Amazon tests listing sites that sell products it doesn’t - as retailer moves to become a search engine

The company announced the data scraping feature nearly a year ago in February, and it’s still in the testing phase. When shoppers search for a product in the Amazon app links to products on other brand sites pop up alongside products directly sold by the e-commerce site.

Amazon also has an advanced artificial intelligence service called Buy for Me that purchases products from brand sites on a shopper’s behalf. Amazon announced last November that it had increased the number of products available for purchase through Buy for Me from 65,000 when it first launched to more than 500,000.

A spokesperson from Amazon told The Independent that the test programs “help customers discover brands and products not currently sold in Amazon’s store, while helping businesses reach new customers and drive incremental sales.”

But Amazon has not asked these brand sites for consent to advertise its products.

Angie Chua, CEO of stationery accessory maker Bobo Design Studio, had her products advertised on Amazon, even though she says she never opted into the program.

Chua claimed the listings contained incorrect information.

"It completely undermines the trust that small businesses are working so hard to create,” Chua told Business Insider.

Amazon told The Independent that product information is taken from a brand site.

After requesting to opt out of the program, Chua’s products were taken off Amazon.

The Amazon spokesperson said the company has received “positive feedback” on the programs and that businesses “can opt out at any time...and we remove them from these programs promptly.”

Last November, Amazon sued Perplexity for its own advanced AI shopping feature, claiming the AI startup concealed its agents to scrape Amazon without its consent. Perplexity called the lawsuit “a bully tactic to scare disruptive companies like Perplexity out of making life better for people.”