Amazon’s secret Project Curiosity used to gather intel on rivals for years

Amazon has been gathering intel on its competitors in retail, logistics, and related fields through a subsidiary store called Big River Services International for many years, a report by the Wall Street Journal revealed. Indian e-commerce platform Flipkart was also targeted.

The e-commerce giant reportedly started Big River, under a clandestine effort dubbed “Project Curiosity,” to gather intelligence on its retail rivals, including Walmart and eBay.

Big River peddled goods across various e-commerce platforms such as eBay, Shopify, Walmart, and Amazon itself, using aliases like Rapid Cascade and Svea Bliss, and had an annual turnover of approximately $1 million.