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

181–190 of 930 posts

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#181

Post by s0rce »

pcurve wrote: post #171
jollofricepeas wrote: post #52

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…

wow... that BB article makes me sad. https://archive.ph/yw3Bv In 2016, they collected 35.2%. In 2022, they collected 51.8% in fee. That's insane.

Depending on what services they provide that might not be terrible, its basically high end art gallery margins, but for consumer products with low margins that seems unsustainable. I'm curious how much AliExpress takes.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#182

Post by waynesonfire »

autoexec wrote: post #165
waynesonfire wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is limited shelf space. they take the original product off the shelf.

I have never once seen a store that removed the major name brands from the shelves and only offered their own generic brand. You might argue that having generics on the shelves at all means that new small brands have to pay more for placement, but that's not the same thing as stealing product ideas and leaving no other option but the generic version of that thing on the shelves.

is your claim the shelves were empty where now stand the generic brand? something had to go.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#183

Post by HDThoreaun »

dragonwriter wrote: post #46
HDThoreaun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't all grocery stores do this?

Grocery stores generally don't have monopoly power to start with, and therefore cannot illegally maintain such power no matter what they do.

They have just as much as Amazon does. Walmart probably has more.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#184

Post by cthalupa »

ihaveajob wrote: post #82

In my opinion, Amazon needs to be split into at least 4 independent entities: - Online marketplace - Consumer products - Internet infrastructure - Delivery logistics Similar to the three-tier distribution system for beer in most states (a brewer cannot be a wholesaler or a retailer). This makes it easier for smaller players can compete with the big ones on quality at least, if not price or recognition. (Edit: format)

The three-tier system is absolutely awful in a lot of states for smaller breweries. It has been used to severely reduce their ability to sell on-site for off-site consumption, which is key for smaller breweries. Many states set the revenue/volume cap too low before you have to cut off on-site sales of off-site consumption for you to not take a significant hit to your profit swapping to a distributor.

It also makes it very easy for the bigger groups like AB Inbev to play games with distributors around pushing enough volume of their products if they want to get allocations of more in-demand bottles like Goose Island's Bourbon County Brand Stout.

I did not think I would ever see someone seriously arguing that the three-tier system for beer is a good thing for smaller players.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#185

Post by [deleted] »

autoexec wrote: post #86
HDThoreaun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't all grocery stores do this?

Grocery stores sell generic foods, but they put them on the same shelf as the name brand stuff. They don't hide the original products in a darkened corner of the back room where no customer can see them. They don't shove their generic into your hand every time you reach for a name brand. Amazon can hide the real products from search, or push it to the bottom of results, while putting their own products at the top of…

[deleted]

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#186

Post by unregistereddev »

loeg wrote: post #132
travoc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Albertsons + Kroger is like 90% of the market in Seattle, where I live, though.

It's very location-dependent. In my midwest metro I believe they'd be less than 5% of the market. I'm sure Albertsons and Kroger each have local monopolies in different regions.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#187

Post by summerlight »

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.

Is it a meaningful volume for Amazon at all? I thought the majority of US/EU customers begin their search from Amazon and just skip Google when it comes to shopping.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#188

Post by runako »

Without engaging the merits of this particular case, I do think there is an interesting takeaway about which companies wield even more power than Amazon (and Big Tech more generally, since Google and Meta are also discussed as likely targets of similar suits).

Notably: health insurers. They're an oligopoly whose revenues total something like 4% of US GDP. They engage in anticompetitive practices, and the end result is far more consumer harm than Amazon can do. (Because people generally spend a lot more on health insurance premiums than they do on Amazon in a year.)

Similar could be written about e.g. airlines.

Lobbying works. Tech will eventually figure this out.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#189

Post by kmeisthax »

babypuncher wrote: post #153
likpok wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATT, where apple hobbled other ad networks running on iOS. It used to be that DTC companies could use the fine-grained targeting offered by FB and Google to reach consumers without needing to go through a major distributor. Since the targeting is much less effective it's more expensive (potentially uneconomically so) to reach people. As a result, sellers are forced back to Amazon.

Businesses got along just fine before all that intense user tracking was even possible. If your business absolutely needs it to survive, then your business doesn't deserve to survive. "boo hoo, I can't invade my users privacy anymore! Waaaaah! It's unfair"

A lot of the old machinery for small businesses to find their customers - e.g. news, hobbyist magazines, etc - is no longer around, and so there's nothing for those businesses to return to. The Internet, and specifically advertising companies, killed them off. What's unfair is not that they can't violate privacy, but that Amazon still can.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#190

Post by vasilipupkin »

lancesells wrote: post #159
vasilipupkin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> others spend a lot of time attacking large companies simply because they are large This isn't the FTC's complaint but search "How Amazon treats their workers" and see why large companies get attacked. Typically the only way you're going to become this large is by abusing people in some sort of way. Amazon abuses their workers, their sellers, etc. Meta abuses their users. Google abuses their users. Uber abuses their…

absurd. Nobody is forcing anyone to work for AMZN or Google or Uber. People would simply quit if these companies were actually abusing them
Post reply on HN