Where does the fine go? Seems to be a great recipe.
FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
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Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#72I'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.
It is not if you cannot prove that the price that the customer pays is now higher.
Apple for example copies apps and makes them available as default in iOS. Companies go bankrupt because of it, but it is not monopolistic.
Of course all these are because of the strict legal definitions we have. In spirit I agree with you.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#73Earlier 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.
I wish we could make this more well-defined because this is every company ever entering a new market supported by their existing business. If you actually outlawed all of it it would kill every medium or larger business (which isn't to say I'm not opposed to outlawing it) because that's just the game. The business that has to take on funding and pay interest will struggle against the conglomerate with a war chest larger than your TAM.
Amazon has some shitty practices but I expect a lot of pushback in this lawsuit as a bunch of other companies see a target on their back for stuff they've been doing for longer than Amazon's been around.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 pr…
We’re coming full circle
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
If they did, whether it'd be something of concern would be a function of the grocery stores market size and capture.
If Walmart, for instance, were to start creating Walmart-branded everything after in-store product trials by small companies, that'd be a concern.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Walmart has been doing that for decades. And they probably were not the first. It is not a novel strategy.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 p…
37.8 seems low, I suspect the "shipped goods" percentage is higher.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#78Maybe 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.
And nuked affiliate sites that promoted Amazon links primarily, wild.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
And so what if they did? Are manufacturers not allowed to sell to customers directly?
If they did, whether it'd be something of concern would be a function of the grocery stores market size and capture. If Walmart, for instance, were to start creating Walmart-branded everything after in-store product trials by small companies, that'd be a concern.
Walmart has done that, for decades. They have tons of their own brand in their stores selling for cheaper next to the more brand name items. Equate, Mainstay, etc. In fact, everyone does it. Target, Costco, CVS, Walgreens, etc. It is basic price discrimination / segmentation strategy.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grocery stores are not a monopoly.
Nor is Amazon
The complaint [0] has 32 pages detailing Amazon's durable monopoly power in two relevant markets, so your claim that it lacks a monopoly might do with somewhat more of a counterargument than you've presented.
[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32...