Amazon Purges Billions of Product Listings in Cost-Cutting Drive

Amazon has quietly removed billions of product listings through a confidential initiative called 'Bend the Curve,' according to Business Insider. The project planned to eliminate at least 24 billion ASINs -- unique product identifiers -- from Amazon's marketplace, reducing the total from a projected 74 billion to under 50 billion by December 2024. The purge targets 'unproductive selection' including poor-selling items, listings without actual inventory, and product pages inactive for over two years.

The initiative represents a shift for the company that built its reputation as 'The Everything Store' through three decades of relentless catalog expansion. Bend the Curve forms part of CEO Andy Jassy's broader cost-cutting strategy, saving Amazon's retail division over $22 million in AWS server costs during 2024 by reducing the number of hosted product pages.

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