Amazon Is a Monopoly • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#71

Post by theturtletalks » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #55

theturtletalks wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see why it seems that way but no one has been able to explain to me why Microsoft was pursued for antitrust litigation and Google was not for doing the exact same thing. Maybe instead of accusing someone of stirring up reactions, explain the double standard.

The core problem here is that you see the “thing” as “bundling a browser”, so your logical conclusion it that it is the “exact same thing”. In reality, Microsoft was accused of several different acts - monopolisation, unlawful tying arrangements, unlawful exclusive dealing arrangements. It was not merely the fact that Microsoft bundled a browser, but the whole ecosystem and market position around that action. It is p…

“The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Windows operating system. Bundling them is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of IE. It was further alleged that this restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera), since it typically took a while to download or purchase such software at a store.”

That’s straight from the wiki. It was mainly about bundling. Yes market dominance was a factor but Google has dominance in the search market and they were never forced to unbundle any of their services in the US. They also “bundle” search with Chrome so how is that any different?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#72

Post by kevinsundar » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 10:24 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #53

toasterlovin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon very often competes directly with sellers on the Marketplace, and often undercuts them on price. If Amazon can actually compete with you in a given product niche, then you're not bringing any value to the table (since they own the customer relationship, the fulfillment, the logistics, etc.), so why do you deserve to make money? There are a gazillion product categories on Amazon. There's no way they can bring…

Being on Amazon's Marketplace (the largest in the world), every sale gives Amazon all the statistics needed to pick only guaranteed profitable products. The sellers actually pay Amazon for the privilege of providing Amazon with these market tests! Then Amazon requires the seller to produce invoices showing purchase of the items, usually with some sort of vague threat of suspending your account if they can't "verify t…

I think you're underestimating how complicated that is to do. If you've worked at any massive company its easy to understand how freaking hard it would be to have the sales department, the manufacturing and product design department, finance, business analytics, and seller auditing teams all working together in unison to pull this off. Yes its worth their time doing this for a few commodities everyone buys but theres no way the can do this for every single product category. In fact Amazon doesn't even make much margin off ecommerce. It's AWS. So it probably isnt even worth their time.

Is it theoretically possible? Yes. Practically? At scale, its hard to say for sure.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#73

Post by blairanderson » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 10:24 PM UTC

indopedia wrote: post #45

She forgets that the Amazon marketplace is made up of sellers and the prices aren't controlled by Amazon for a lot of their products. These are inherited from the distributor in most cases. Sure Amazon fulfills the orders but it's not like Walmart that controls the entire process. There is more freedom in Amazon. Anyways, this is just the hip thing of today. How about making a service better than Amazon? No that's im…

You are ostensibly correct but basically incorrect.

If you sell a product on Walmart and Amazon, Amazon forces you to sell it at the same price or they will not offer it immediately for sale. They change the page to make it look entirely out of stock.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#74

Post by Alupis » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 10:24 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #66

Alupis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being on Amazon's Marketplace (the largest in the world), every sale gives Amazon all the statistics needed to pick only guaranteed profitable products. The sellers actually pay Amazon for the privilege of providing Amazon with these market tests! Then Amazon requires the seller to produce invoices showing purchase of the items, usually with some sort of vague threat of suspending your account if they can't "verify t…

> Being on Amazon's Marketplace (the largest in the world), every sale gives Amazon all the statistics needed to pick only guaranteed profitable products. No, it does not. They are missing the most important piece of information: Cost of Goods Sold. They also don't know where you sourced the product. Or which features are important to customers and which are not. > Then Amazon requires the seller to produce invoices…

> This is only for trademarked products where the trademark owner has registered with Amazon

I can tell you first hand, this is not true. This is the "official party line", as it were, but not true in practice. Particularly if you FBA anything.

Get enough returns of a product and Amazon will freeze the listing until you provide an invoice - FBA and FBM.

For us, "enough" returns was 4 on a single ASIN in a week, out of the thousands we carry. It's a totally random system.

> I have a viable business that is growing

I wish you best of luck! In our case, we're an ecommerce company operating our own warehouse and multiple sales channels including our own websites. Amazon is but one of those channels, and we don't rely on it for company livelihood. I would be terrified to live solely off Amazon, knowing the rug can be yanked out at any time for any reason and with zero recourse. You can do everything right and still get canned.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#75

Post by adventured » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 10:26 PM UTC

kevinsundar wrote: post #67

adventured wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You take the stance that only competition can breed this but in this case reducing competition has breed these points too. It's neither. It wasn't active competition (or the lack of it, or it being reduced) that generated that outcome. It was Bezos (just as it was Sam Walton before him), he dictated that approach as the basis for Amazon's best likely ability to reach massive scale. There were no possible alternativ…

This is my point exactly. Someone was going to do it. Amazon did it. So if today its Amazon and tomorrow someone else, why be up in arms about it?

> So if today its Amazon and tomorrow someone else, why be up in arms about it?

