AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis
- Amazon posted CEO Jeff Bezos’ prepared testimony Tuesday on its blog ahead of his appearance at the historic Congressional tech antitrust hearing on Wednesday.
- Bezos plans to argue that Amazon’s size benefits consumers, sellers, and the economy, and that it faces plenty of competition from rivals including Walmart, Instacart, and Shopify.
- “Just like the world needs small companies, it also needs large ones,” Bezos is expected to say.
- Bezos along with the top executives of Apple, Facebook, and Google parent Alphabet are set to face questions from Congress on Wednesday, where they’ll have to defend their companies’ growing power.
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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos plans to tell members of Congress that the company’s size is actually a good thing, and that it still faces plenty of competition, according to prepared remarks posted to an official Amazon blog on Tuesday.
“Just like the world needs small companies, it also needs large ones,” Bezos plans to say. “There are things small companies simply can’t do. I don’t care how good an entrepreneur you are, you’re not going to build an all-fiber Boeing 787 in your garage.”
Bezos is also expected to argue that Amazon competes in a global retail industry that is “strikingly large and extraordinarily competitive,” and that the company captures only captures single-digit market share in the sector. He plans to name several firms as competitors, including traditional retailers like Walmart, Target, Costco, and Kroger, as well as e-commerce companies like Shopify and Instacart.
Bezos, along with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, are set to appear before the House Antitrust Subcommittee on Wednesday, where they’ll face questions over their companies’ growing power.
Amazon has come under increasing scrutiny from lawmakers who say its size and market dominance allow it to unfairly prevent competition, particularly surrounding its treatment of third-party companies that sell products through its website.
Bezos plans to say that by opening its marketplace, Amazon instead enabled sellers to better than they could have hoped to otherwise. He says that opening up the marketplace was a bet that third-party sellers would help both buyers and sellers, and that “we were right — the whole pie did grow, third-party sellers did very well and are growing fast, and that has been great for customers and for Amazon.”
He also plans to argue that Amazon’s size has other benefits, such as allowing it to create jobs in the US that pay better than competitors and to use its scale to combat climate change – but that lawmakers should still look into its business practices.
“I believe Amazon should be scrutinized. We should scrutinize all large institutions, whether they’re companies, government agencies, or non-profits,” Bezos plans to say. “Our responsibility is to make sure we pass such scrutiny with flying colors.”
