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FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

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Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#51

Post by browningstreet »

zht wrote: post #12
_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.

You're allowed to win.

You're not allowed to complain.

I think that's a very American thing right now... politically too.

But downstream, there are lots of issues that arise if one can't expect some kind of balance in check-n-balances.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#52

Post by jollofricepeas »

FBA seller here.

A lot of mom and pop businesses (~$20 million) have been built on Amazon over the past 10 years. Most of us are in the $250k to $5 million dollar range.

The impact of Amazon’s monopoly power is felt big time by us as we’re being squeezed with no place left to go online especially post-iOS change.

Our second option used to be the Facebook/Instagram/TikTok to Shopify connection but with that being dead in the water most of us have had to commit 100% to FBA to be able to stay afloat.

With the increase in inflation and Amazon abusing its power to significantly raise its prices for FBA and force us to use its advertising services our revenues have been severely impacted.

This doesn’t include their unwillingness to meaningfully fight counterfeits

Or that they penalize you if you attempt to drive sales elsewhere with lower pricing on other sites

Bloomberg did a write up on this a few months back:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-13/amazon-am...

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#53

Post by Waterluvian »

_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.

But I like it when Costco does it…

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#54

Post by cj »

taeric wrote: post #20
munk-a wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The examples are listed in the article. The last point is pretty damning if they can prove it.

> Biasing Amazon’s search results to preference Amazon’s own products over ones that Amazon knows are of better quality.

> Degrading the customer experience by replacing relevant, organic search results with paid advertisements

> Charging costly fees on the hundreds of thousands of sellers that currently have no choice but to rely on Amazon to stay in business. [...]

> Anti-discounting measures that punish sellers and deter other online retailers from offering prices lower than Amazon, keeping prices higher for products across the internet. For example, if Amazon discovers that a seller is offering lower-priced goods elsewhere, Amazon can bury discounting sellers so far down in Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#55

Post by taeric »

542458 wrote: post #29
taeric wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The ones folks are buying? Not really. :D Publishers still do a good job signing on authors. Audio books, I think, are very different. Audible was far more active in building up a market and voice talent than the competition for a long time.

That said, I am not aware of any actual anti-competitive practices that they do there. The examples that some high profile folks have used feel very weak. Prices are lower for customers than they have ever been, and profits for the talent are almost certainly up due to increased sales volume. Their percentage profit per sale is down, but the history could also be that keeping that percentage high would not have grown the market? Such that, they could not have gotten the larger pie without the smaller slice. But, now that the pie is big, they want the bigger slice.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#56

Post by ch4s3 »

travoc wrote: post #24
HDThoreaun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't all grocery stores do this?

Grocery stores are not a monopoly.

Neither is Amazon in e-commerce, they hold ~39% of the US market and their eCommerce growth lags behind total eCommerce with 9% and 10% respectively. Wal-Mart is at about 6.5% but had nearly 25% growth this year while capturing 36% of all eGrocery sales in the US.

The only place where Amazon is even near 50% is in consumer electronics and office supplies.

The eCommerce market as such has a very long tail and a lot of competitive players just behind Wal-Mart.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#58

Post by atlasunshrugged »

Merits of this specific case aside, I find it really interesting that the FTC is going after Amazon now. They have pretty limited resources (especially relative to a massive tech co which can pour money into litigation) and have to pick and choose their battles carefully... I have to admit I'm a little frustrated that they're choosing to go after Amazon, which yes, imo the case definitely has merits and they do shady stuff like with dark patterns for trying to cancel accounts and the like, but there are so many other things more important to my life that seem broken that I wish the FTC would prioritize. How about more of a focus on insurers who refuse claims, drug companies flouting the law, PE firms jacking up the cost of housing or contractors gouging the government (and therefore all of us)?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#59

Post by rob74 »

skilled wrote: post #44

Maybe interesting to some, but during the recent Google updates (core and "helpful"), Amazon had more than $100M of search traffic value wiped out, https://i.imgur.com/5HpZT6Z.jpg Google absolutely launched a nuke at Amazon.

Well that depends on how many people still use Google to search for products, and how many go directly to Amazon...

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#60

Post by Andrex »

zht wrote: post #12
_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.

The argument always boils down to "well it's allowed / that's just how you do things" and when the companies get told "No, that's actually not allowed and not how you should do things" the argument switches to "the FTC has been weaponized by The Other Side, even if they're doing pro-consumer things we shouldn't trust them because Big Govt."

Meanwhile, we have over 100 years over antitrust history and precedent pointing the other way. Sometimes Big Govt does need to step in and set the market right, because raw unfettered capitalism lacking regulation will always destroy itself. (For the record, and to preempt some strawmen, I don't think raw, unfettered socialism is The Way either.)

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