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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

#281

Post by dnissley »

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…

Can't speak for your experience, but in mine generics have often replaced name brand products in shelf-space-limited urban locations of stores like Target, etc. I should make it loud and clear that I'm completely fine with this.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#282

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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.

This is not a defense of Amazon.

A neighbor of mine who makes high end silver jewelry was doing fine with the gallery he used (in Santa Fe). The gallery collected about 30% of his sales price in fees.

Another gallery approached him, asked to represent him instead. They took 50% in fees. He switched anyway.

His income went up (and stayed up). Presumably the new gallery provides some combination of better environs, more and/or different customers, better salespeople.

It still seems wrong that fees could be this high, for a jewelry gallery or for amzn. But it shouldn't be assumed that the high fees necessarily mean reduced income for the original seller.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#283

Post by taeric »

arielcostas wrote: post #275
taeric wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that AWS is actually not a part of this lawsuit. So that is mostly not relevant.

No, but it still is part of Amazon. In fact, as others have commented, AWS helps subsidise parts of the Amazon store that would otherwise result in losses.

But how is it at all relevant to this story? And if it is a vital point, why not get mentioned by the FTC?

I don't think there is nothing at all there. However, most of the criticisms you will see in the wild about how AWS pays for retail are almost certainly from ignorance of how retail had to literally seed AWS.

And don't take my criticism of that point as some sort of promotion of Amazon. I can be critical of the complaints without having to worship them.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#284

Post by taeric »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #247
Spivak wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we could make this more well-defined because this is every company ever entering a new market supported by their existing business. If you actually outlawed all of it it would kill every medium or larger business (which isn't to say I'm not opposed to outlawing it) because that's just the game. The business that has to take on funding and pay interest will struggle against the conglomerate with a war chest lar…

it was well defined enough for the FTC to bring this suit with a pretty detailed complaint, I think we're good there "other companies" don't have the same market power here, or indeed engage in the same anticompetitive behavior, but again, that's all explained when you read the FTC complaint detailing the actual behaviors in question

Sadly, no it isn't. Them calling out that they are not going after Amazon because they are too big, but because they did thing X is very problematic for the clear definitions.

That is, as well defined as some concerns are, this complaint actually throws out a ton of that and makes it even less clear.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#285

Post by rat9988 »

lacker wrote: post #227
_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.

According to the best statistics I can find, in the US, Amazon has 37.8 percent of the retail e-commerce market. https://www.statista.com/statistics/274255/market-share-of-t... The simplest pro-Amazon case is that they do not have monopoly power, because they are not a monopoly.

As a seller who wants to sell retail, what is the marketshare of available platforms?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#286

Post by tick_tock_tick »

etchalon wrote: post #48
HDThoreaun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't all grocery stores do this?

Not really, or, at least, not at the same scale. Staples (peanut butter, canned fruit, etc.) tend to have store brands, but grocery stores doesn't have a store brand version of the vast majority of popular products.

> but grocery stores doesn't have a store brand version of the vast majority of popular products

Yes they do. I can shop at safeway and buy nothing buy safeway branch shit easily.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#287

Post by brianstorms »

I signed up as a Seller on Amazon a while back, with one primary goal: sell extra copies of my book, published by Pantheon Books in 2017. The publisher offered me boxes of them at dirt-cheap prices and I took them up on their offer. So I started selling on Amazon, and I set my price as the lowest possible for "New" condition hardcover.

For a while my price got listed on the main book product page. Only briefly though. Then it disappeared, and another seller got the glory of the link for a "New" 3rd party seller, and their price was HIGHER than mine.

Amazon does not want to advertise your price if you are too low for their liking...

Suddenly, in July, my mom dies. I have to travel to the east coast for the funeral, etc., so I put a hold on the one and only item in my inventory -- my book. Effectively this takes me offline temporarily as an Amazon Seller which was fine.

BUT . . . when i get back home, I try to re-activate the account and find I cannot. INSTEAD, I get this notice from Amazon that my account is suspended, and that it's mandatory I go watch all these training videos about COUNTERFEIT products, how to spot them, why not to sell them, why it's illegal, etc, and that I do not have permission to sell counterfeit "Pantheon products." And I'm like, WTF? I'm selling the real deal, from Pantheon, and I AM THE EFFING AUTHOR AND THESE ARE MY OWN BOOKS.

I try to communicate with Amazon Seller Program and get nowhere (I think they deliberately hire only people who don't understand English). They refuse to explain anything about this absurd counterfeit stuff.

So I contact Pantheon. They just laugh. They had nothing to do with it, but weren't surprised -- they kind of hate Amazon.

THEN I get a new notice from Amazon that my account is disabled permanently due to lack of use.

WTF!?

So: here is my theory. They were pissed I had a super-low price, and when they saw me temporarily disable my inventory as I'd be away for a week for a funeral, they swept in and shut me down, with some kind of made-up lie about COUNTERFEIT (I mean, can you believe these guys!?). And nothing is resolved, and we're on the verge of October.

Amazon sucks.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#288

Post by arbuge »

YeBanKo wrote: post #268
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…

I heard some stores switched to Shopify, would be interesting to learn why it is not an option for stores like yours.

Shopify and Amazon are quite different things.

Amazon is a marketplace and provides exposure - in other words, they bring you traffic besides providing ecommerce functionality. Possibly a lot of traffic if there's not much competition already in your space.

With Shopify you have primarily an online store solution. It's up to you to do your own marketing somewhere to drive traffic. Shopify does have what they call "Shop" now, which works like a marketplace, but in my experience that's still a relatively small channel for Shopify sellers.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#289

Post by ggreer »

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)

I'm pretty sure the beer laws hurt small breweries and consumers. Back in the 1980s when these laws were at their most numerous and strictest, the market was dominated by a few macrobreweries. Even today, the states that restrict brewery self-distribution have half as many breweries per capita as states that allow it.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#290

Post by kmeisthax »

catiopatio wrote: post #248
kmeisthax wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Weren’t those outlets even less targeted?

The key was that people self-selected into those outlets. If you were selling, say, game controller skins; you'd be making a pretty sure bet buying ads in GameInformer or on Joystiq. The problem with going back to that kind of business model is that these dedicated websites with specific niche audiences are dead or dying because the ad dollars moved elsewhere.
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