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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

#111
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.

Where did that chart come from?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#112
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty close! 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 mergin…

Not even close. Combining all those brands results in a 13.5% market share.

Groceries aren't a single national market, and its quite likely that such a merger would both create both monopolies and monopsonies.

Its also quite likely that the big grocery merger won't happen as planned for that reason.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#113
post #101

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…

Not to be rude but you made millions on the backs of Amazon. Now you’re complaining that you have competition.

> on the backs of Amazon.

They were using the Amazon platform for what it was intended for, and Amazon made more millions off of them. It was supposed to be a mutually beneficial relationship.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#114
Out of all the natural tech monopolies, Amazon is the ONLY one that did the opposite of exercising market power. They actually brought fast shipping to the market. A decade ago, you had to pay a crap ton of money to ship things even two days. They forced the incumbents such as Walmart to change. They’re constantly improving e-commerce. Heck they even opened up aws and created an entire industry. Amazon did more to reshape commerce in the US than anyone in the past two decades.

What more does US govt want?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#115
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.

Where did that chart come from?

Ahrefs. It’s basically a backend UI for how Google rankings change over time for the entire web.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#116
post #101

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…

Not to be rude but you made millions on the backs of Amazon. Now you’re complaining that you have competition.

a competitor that owns and governs the platform you have to use is different from another 3rd party that you have to compete with

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#117
post #102
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo: Sony has about 50% market share and Microsoft and Nintendo have about 25. That’s a very different (I’d argue healthier) world than online retailers where Amazon has like 36% but the next largest (Walmart) is like 6%. You need to weigh the market share against the number of players in the space. Also that’s not to mention how all 3 major game console players have some kind of moat…

Note that I don't mean one to be a defense of the other. It can be argued well that both markets are unhealthy. :D

To your numbers, though, I'm not sure I see the argument? I'd be very surprised if that 25 is evenly split between Nintendo and Microsoft. And where is Valve in that?

Playing into your argument, is Walmart really only 6%? Of all sales that happen period, how is the online/offline split? From my perspective, folks love to hate tech companies. You'll see silly headlines about 1 in 169 people work for Amazon. You don't often see similar headlines for Walmart, which has twice the associates, if I recall...

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#118
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.

There's the old line about "temporarily embarrassed millionaires." I feel like Hacker News types see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed monopolists."

I mean… that’s basically the business case behind many tech companies, right? Build a moat.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#119
Even if this action turns out to be toothless, it should still go a long way to shape public perception. I cancelled Prime 3 years ago and really haven’t looked back. I simply shop elsewhere, and between Target and eBay I don’t miss a thing. The Echos got unplugged, the AWS certs didn’t get renewed, their music service got canceled. I am all out and I hope others will do the same. For me this was driven by their anticompetitive behavior as well as terrible treatment of staff from warehouse workers to web developers. This FTC suit brings a new level of attention and gravity to their insidious practices.

Obviously a firm that massive can’t be all bad. As a consumer, the only thing I have is choice in how I spend my time and resources based on the information I have.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#120

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…

There are many insurers, so this would mean many cases.

There is only one Amazon and I am sure the FTC is receiving a ton of complaints against them.

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