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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

#321

Post by taeric »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #309
taeric wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If Amazon refused to enter that agreement, would the publisher simply refuse to sell ebooks on Amazon? I sincerely doubt that. If Amazon was actually motivated to refuse DRM, then we would be in an entirely different situation. The reality is that the opposite is true, and that Amazon itself is one of the publishers requiring DRM!

You do know there was an antitrust against the publishers and Apple where they did collude and force changes to the agreement onto Amazon, right? This isn't even hypothetical. Literally happened. Amazon absolutely cannot live without publishers right now.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#322

Post by stale2002 »

pixl97 wrote: post #313
stale2002 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is literally the opposite of anti-competitive. That is the definition of a pro competitive behavior. Lower prices for consumers is the whole point of a competitive market! Yes, big companies can compete in the market, by offer better quality stuff, for a lower price. Thats what we want! You are literally arguing in favor* of monopolies, and against competition by saying that other companies shouldn't do a better…

Reality is far more complex then the simple take you have here. >by offer better quality stuff, Amazon, for example, offering counterfeits of your product as your product is not under the definition of "better quality stuff" >for a lower price Again, offering a lower price consistently is one thing. Using pricing as a weapon, for example selling a product lower than cost in order to monopolize a market is not.

> Using pricing as a weapon, for example selling a product lower than cost in order to monopolize a market is not.

If the price stays low and never goes to high monopoly prices then it is a good thing.

If a company becomes a "monopoly" by being cheap, and staying cheap, thats just competition by definition.

Which is the situation we are seeing with amazon.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#323

Post by kiklion »

losteric wrote: post #168
likpok wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with this argument (which gets made a lot) is that this is basically every large retailer. Walmart has great value, Safeway has safeway select, Target has good and gather. In all of these cases large retailers take well-performing products (i.e. look at their sales data to see what is selling well) and creates mimics. They put the generics right next to the original products, and then charge the original…

> The trouble with this argument (which gets made a lot) is that this is basically every large retailer. Alternatively: there's no trouble at all, Walmart/Safeway/etc are all clearly engaging in this anti-competitive practice and must be reigned in. Marketplaces need to be regulated as neutral grounds for sellers, the marketplace cannot double-dip and compete against sellers or engage in practices that reduce competi…

How is it clearly anti-competitive if they are providing a better value for the consumer?

When a name brand has market power and charges a premium for a basic product, then another company entering the market and undercutting them is great for the consumer. We can make regulations to ensure that a distributor, advertiser, retailer and the product owner engage in arms length transactions but there’s nothing inherently wrong with a store brand offering products comparable to name brand at significantly reduced prices.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#324

Post by m463 »

karaterobot wrote: post #215
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 had to look this up, so for other ignoramuses like me: FBA is Fulfillment by Amazon, where you sell things on Amazon and they handle payments and shipping to customers.

I think this is basically becoming a de-facto monopsony for some folks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#325

Post by skinkestek »

Good!

Does this mean FTC got a new spine (or have I misunderstood and they had one all the time)?

If so:

Can I also suggest someone looks into:

- Googles abuse of market position to take over the browser market

- Microsoft trying to abuse their market position to take over the browser market (again)

?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#326

Post by m463 »

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)

- advertising

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#327

Post by jrockway »

brianstorms wrote: post #287

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…

I guess we figured out their algorithm. `if random() What's great about Amazon is that they kicked their competitors into gear and there are a lot of reputable vendors that offer cheap overnight shipping now. (B&H is my go to for electronics.)

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#328

Post by shiftpgdn »

steveBK123 wrote: post #177
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 ran a small FBA business for a year nowhere near any scale and it was an interesting lesson. People who weigh in on these tech topics should actually try these things out to understand them better. It's nothing like listing on eBay where there's some haircut off the top and that's that. There are fees for - accepting inventory, holding inventory, returning unsold inventory, shipping sales, processing returns, destr…

AWS works this way too but I’ll get dogpiled by Amazon sycophants and other people who have built their careers around getting witless companies sucked into the Amazon machine.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#329

Post by babypuncher »

kmeisthax wrote: post #189
babypuncher wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is Amazon somehow exempt from the App Store's privacy rules?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#330

Post by kiklion »

enriquec wrote: post #135
likpok wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with this argument (which gets made a lot) is that this is basically every large retailer. Walmart has great value, Safeway has safeway select, Target has good and gather. In all of these cases large retailers take well-performing products (i.e. look at their sales data to see what is selling well) and creates mimics. They put the generics right next to the original products, and then charge the original…

Very true. I find it hard to argue against something like generics - since they increase access and lower price.

There’s nothing wrong with genetics and nothing wrong with stores having their own brand.

We just need regulations to ensure that vertical companies are engaging in arms length transactions. If Walmart charges a company $10 per linear foot of shelf space on the third row, then they need to internally bill the generic brand division the same rate.

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