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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…
>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.
I really don't mind their being a different set of rules if someone has the ability to dictate most of the market, but exclusive deals are routine for smaller players.
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.
(disclaimer: Amazon employee) For that one, it's mandated by publishers. There's nothing that can be done for e-readers from vendors that don't support third-party applications. Amazon e-books are accessible on Android and other platforms in addition to Kindle devices. Kindle is also not locked to only ebooks from Amazon, but third-party DRM schemes are not supported. Calibre for example comes with good tooling for t…
I believe the publishers want DRM. I'm not sure they want DRM that effectively locks in their readers to the Amazon ecosystem. I don't believe publishers would be upset if I could directly purchase books from Apple, Google, Kobo, or any other similar vendor directly on the Kindle.
Is the audiobook market different? I know Cory Doctorow for one would like to sell his audio books through Audible but they require DRM. Care to defend that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grocery stores are not a monopoly.
Neither is Amazon. Aliexpress, Walmart, Newegg are direct competitors selling cheap crap. Then there is Target/Home Depot/Lowes/Staples/Costco/Best Buy/etc
The lawsuit that is the subject here details Amazon's durable monopoly power in two markets.
But, yes, if Amazon did not have a monopoly, it could not, obviously, be illegally maintaining a monopoly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
From the link:
> 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.
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.
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.
That's according to a peculiar interpretation of anti-trust law.
“Due to a change in legal thinking and practice in the 1970s and 1980s, antitrust law now assesses competition largely with an eye to the short-term interests of consumers, not producers or the health of the market as a whole; antitrust doctrine views low consumer prices, alone, to be evidence of sound competition.”
Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
> Conditioning sellers’ ability to obtain “Prime” eligibility for their products—a virtual necessity for doing business on Amazon—on sellers using Amazon’s costly fulfillment service I'm no fan of Amazon, but that kind of makes sense - if they use another fulfillment service, Amazon wouldn't be able to guarantee next-day delivery for their products?
Consumers pay for Prime, and with it the 2 day shipping on eligible items, and so they prefer buying items with Prime eligibility. I must disagree with the "costly" description, as cost incurred shipping with Amazon and drastically lower than shipping with other services.
Having worked with dozens of businesses on establishing their Amazon account, there are very few that can move the volume needed to achieve the economies of scale necessary to match the costs of using FBA services.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't all grocery stores do this?
Grocery stores are not a monopoly.
Albertsons owns: Acme Markets, Safeway, Haggen, Jewel-Osco, Kings, Pavilions, Plated, Randalls, Shaw's, Tom Thumb, United Supermarkets, and Vons
Kroger owns: Baker's, City Market, Dillons, Food 4 Less, Foods Co., Fred Meyer, Fry's, Gerbes, Harris Teeter, JayC, King Soopers, Kroger, Mariano's, Metro Market, Pay Less, Pick 'n Save, QFC, Ralphs, Ruler Foods, Smith's
And now Albertsons and Kroger are merging together into one gigantic holy-shit mega corp.
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.
They put the generics right next to the original products, and then charge the original seller for better shelf placement (as well as for various other things -- getting a product in a retail store requires a fair amount of payola in some form or another).
All of this adds up to basically the same thing: amazon copies a product and ranks it highly unless you pay for better placement.
You can say that this is bad, which sure, but it seems hard to make the argument that this is specifically illegal for amazon when it's widely practiced in the industry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But you don't see Walmart creating store-brand knock-offs of every popular product on their shelves.