“Amazon is quietly deleting billions of product listings.”
That’s not a headline. That’s a line from Amazon’s own internal planning document.

Not many people are talking about it, but thanks to experts like Jordi Ordonez, attention is returning to Amazon’s 'Bend the Curve' initiative, which, according to Business Insider, aimed to reduce active ASINs from 74 billion to under 50 billion by the end of 2024.

That’s a 32% purge, at the heart of the world’s largest online store.

On the surface, this looks like a technical cleanup. Behind the scenes, maybe it’s a strategic correction.

For decades, Amazon chased infinite selection, more products, more sellers, more choices. The “Everything Store” was built on the belief that if you listed it, customers would come.

But now the curve is bending the other way.

Because unproductive listings don’t just clutter the site. They cost real money. Every outdated, duplicate, or inventoryless listing still lives on AWS. And Amazon’s retail division is projected to spend $5.7 billion on cloud infrastructure in 2025 alone.

So, what can we expect to see?

Amazon targeting listings that haven’t sold in over a year.
Throttling product creation for underperforming sellers.
Analyzing deleted ASINs for patterns.
And rewriting the definition of catalog health, not just what’s visible, but what’s worth hosting.

Some sellers are already seeing the effects:
• Creation throttling for high-volume, low-conversion accounts
• Listing rejections with vague or retroactive policy justifications
• Quiet suppression of ASINs with old data, no inventory, or low performance

The deeper tension here isn’t just operational. It’s cultural. For years, “more” was the default strategy. Now, “less but better” is becoming the new mandate.

If you’re a brand: now is the time to audit your catalog. Remove outdated variations. Update compliance fields. Validate inventory. Don’t assume your listings are safe just because they’re live.

If you run an agency: expect rising demand for listing optimization, compliance checks, and proactive suppression management. Catalog quality is no longer just a nice-to-have, it’s table stakes.

If you’re on the creative side: this is the moment to upgrade underperforming content. Amazon is rebalancing toward performance, and weak visuals, incomplete copy, or mismatched attributes are liabilities.

The most important shift?
Amazon isn’t curating by hand. It’s curating by signal.
So if your ASIN doesn’t send the right signals: sales, relevance, completeness, compliance, it might not exist next year.

This isn’t just catalog cleanup. It’s a recalibration of what the Everything Store chooses to be.