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

61–70 of 930 posts

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#61

Post by TheCaptain4815 »

This seems extremely weak, even by recent FTC standards. Just in the past 2 years we've had the following e-commerce changes:

- Shopify small store explosion

- Google search adding products DIRECTLY to the search engine results

- LLM vs Search Engine battle. Whoever controls the LLM controls the product listing.

- Temu & Shein exploding onto the scene. WSJ just had an article on this yesterday.

My real annoyance with the FTC is why they refuse to go after REAL monopolies that actually hurt consumers, such as Apple and their closed App Store.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#62

Post by neogodless »

nixass wrote: post #9
_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.

By what metric Amazon IS monopoly?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/274255/market-share-of-t...

37.8% of online retail.

Walmart is #2 at 6.3%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

> The verb monopolise or monopolize refers to the process by which a company gains the ability to raise prices or exclude competitors. In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with a decrease in social surplus.

> Product substitutability: Product substitution is the phenomenon where customers can choose one over another. This is the main way to distinguish a monopolistic competition market from a perfect competition market.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#63

Post by wordsarelies »

TonyTrapp wrote: post #22
HDThoreaun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's going to come out that Amazon calls the manufacturers for their basics goods, sends them the leading competing item and has them make it with slightly less expensive components to undercut the cost of the competitor.

It's so blatantly obvious if you've ever done a side by side in things like lamps, backpacks etc and other super simple designs.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#64

Post by lotsofpulp »

etchalon wrote: post #48
HDThoreaun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't all grocery stores do this?

Not really, or, at least, not at the same scale. Staples (peanut butter, canned fruit, etc.) tend to have store brands, but grocery stores doesn't have a store brand version of the vast majority of popular products.

And so what if they did? Are manufacturers not allowed to sell to customers directly?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#65

Post by 2023throwawayy »

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.

In Denver they are. I imagine other places too. https://kdvr.com/news/local/kroger-albertsons-king-soopers-s...

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#66

Post by autoexec »

fasthands9 wrote: post #34

>The complaint alleges that Amazon violates the law not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging >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 discov…

Maybe they are only so big because their anti-competitive behaviors have kept alternatives from taking their users. I'd love to be able to stop giving amazon as much money as I do, and I know a lot of people who feel this way.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#67

Post by sitzkrieg »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #28
zht wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

well, there is an entire article highlighting each of their reasons if you are so inclined

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#68

Post by taeric »

j_maffe wrote: post #32
charcircuit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

PS5 doesn't have a monopoly over the console market, Amazon does.

Sony almost certainly has more marketshare of the console market than Amazon does of anything. The numbers that came out for sales of XBox were... sobering for how badly Microsoft is throwing cash to stay in the game.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#69

Post by wordsarelies »

The measure of these services shouldn't be if you can sell a new product and make money.

It should be that you can sell a cheaper, better version of an Amazon basics product and overtake it.

If there is literally no way to do that... Amazon is clearly a market manipulator.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#70

Post by rob74 »

hrdwdmrbl wrote: post #33
hrdwdmrbl wrote: post #21

Do Shopify next! And Apple's 30% tax is literally outrageous!

Also do the fact that you never own what you "buy". Buy means buy. Period. Amazon, Audible, Google Play, Apple TV, etc. I would like to _own_!

Then you are in the minority unfortunately. Just look at music - you can buy DRM-free music online without problems, but people still prefer to pay for Spotify...
Post reply on HN