's monopoly-abuse lawsuit against Amazon has confirmed some of what we previously reported about the web goliath's secret price-setting algorithm, and spilled a bunch of juicy details, too.
Project Nessie was mentioned by the FTC in earlier
legal filings against Amazon, though we were left in the dark regarding its exact nature and operation thanks to heavy-handed redaction.
Nessie was rumored to be a tool for pumping up Amazon's profits by raising prices algorithmically, making customers pay more: Nessie would automatically ease up the prices of items, crucially making sure not to leave itself in a position where it would be undercut by rivals, it was claimed.
Newly published [PDF] court documents from the FTC attempt to support those allegations.
We didn't know at the time how much Nessie netted Amazon, but now we do: it inflated prices to the tune of "more than $1 billion in excess profit," the FTC alleged in previously redacted, and now revealed, portions of its complaint against the tech giant. $1.4 billion, to be precise.
