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FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

ftc.gov

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Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#191

Post by say_it_as_it_is »

"anti-discounting tactics"

> One set of tactics stifles the ability of rivals to attract shoppers by offering lower prices. Amazon deploys a sophisticated surveillance network of web crawlers that constantly monitor the internet, searching for discounts that might threaten Amazon’s empire. When Amazon detects elsewhere online a product that is cheaper than a seller’s offer for the same product on Amazon, Amazon punishes that seller. It does so to prevent rivals from gaining business by offering shoppers or sellers lower prices

Price competition conflated as punishment. The FTC's mandate is to promote competition. Here, they attack Amazon for competing effectively.

Also, advocating for other online superstores is playing the world's smallest violin. Walmart has decimated mom and pop stores. They're unable to beat Amazon at the online game. Truly remarkable achievement, really.

Why are redactions even permitted in a lawsuit involving a government agency and a corporation? Don't mention Project Nessie at all if you can't tell the public what you're arguing about. "Trust us, they were monopolists" isn't the same as laying out the facts for all to see.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#192

Post by vasilipupkin »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #67
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?

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

yeah, I am saying these reasons don't seem to make sense, since AMZN is not a monopoly because other online sellers exist and physical stores exist

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#193

Post by lbsnake7 »

lvl102 wrote: post #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 re…

They did all those things unsustainably so they could gain market share and raise prices when people were locked in. Similar to Uber and AirBnB etc. All those things are good but not feasible and subsidized by the capital/venture markets. The game is market share and ecosystem lock-in both from suppliers and customers.

A truly competitive marketplace allows any supplier to easily match with any customer. Suppliers gain market share by being the ‘best’, not by being the only option.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#194

Post by likpok »

lvl102 wrote: post #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 re…

Less market concentration. Lina Khan, the current head of the FTC, argued before she got the job that market concentration and not consumer harm was a better target for antitrust enforcement.

Amazon does exercise a fair amount of their market power. FBA policies are generous to the consumer and to amazon, taking it out of the third party sellers. The other classic example was IIRC diapers.com which was a sharp competitor until Amazon bought it and raised diaper prices. It's possible this was all a ZIRP fad, and diapers.com was burning through investor cash, but still a pretty clear-cut case of consolidating market power (at the time the FTC did not consider it illegal).

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#195

Post by criddell »

taeric wrote: post #166
thomastjeffery wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An agreement is constructed by two parties, not one.

Feels like a non-sequitur? What are you trying to say? My specific point is that I would wager money that Amazon being required to have DRM on their devices is required by publishers for them to be able to have that publisher's offerings. If Amazon drops the DRM, they lose the ability to offer that content. I'm not as confident that they have the agreement include that they will not offer authors a way to have DRM fr…

DRM doesn't have to be proprietary. I should be able to buy books from any place and read them on any reader.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#196

Post by oezi »

crznp wrote: post #163
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.

Lots of TLAs: ATT: Apple's App Tracking Transparency, not AT&T FBA: Fulfillment by Amazon, not related to FB DTC: Direct To Consumer, not Depository Trust Company

What is a TLA?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#197

Post by lolinder »

Does anyone know more about Project Nessie? There's a portion of the complaint [0] that is heavily redacted from page 123 to 126. The only information that isn't redacted is this:

* Project Nessie is an algorithmic pricing system

* "Amazon's Project Nessie has already extracted over [redacted] from American households."

* "this scheme belies its public claim that it “seek[s] to be Earth’s most customer-centric company,”"

* It's related to Section VI.A.3 (Amazon maintains its monopolies by suppressing price competition with its first-party anti-discounting algorithm)

Amazon themselves identify Nessie as the system that monitors spikes or trends [1], so my hunch is this is some sort of surge pricing system. Does anyone here know more?

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910129AmazoneC...

[1] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/amazon-offices/the-surprisi...

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#199

Post by elzbardico »

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"

Business didn’t have to compete with Amazon in so stringent conditions. People even were able to (gasp!) maintain physical stores, etc etc etc

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#200

Post by dragonwriter »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #154
dragonwriter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about more of a focus on insurers who refuse claims, drug companies flouting the law, PE firms jacking up the cost of housing or contractors gouging the government (and therefore all of us)? Those aren't FTC issues regardless of merits, so they don't factor into FTC priorities. The first is mostly state insurance regulators, the second doesn't seem to be a violation of existing law (though it might be a legisla…

I'm not sure I agree but IANAL. Doesn't the fact that the FTC recently filed a case against a PE firm buying up anesthesia clinics and using that to jack up prices run counter to the example of the cost of housing? Or for contractors gouging the gov, my understanding is that PE firms have rolled up small defense contractors and then used monopoly power to gouge the government. That seems pretty firmly in their jurisd…

> Doesn’t the fact that the FTC recently filed a case against a PE firm buying up anesthesia clinics and using that to jack up prices run counter to the example of the cost of housing?

If you can find a single private equity firm doing that to a functionally bounded market to secure a monopoly on, say, rental housing, sure.

But that isn’t the complaint I’ve heard about PE effects on housing markets.

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