Because - I believe - people are overwhelmingly reactionary, easy to excite and short-term focused. Microsoft was the end of the world. Google is the end of the world. IBM before them. Yesterday Walmart was the destroyer of worlds that was going to kill every small business in every town in America. Countless articles were written for a decade espousing that as fact, inevitable, unstoppable. They were pure evil, everyone knew it. Nobody could compete with them. That reactionary emotionalism against The Corporate Overlords, is now retrained on Amazon as the destroyer of worlds, the evil entity that will crush everyone. Tomorrow it will be someone else.

The most interesting story about Amazon - which is being almost universally ignored - is that the growth in their retail business has already mostly stopped (some shareholders are finally noticing). In the next few years that growth will continue to trend toward between zero and low single digits. The mighty retail conquerer of worlds is running out of retail growth and mostly that is being ignored because it doesn't bolster the story of the moment that Amazon is going to eat everything.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#76

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 10:26 PM UTC

kevinsundar wrote: post #41

acover wrote: post #26

As governments seem slow to action, would coordinating consumers shopping help combat the monopoly power of some industry? For example, having an app that notifies you to try and buy from a competitor like walmart for a few days to pressure amazon into bargaining?

And why would consumers coordinate against a company that is benefiting them with lower prices, great customer service, and insanely fast shipping now (I live in a small town of 40,000 - 3 hours from any major metropolis and get 1 day shipping)? Honestly I'm pretty impressed how such a massive company still seems to do a majority of their customers good, without even making them pay more. I'd say most of the people I…

In many ways, they've out Walmarted Walmart.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#77

Post by toasterlovin » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 10:27 PM UTC

lttlrck wrote: post #70

Alupis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being on Amazon's Marketplace (the largest in the world), every sale gives Amazon all the statistics needed to pick only guaranteed profitable products. The sellers actually pay Amazon for the privilege of providing Amazon with these market tests! Then Amazon requires the seller to produce invoices showing purchase of the items, usually with some sort of vague threat of suspending your account if they can't "verify t…

This seems little different to walmart or any other grocer or retailer with own brand products alongside other suppliers in their ‘marketplace’. Should bricks and mortar stores also be dumb pipes? Is there evidence of Amazon driving a company out of business by abusing this position? If there is then that could be a problem.

> Is there evidence of Amazon driving a company out of business by abusing this position? If there is then that could be a problem.

No, it really is not a problem. Amazon does not have a monopoly on consumer purchases. If your livelihood is dependent on selling on Amazon, a company which sells tons of products first party, then you need to be prepared from day one for the possibility that Amazon is going to bring a product to market in your category under the Amazon Basics brand, or that they will go directly to the manufacturer whose products you are selling.

Period.

Amazon isn't running their business so you can make money. They're running it so they can make money. As long as they think their interests are aligned with yours, then there's a chance for you to participate profitably on their platform. The minute that changes, you better have a plan B.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#78

Post by disposition2 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #42

Arrezz wrote: post #2

How we actually define a company to be a monopoly seems to be somewhat arbitrary? I agree that Amazon engages in anticompetitive behaviour but I'm not sure that it can control prices or exclude competition to that extent? I mean every company can affect that, at what point does it become problematic?

> I'm not sure that it can control prices Amazon very often competes directly with sellers on the Marketplace, and often undercuts them on price. There are products they sell below the purchase cost, sometimes below manufacturing cost. You can't compete with that unless you have piles of money to burn. They sell at a loss until they shake everyone loose from a product, then dominate all sales of that products on the…

Are the actions of Amazon any different from what Walmart has done in the past? Just about all you describe, Walmart has been doing for 20+ years (probably closer to 30)

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#79

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

theturtletalks wrote: post #63

jdietrich wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google were sanctioned in 2017 for exploiting their dominance in the search market to promote their other services. https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15872354/google-eu-fine-a...

This is the EU. What has the US done to limit or sanction Google? Why was Microsoft pursued and Google not? Both were using one market dominance to push another.

IIRC, the US hasn't done much at all, until pretty recently. I think recent actions of Google/YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are catching a lot of regulatory attention at this point.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#80

Post by indopedia » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

blairanderson wrote: post #73

indopedia wrote: post #45

She forgets that the Amazon marketplace is made up of sellers and the prices aren't controlled by Amazon for a lot of their products. These are inherited from the distributor in most cases. Sure Amazon fulfills the orders but it's not like Walmart that controls the entire process. There is more freedom in Amazon. Anyways, this is just the hip thing of today. How about making a service better than Amazon? No that's im…

You are ostensibly correct but basically incorrect. If you sell a product on Walmart and Amazon, Amazon forces you to sell it at the same price or they will not offer it immediately for sale. They change the page to make it look entirely out of stock.

More like "if you sell a product that they already have because it's from the same distributor and is the exact same product".

Well then what do you bring to the table for their consumers and why on earth would they pay more for yours. Don't like it? Try ebay.