Amazon is pursuing a project aimed at collecting and normalizing product information on a global scale, according to an internal PR/FAQ document and people with knowledge of the matter. The initiative, named World Product Graph in the internal materials, is pitched as a way to centralize data on virtually every item offered for sale worldwide - not only the goods Amazon stocks itself.
The internal memo frames the effort as a remedy to what it describes as a persistent gap in Amazon’s ability to answer certain customer questions without sending shoppers off-site to brand pages, review forums and third-party platforms. "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," the document states. "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."
World Product Graph, as outlined in the document, would aggregate data from several sources. Some brands and retailers would contribute product feeds on an ongoing basis, while Amazon would also independently crawl other retailers’ websites to discover how brands organize their assortments. The document indicates that Amazon has already secured participation from some major brand partners for data contributions and has conducted trial-level conversations with others.
Specifically, the internal materials say that Coca-Cola and Bayer have agreed to provide product data, and that Amazon held a "CEO-level P&G/Amazon summit" for a trial with Procter & Gamble. The memo also notes that a number of staff are being moved internally to support the project under the Selection & Catalog Systems unit, with the program organized under Robert Tekiela, a vice president in that division.
How Amazon plans to crawl other retailers’ sites - and whether it would require permission in every case - is not detailed in the document, and sources could not determine the company’s technical or legal approach to that task. The PR/FAQ format itself - a narrative memo that typically resembles a press release plus frequently asked questions - is often used inside the company to lay out the rationale and business case for new products or services. Not every PR/FAQ ultimately becomes a launched service, and the document says World Product Graph could be modified or abandoned for financial or other reasons.
Addressing product discovery and AI shortcomings
The World Product Graph is presented as a response to two interlocking problems described in the memo. First, customers sometimes need to consult external sources to determine relationships among products - such as which is a newer model or which colorway is current. Second, Amazon’s own AI-powered shopping assistant has delivered inaccurate or incomplete answers in certain cases, and that undermines customer trust.
The internal document addresses the company’s AI search tool, known internally as Rufus and publicly promoted as "Alexa for Shopping." It states that "many Rufus answers are factually wrong or incomplete, but customers lack expertise to detect these errors." The memo also notes that users run roughly 83 million searches per week via Rufus, a level of usage the document characterizes as "expensive" to serve. According to the PR/FAQ, a richer, more complete product-data repository would allow Amazon to run search and recommendation functionality on less costly models more efficiently.
The document includes an illustrative customer quote - a fictionalized voice used to convey the user benefit - saying, "I used to spend an hour on Reddit figuring this stuff out. It’s like the store finally knows what it’s selling." Another line attributed to Tekiela in the document summarizes the problem World Product Graph intends to solve: "Customers have always been able to find products on Amazon. 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?"
Competitive context: search share and AI agents
The internal memo sets out competitive motives for building the data repository. It cites a 2025 Morgan Stanley research report to show where online shoppers begin product research: the memo notes that 16% of online shoppers start research on Amazon versus 57% who use Google. The document also points out a distinct advantage for Amazon when shoppers already know exactly what they want to buy, saying 41% of those searches begin on Amazon compared with 23% on Google and 18% on Walmart.
Beyond search engines, the PR/FAQ positions World Product Graph as a defense against the rise of alternative AI shopping agents - software that can perform shopping tasks for users and potentially direct them to retailers other than Amazon. The document and sources describe growing executive concern that agents could route traffic to other sites that have more complete or readily accessible product data.
Several concrete examples are cited. The memo notes that Meta’s Muse agent rapidly attracted more than 10 million users in the United States and Canada after launching in September, and it records that Amazon moved to block Muse from accessing its retail site in the same month. The company has also pursued legal action in other cases - including a lawsuit against an AI firm named Perplexity - to limit third-party agents’ access, according to the internal materials.
In public remarks during the company’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy is quoted in the memo as downplaying the immediate impact of agents, saying "few customers are doing much shopping this way yet" and that Amazon’s advertising business had been minimally affected. Nonetheless, the internal materials reflect a level of caution among executives about how agents might evolve and whether they could divert commerce away from Amazon.
Company responses and accuracy disputes
Amazon provided formal comments acknowledging the existence of a PR/FAQ-style planning document while cautioning against treating a draft as a definitive statement of current plans. In a statement, the company said, "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." The statement added that Amazon is continually working on ideas and technologies "to make Amazon’s product catalog comprehensive, accurate, and helpful for customers."
On the specific usage and accuracy figures cited in the PR/FAQ, the company said those numbers were "significantly outdated" and asserted that their data shows Alexa for Shopping is roughly 97% accurate globally. The internal document had reported the 83 million weekly Rufus searches figure and described the system’s answers as often incorrect or incomplete.
Organizational and operational notes
World Product Graph is described as part of the Selection & Catalog Systems unit within Amazon, and the work is being organized under Vice President Robert Tekiela, according to the document. The memo states that Amazon has already reassigned employees internally to support the effort, and that early brand partners have been signed up to provide data feeds, while trials have proceeded with at least one large consumer packaged goods company at the CEO level.
The PR/FAQ carries an aspirational public release date of October 1, 2027. The document’s format and the company’s comments emphasize that this date is not a guarantee of an eventual launch; internal memos of this type often serve as exploratory planning tools and can be altered or discontinued for strategic, financial or operational reasons.
How the initiative connects with existing services
Internally, employees framed World Product Graph as an extension of Amazon’s existing features that already surface products sold elsewhere. The memo refers to services called "Buy for Me" and "Shop Direct," which list products sold on other sites and let customers buy them with Amazon acting as an intermediary. The new repository is described as widening those capabilities by providing a deeper layer of product understanding - enabling determinations such as which model is the newest, how items relate to one another, and which product choices align with a customer’s history or preferences.
Proponents argue this would make Amazon more of a one-stop destination for research and purchase decisions, and that richer data could reduce the cost of serving AI-driven features by enabling more efficient models. But the PR/FAQ also underscores operational and strategic limits: some data will come from brand partners; other information will be discovered by crawling. How the latter step would be carried out consistently, and what permissions would be required, is not specified.
What remains uncertain
The PR/FAQ itself warns that World Product Graph is not a guaranteed product launch. The memo explains that PR/FAQs are conceptual and that the initiative could be changed or abandoned for a range of reasons, including financial considerations. The aspirational October 1, 2027, release date in the document does not establish a firm timetable.
Operational questions also remain. The document does not set out in detail how Amazon would technically execute large-scale crawling of other retailers’ sites or what legal and permission frameworks it would follow. The company’s public response flagged that some figures in the memo were out of date, and the discrepancy over usage and accuracy statistics illustrates that internal planning materials can contain estimates that evolve.
Until and unless Amazon decides to move forward publicly, World Product Graph will remain an internal-level proposal - a blueprint for one possible path to make the company both a deeper information hub and a more resilient platform in the face of changing search and AI dynamics.