Jassy: shopping agents like Muse 'not great' as Amazon blocks access

The public back-and-forth follows Amazon's September decision to block Meta's Muse from its online store, a move Amazon justified by saying Muse's access would violate customer terms of use. That block set up the question Jassy addressed on Thursday's analyst call: whether outside shopping agents pose a real threat to Amazon's store.

Jassy's answer was skeptical. He said few customers buy through outside agents because the experience is not great or more convenient than going to a retailer directly, and he noted that outside agents were not the cause of the company's weaker-than-expected advertising performance in the third quarter. Amazon has its own alternative in "Alexa for shopping," which Jassy said more than 400 million customers used in the last year, with customer interactions growing 570% year over year and U.S. users spending 50% more per order.

Meta's Muse has grown quickly regardless. It unseated ChatGPT as the top free app on Apple's App Store, and Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada had set up the assistant since its early September release. He said shopping is the most common use case, with more than a quarter of users engaging in shopping and the average purchase size topping $200, and that Meta will work with partners on terms that make sense for them.