
Amazon released a statement founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will read in today's testimony to the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee.
The following excerpt explains how Bezos believes Amazon was able to surpass eBay:
"And it is striking to remember how recent all of this is. We did not start out as the largest marketplace - eBay was many times our size. It was only by focusing on supporting sellers and giving them the best tools we could invent that we were able to succeed and eventually surpass eBay.
"One such tool is Fulfillment by Amazon, which enables our third-party sellers to stow their inventory in our fulfillment centers, and we take on all logistics, customer service, and product returns.
"By dramatically simplifying all of those challenging aspects of the selling experience in a cost-effective way, we have helped many thousands of sellers grow their businesses on Amazon.
"Our success may help explain the wide proliferation of marketplaces of all types and sizes around the world. This includes U.S. companies like Walmart, eBay, Etsy, and Target, as well as retailers based overseas but selling globally, such as Alibaba and Rakuten. These marketplaces further intensify competition within retail."
Bezos will be joined by the CEOs of Google/Alphabet (Sundar Pichai), Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), and Apple (Tim Cook) in testifying today before the House subcommittee as part of its "Online Platforms and Market Power" hearings.
C-span.org will carry the hearings at noon, carving out a 3 hours and 30 minutes time slot on C-SPAN 3; the subcommittee will stream the hearing on its YouTube channel.