Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 930 posts

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#11

Post by hightrix »

tehlike wrote: post #6
_uhtu wrote: post #3

I'm honestly not sure how you could make the case that they aren't maintaining and abusing monopoly power. I mean they literally blatantly copy the designs of other companies who sell on amazon, then put their own results for their own products higher in search results than what they copied off of. It's incredibly blatantly anti-competitive.

At this point, they don't have to rank it higher and people would still buy it. They are like Kirkland of Costco most often.

Exactly. I prefer Amazon Basics to YAYWOWND brand every day.

It is one of the few brands on Amazon you can count on to not be Chinese crap. Even if it is made in China, the Amazon Basics products are generally good quality.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#12

Post by zht »

_uhtu wrote: post #3

I'm honestly not sure how you could make the case that they aren't maintaining and abusing monopoly power. I mean they literally blatantly copy the designs of other companies who sell on amazon, then put their own results for their own products higher in search results than what they copied off of. It's incredibly blatantly anti-competitive.

I've found that many people will spend a lot of time and energy defending large companies (and often their CEOs) against perceived bullying. Amazon, Tesla, Elon, Meta, etc etc. I don't really understand it.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#13

Post by taeric »

criddell wrote: post #5

I wish they would add ebook DRM to the list. Amazon has essentially locked the Kindle so that it can only purchase from Amazon and Amazon ebooks can only be used on the Kindle. On top of that, they offer no way of transferring ebooks and, AFAIK, offer no way to remove DRM after a work enters the public domain.

I don't know, as I never had access to that data, but I would be shocked to find that is not demanded by their agreements with the publishers. Akin to why there is no library that will give you non-DRM items. Is almost certainly part of a strategy by the publishers to bolster other marketplaces they find more favorable.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#15

Post by crooked-v »

tehlike wrote: post #6
_uhtu wrote: post #3

I'm honestly not sure how you could make the case that they aren't maintaining and abusing monopoly power. I mean they literally blatantly copy the designs of other companies who sell on amazon, then put their own results for their own products higher in search results than what they copied off of. It's incredibly blatantly anti-competitive.

At this point, they don't have to rank it higher and people would still buy it. They are like Kirkland of Costco most often.

Kirkland has a big difference here, in that it's a much better consistent indicator of quality than the Amazon house brands.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#16

Post by HDThoreaun »

_uhtu wrote: post #3

I'm honestly not sure how you could make the case that they aren't maintaining and abusing monopoly power. I mean they literally blatantly copy the designs of other companies who sell on amazon, then put their own results for their own products higher in search results than what they copied off of. It's incredibly blatantly anti-competitive.

Don't all grocery stores do this?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#17

Post by charcircuit »

criddell wrote: post #5

I wish they would add ebook DRM to the list. Amazon has essentially locked the Kindle so that it can only purchase from Amazon and Amazon ebooks can only be used on the Kindle. On top of that, they offer no way of transferring ebooks and, AFAIK, offer no way to remove DRM after a work enters the public domain.

If you buy a PS5 game you can only play it on the PS5 and they don't remove DRM after the came goes into public domain.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#18

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

_uhtu wrote: post #3

I'm honestly not sure how you could make the case that they aren't maintaining and abusing monopoly power. I mean they literally blatantly copy the designs of other companies who sell on amazon, then put their own results for their own products higher in search results than what they copied off of. It's incredibly blatantly anti-competitive.

Monopoly is a subset of anticompetitive behavior, and not easy to prove. Whatever behavior you see as monopoly, they could have a "reasonable" explanation for. A company violates the law only if it tries to maintain or acquire a monpoly through unreasonable methods. As usual, the law has loopholes big enough to drive an entire logistics chain through.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#19

Post by Justsignedup »

remember that time that amazon was bleeding like 5 million a day just to make sure they can destroy diapers.com? by selling diapers at a loss, which was numbers that diapers.com couldn't compete with given that they didn't have another business to rely on, then forced diapers.com to sell to amazon because they had no other option?

And this came out last time they were doing monopolistic inquiries against amazon. Yet...

So I'd love to see something positive come out of it, but I have my doubts.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#20

Post by taeric »

munk-a wrote: post #10
nixass wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By what metric Amazon IS monopoly?

By the metric of market control and by the metric of being able to leverage anti-competitive practices without feeling any market pushback.

Examples? Because, by most evidence that I am aware of, they aren't actually doing that well? Certainly not bad. But not clear to me that they have any real online advantage now that other stores have online payment that they can use between them. I've certainly been far more willing to buy direct from brands for the past few years.
Post reply on HN