261–270 of 727 posts
Quick link to AmazonBasics https://www.amazon.com/s?rh=p_89%3AAmazonBasics I am happy to buy these products over generics because of the higher quality. Batteries, paper shredders, water filters, electronics accessories, household supplies, office products...
AmazonBasics is just one of Amazon's brands. Take a look here: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-owns-these-brands-lis...
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Does anyone really think that any retailer launches a competing product in a category without looking at all their supplier data? So, if cars are inevitably becoming computers with wheels, what's going to happen to insurance companies? The major weapon of underwriting is data, and a company like Tesla is going to have a huge advantage in data over external insurance companies. Is it really a societal good for big com…
The difference is aggregate vs specific data. If insurance companies use the cars' data to change their policies in aggregate, there's no problem. Meaning, if they discover that cars of a particular brand have more accidents, they can raise premiums on owners of that brand of car. On the other hand, determining that YOU drive really fast, should NOT trigger a higher premium.
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has there been any antitrust activity in the united states recently? Like... past 10 years? Particularly given the current administrations disposition, I think pinning your hopes to anti-trust is like financially planning around lottery tickets.
> has there been any antitrust activity in the united states recently? Yes, lots [1][2]. (I count fourteen cases year to date.) [1] https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/terms/217 [2] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/terms/217
I'm not sure that Amazon would be able to pierce the veil of the hypervisor like that, but his instincts were in the correct direction.
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This is the same situation that happens on most platform plays. You can see this in how Salesforce and Shopify are leveraging their platforms to learn what is popular and produce/buy their own products to sell to their customers to capture 100% of the value, rather than 30% of the value of the solution to the customer.
Shopify? What's a product that Shopify sells other than its ecommerce platform?
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What really is the issue? That Amazon is leveraging its success to be successful? It's unfair that Amazon is able to see that a product category is doing well so it invests its own money into manufacturing a product to sell through its site? Do you really think that if Amazon couldn't use the data from its own site that it wouldn't procure it elsewhere? Before any product is developed there is extensive market resear…
Vertical monopolies are anti-competitive. It works like this: 1. Amazon clones independent manufacturer's product. 2. Amazon strangles manufacturer because they can promote their own product more and have lower overhead because they control the entire chain. 3. Competitor dies. 4. Amazon has no competition on this product. 5. They raise prices and/or lower quality. 6. Consumers pay more for a shittier product.
Sun pushed OpenOffice to cut MS's profits from Office
Google and MS are pushing into the Cloud to reduce Amazon's influence
Amazon is creating its own ad network and offering Twitch to reign in Google
Walmart is slowly creating its own global online shopping platform to compete with Amazon
Should Amazon ever have no competitor, monopoly regulations would kick in. But usually, all the other big players will make sure that Amazon has enough competition to not be invincible. It's not fun for small players, but they obviously don't care enough to organize and take their products off Amazon.
Btw, Amazon does not necessarily have less overhead due to Price's law: [1]
>The square root of the number of people in a domain do 50% of the work.
Should Amazon expand into every business, they would be so huge that all their efficiencies and more would be eaten up by the overhead.
About 10 years ago I met the head of IT for B&H cameras in NYC. Among many things, he was in charge of the hosting for their online store. After he complained about dealing with physical servers, I asked him if he had ever considered using AWS ec2 for the website, and he replied that his boss refused because he believed that Amazon would pull data on B&H products and use it to compete more effectively. I'm not sure t…
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I really don't think Target is that upfront. How am I supposed to know Mossimo and Goodfellow are Target brands. I do however understand that Kroger groceries are made by the kroger store.
I mean. That's what I meant. Upfront in the sense that they compete with their suppliers by having a lot of brands that are hard to distinguish as white-label brands by Target.