Amazon.com Inc. has strongly denied a report published by The Wall Street Journal today that claimed that the e-commerce giant had manipulated its search algorithms to boosts its own products.

The report, citing unnamed people who worked on the project, said the decision to feature more prominently listings that are more profitable for the company, primarily its own products, was “contested internally” before getting implemented.

The pushback is said to have come from employees in Amazon’s A9 search team who argued that it wasn’t in Amazon customers’ best interest to feature its own products first instead of products that were best for them overall. Further, the report said Amazon lawyers raised red flags about using the search algorithm to favor its own products, saying doing so may provoke regulators.

Amazon has a balancing act in terms of being both a marketplace and a provider of its own private-label goods. Given its market-leading position, using that market power to push its own goods over those of others, in theory, runs the risk of breaking competition and antitrust laws.

“The fact is that we have not changed the criteria we use to rank search results to include profitability,” Amazon said in a statement. “We feature the products customers will want, regardless of whether they are our own brands or products offered by our selling partners. As any store would do, we consider the profitability of the products we list and feature on the site, but it is just one metric and not in any way a key driver of what we show customers.”

The allegations come as Amazon is facing multiple antitrust investigations, the latest launched by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission Sept. 11. In that case, the FTC is investigating Amazon’s marketplace for anti-competitive behavior and is interviewing merchants as part of the investigation.

Amazon is also being investigated in several other antitrust investigations, including one led by U.S. state attorneys general into whether Amazon and others tech firms are abusing their power to “stifle competition in the market.” On Aug. 2 it was also reported that the FTC had launched an inquiry into an e-commerce deal between Amazon and Apple Inc. on unfair-competition grounds.

Not least, Amazon is facing antitrust investigations in both the European Union and Japan.

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