By Greg Bensinger
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Amazon has a secret plan to ensure shoppers never need to leave its site: own the world’s product information.
Called World Product Graph, the initiative seeks to hoover up data on virtually every item for sale on Earth, whether Amazon stocks it or not, according to an internal document reviewed by Reuters, and to people familiar with the matter.
In so doing, Amazon could truly become the everything store, offering deep data on a vast array of goods
and cutting in to Google's dominance in online search, while also fending off rival Walmart's growing e-commerce business.
It also serves to address the continued rise of AI agents, software that can complete shopping tasks autonomously for users. According to the document, Amazon's own AI-driven search agent often provides inaccurate information.
And if fully implemented, World Product Graph could draw shoppers away from rival e-commerce sites that have far less data.
“Amazon cannot be the go-destination for every shopping mission if customers must leave to research product relationships on Google, brand websites, and review sites,” according to the document. “These answers exist, but the only way to find them has been to leave Amazon for painstaking research on brand websites, third party review sites and tech forums.”
Reuters could not determine if or when this plan may be implemented, though the document, written like a press release, has an aspirational future release date of October 1, 2027.
"Draft, outdated documents often paint an incomplete picture and the existence of a brainstorming document such as this one doesn't necessarily reflect our current plans," said Amazon, in a statement. "We're constantly working on new ideas and technologies to make Amazon's product catalog comprehensive, accurate, and helpful for customers."
Already, many consumers begin researching products on Amazon. But according to a 2025 Morgan Stanley research report, the 16% of online shoppers who do so on Amazon is dwarfed by Google’s 57%. However, when customers know exactly what product they plan to buy, Amazon has the advantage, with 41% of searches starting there, compared with 23% for Google and 18% for Walmart.
'THE EVERYTHING STORE'
World Product Graph “depends on discovering how brands organize their products on their own websites,” the document says. That will entail some brands and retailers contributing product data continuously to Amazon, but also Amazon independently crawling other retailers’ websites.
Reuters could not determine how Amazon planned to crawl the sites or whether it would need to seek permission in all cases.
Amazon has already signed up Coca-Cola and Bayer, among others, to contribute product data, the document says. And the company held a “CEO-level P&G/Amazon summit” for a trial with Procter & Gamble. The companies didn't respond to requests for comment.
Amazon is shuffling staff internally to get the project off the ground, according to one of the people, though Reuters could not determine if the October 1 date is a realistic deadline for making the plan public.
The document laying out the plan is what is known internally as a PR/FAQ — press release and frequently asked questions — which is typically a six-page narrative memo laying out the rationale and business case for a new product or service. Not all PR/FAQs lead to a service being introduced and, the people said, World Product Graph could be modified or aborted due to financial or other concerns.
The project is part of Amazon’s Selection & Catalog Systems unit, according to the document, and is being organized under Robert Tekiela, a vice president in the division. He did not respond to a request for comment.
With the more complete data, Amazon can help users determine with more certainty which is the most recent model or colorway of a vacuum cleaner or tablet computer while also guiding them toward more subjective criteria like which is best for them based on their shopping history or other data, the document shows.
The project would also address problems with Amazon’s own AI-powered search engine known as Rufus, which the company began calling “Alexa for Shopping” in May. “Many Rufus answers are factually wrong or incomplete, but customers lack expertise to detect these errors,” the document says.
Further, users conduct about 83 million searches weekly using Rufus, and running them is “expensive,” according to the document. More data would allow Amazon to use less expensive models, more efficiently.
“I used to spend an hour on Reddit figuring this stuff out,” says a fake customer in an imagined quote in the document. “It’s like the store finally knows what it’s selling.”
In its statement to Reuters, Amazon, referring to the PR/FAQ, said, "the usage figures are significantly outdated" and that its data shows that Alexa for Shopping is roughly 97% accurate globally.
BATTLING AGENTS
World Product Graph would help serve at least one other important function — staving off the growing threat of alternative AI shopping agents, the people said. CEO Andy Jassy sought during the company's third-quarter earnings call to downplay agents' impact, saying “few customers are doing much shopping this way yet” and that Amazon’s advertising business has been minimally impacted.
Yet Amazon executives have grown wary of AI shopping agents that may send customer traffic to other sites that have greater or more complete data, according to people familiar with the matter.
Meta’s Muse agent, for instance, has proven popular with customers already, garnering more than 10 million users in the US and Canada since launching in September. Amazon in the same month blocked Muse from its retail site and last year sued AI firm Perplexity to prevent similar access, a case that is still ongoing.
Jassy said Alexa for Shopping has been used by over 400 million people in the past year.
Muse, however, "has the potential to become the most widely used consumer AI application since ChatGPT,” JPMorgan said in a research note. Responding to a post saying xAI's Grok agent was blocked on Amazon, Elon Musk wrote on X last month: “Maybe we should start a competitor to Amazon."
By creating the world's most extensive storehouse of product data, Amazon could ensure AI agents working on behalf of shoppers will be compelled to seek products out on Amazon.com and not other retailers’ sites, the people said. That would also help protect Amazon’s growing advertising business.
Employees have described World Product Graph as the beginnings of an effort to make the site a one-stop shop for buying anything imaginable, an expansion of existing services known as “Buy for Me” and “Shop Direct,” which list on Amazon products sold on other sites, allowing customers to buy them with Amazon as an intermediary.
“Customers have always been able to find products on Amazon,” Tekiela said in the document. “What’s been missing is understanding – how do these products relate to each other, which one is right for me, and what else should I consider?”
(Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco; Editing by Kenneth Li and Matthew Lewis)
