Do Shopify next! And Apple's 30% tax is literally outrageous!
FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
21–30 of 930 posts
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#22I'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?
Often store-branded articles are in fact produced in the same factory as the original brand products. It's not quite the same.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#23I'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.
This is what supermarkets do as well - see what sells, then create own-brand alternatives.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#24I'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?
Grocery stores are not a monopoly.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think it's slightly better than but just slightly. Amazon Basics within my company has earned a reputation for being extremely fragile crap that will break quickly and, occasionally, dramatically. I have had absolutely awful experiences with their surge protectors.
But yes - it's a step up from YAYWOWND which is a company that probably didn't exist last week and almost certainly won't exist in a month when their product spontaneously combusts and you try and chase down damages or at least a refund... Still, I'm actually finding myself buying more and more name brand crap because at least that way I know there's a company I can reach out to when it breaks down.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#26Hopefully it works. Amazon has done so much damage to this world....
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#27I'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?
I think grocery stores are culpable for a lot of shady behavior.
The least of which is selling end cap space (most walking traffic) to the highest bidder, meaning a lot of junk food and impulsive-purchase products are put in the highest traffic places.
At least on Amazon it's marked as a sponsored result. Even if most people click the first result anyway.
Both Amazon and grocery stores can be in the wrong.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#28I'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.
and others spend a lot of time attacking large companies simply because they are large. In this case, AMZN. AMZN is like the cheapest place to buy things online. But it's not the only place. So, why is FTC going after them?
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#29I 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.
Isn’t Amazon also the publisher for a nontrivial number of ebooks on Amazon?
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#30I'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.
There's the old line about "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
I feel like Hacker News types see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed monopolists."