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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

#201

Post by elzbardico »

yomlica8 wrote: post #127
Justsignedup wrote: post #19

remember that time that amazon was bleeding like 5 million a day just to make sure they can destroy diapers.com? by selling diapers at a loss, which was numbers that diapers.com couldn't compete with given that they didn't have another business to rely on, then forced diapers.com to sell to amazon because they had no other option? And this came out last time they were doing monopolistic inquiries against amazon. Yet.…

Apparently product dumping isn't illegal if you do it on the internet. This wasn't even a fuzzy digital goods or services example either.

Product dumping is not illegal if you have a national newspaper that can be used to target any politician and if you make sure to contribute millions and make sure your employees do the same for the political party in power.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#202

Post by dragonwriter »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #183
dragonwriter wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They have just as much as Amazon does.

What individual grocery firm has a monopoly of the degree that the FTC has identified for Amazon in the two relevant markets for this case over any market, what is that market, and where is the evidence for the claimed monopoly?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#203

Post by bluGill »

gehwartzen wrote: post #167
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think those great value products are not in fact produced by Walmart. It's the same product from the same company, just lower priced to appeal to price conscious customers.

Thats exactly what those are. I worked for Reynolds Consumer a while back and the same aluminum foil goes into the brand box as well as the private label box.

The foil might be the same, but that doesn't mean everything is. I've had generic raisin bran cereal that was clearly Kellogg's in a different box, excpet that 1 out of 100 boxes had a slightly different flavor that wouldn't have passed Kellogg's quality controls but since still food safe (so I assume) the generic boxes got it. Of course when doing a private labor you can specify the higher quality controls, but that comes at a higher price. Most of the time Kellogg's is going to make the same cereal either way so nobody can tell the difference, but when something goes off in the process the cheaper generics get it.

My knowledge of foil suggests there isn't anything Reynolds could to that would reduce quality that would still be good enough to ship.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#204

Post by ayewo »

oezi wrote: post #196
crznp wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

TLA = Three Letter Acronym

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#205

Post by plagiarist »

lvl102 wrote: post #125
sudobash1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And I am saying what Amazon is doing is not anticompetitive at all. These “companies” that sell on Amazon are basically glorified trade companies that arbitrage low cost Chinese manufacturing. I don’t feel bad for them at all. If they are hurting so bad, go sell the goods on Shopify store or Walmart/Target. Oh, what’s that? They charge more than Amazon? Interesting…

The reason you see only low-quality Chinese knockoffs with computer-generated names could be because Amazon's anti-competitive behavior made selling real products unprofitable.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#206

Post by autoexec »

waynesonfire wrote: post #182
autoexec wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Originally, the generics (which had plain black and white packages) had their own dedicated isles. Now the generics are put on the shelves next to the originals and all those "generic only" shelves got filled with regular products.

I've still never seen a brand new product show up in the store and become popular only to be pulled off the selves and replaced with only a generic version of that product. When I see examples of that happening, I'll accept that grocery stores are guilty of doing what amazon does.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#207

Post by [deleted] »

catiopatio wrote: post #84
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…

> post-iOS change What is the iOS change you’re referring to?

[deleted]

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#208

Post by megaman821 »

zht wrote: post #12
_uhtu wrote: post #3

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.

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.

Is this supposed to be an argument or something? Malign people with large companies, and then tell them their opinions don't matter.

Tribal thinking is the worst. You added nothing of value to the conversation.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#209

Post by malfist »

munk-a wrote: post #25
hightrix wrote: post #11

Earlier 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…

Bonus points for YAYWOWND that didn't exist last week, yet all it's products have thousands of 5 star reviews that amazon somehow doesn't think is fraudulent.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#210

Post by HDThoreaun »

dragonwriter wrote: post #202
HDThoreaun wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> They have just as much as Amazon does. What individual grocery firm has a monopoly of the degree that the FTC has identified for Amazon in the two relevant markets for this case over any market, what is that market, and where is the evidence for the claimed monopoly?

Not really feeling like doing a bunch of research right now but walmart has 36% of the grocery market in this country and many local monopolies. I don't think Amazon is above 50% in any ecommerce sectors so seems pretty similar to me. Walmart also is known for the same stuff Amazon does where it bans the companies it buys from from charging less elsewhere.
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