The ill-starred decision by Seattle’s panjandrums - to throw open the US Marketplace in 2013 to the PRC-based sellers who had, under pressure from Beijing’s panjandrums, steered clear of Amazon’s attempt, with the launch of the Amazon.cn Marketplace, to compete with Jack Ma’s TaoBao/Alibaba conglomerate - was undertaken in 2012.
ASIN Change/Merge Notifications were deprecated in Q2 of 2017 - the last Merge Notification (Subject Line “Amazon.com ASIN Merge Notification,” received from [email protected]) we ever received was dated 2017-07-08 12:00 am; the very last Change Notification (Subject Line “Amazon.com ASIN Change Notification”, rcv’d from same email address) we ever saw was dated 2017-06-30 12:57 pm.
That same summer of 2017, the oft-irascible forum vet “Schady” (@The Schadenfreudist in the Age of Jive, when this occurred; later @Schadenfreudist during the Age of Discourse) posted a response he’d received from the ESR/ESRT which vaguely implied that April’s take on the reason for deprecation was likely a prime factor.
After seeing that, some of us opened case inquiries on the matter, and posted what we received in response; the available evidence suggested that this excuse was indeed going to be upheld as the Party Line on the matter.
That being said, I strongly agree with your over-arching point: