AUSTIN, Aug. 31 -- The Texas Attorney General issued the following press release:
Attorney General Ken Paxton today sued Amazon.com, Inc. ("Amazon") for deceiving Texas businesses about how it prices the advertising they buy. Amazon promised advertisers a competitive auction, then secretly manipulated the process to change the results to charge them more.
Amazon sells advertising space on Amazon.com through auctions that run in a fraction of a second every time a shopper searches. Amazon called them second-price auctions and told advertisers they "only pay the least bid amount needed in order to win." That was false. Amazon stopped running a second-price auction years ago while continuing to describe one in its marketing materials, traini...