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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

#421

Post by cdumler »

m463 wrote: post #316
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WOWZAMGO makes quality products. I bought their portable usb battery and it only caught fire after the 20th charge cycle. PARTUE, on the other hand… don’t ask!

What's funny is that I couldn't tell if this was serious or sarcastic at first glance. (caught fire -> sarcastic) Thing is, these silly UPPER-CASE-NONSENSE-COMPANIES are winning against established brands with quality products. Except there is a trend now where a brand with products of known good quality like YETI can now charge outrageous amounts of money - like 10x or more.

Welcome to the Era of [Poe's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law).

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#422

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

taeric wrote: post #284
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

fortunately, it was, hence the existence of the complaint

if the FTC didn't know whether their rules applied, they wouldn't have been able to draft a complaint explaining how they do

penalizing suppliers for offering lower prices elsewhere, for example, is pretty clearly anticompetitive

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#423

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

Nevermark wrote: post #403
InitialLastName wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about slogans is that you can almost always count on the sloganeer to embody the opposite: - Don't be evil - Drain the swamp - Hope and Change

- “Free”

"Unlimited"

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#424

Post by dragonwriter »

kortex wrote: post #418
symlinkk wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon does not have a monopoly on online shopping that’s absurd. Chewy, Wayfair, Target, Walmart, AliExpress all are huge competitors.

We need to move away from the term "monopoly" (which may not literally be a mono ) and towards anti-competitive.

> We need to move away from the term "monopoly" (which may not literally be a mono) and towards anti-competitive.

Anti-trust rules cover both, with a (often complex to apply, because of the kinds of facts that need to be analyzed, but relatively well-developed) concept of “monopoly” which ultimately boils down to whether or not substitution happens in practice rather than whether there is exactly one firm ina descriptive market. There's no need to “move away” from one to the other.

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#425

Post by TheCoelacanth »

symlinkk wrote: post #359
m-ee wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand the FTC is shifting away from the doctrine that consumer benefit/harm as the deciding factor for an antitrust case.

Okay so take the FTC out of it. Let’s say we’re writing the laws from scratch today. Why would store brand generics be outlawed?

They wouldn't, except for market dominating retailers.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#426

Post by jongjong »

At the root, the problem with big tech is the monopolization of people's attention. There is essentially no way to gain any meaningful exposure to users without going through big tech platforms and they limit the exposure. Even if you buy ads from them, you never know if your product is being put in front of real users or bots. They seem to favor big, established companies.

I also blame modern journalism for being heavily centered around corporate interests. They won't cover any product or tech which isn't backed by big corporations. That is a major source of anti-competitive dynamics. It feels like every journalist has been bribed to the eyeballs to only cover products from certain companies.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#427

Post by steveBK123 »

WalterBright wrote: post #404
steveBK123 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ebay doesn't do fulfillment, which is why they take a smaller cut.

Correct. My point is that people only casually familiar don't realize how vertically integrated the FBA model is.

FBA is like eBay, PayPal, FedEx, Google Ads and a warehouse all wrapped into one. But they charge you varying types of fees based on different measures, at different times, for each of those parts of the stack. And you cannot cross shop, mixing and matching other vendors in to keep them honest on pricing.

It's easy to use, but you are locked in to their stack.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#428

Post by toast0 »

musicale wrote: post #393
blibble wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a genius business for a "retailer" normally they'd need to pay for storage, stock, liquidation of stock they didn't sell, returns etc and instead now you pay for all of that for them and what do you get in return? - a listing on page 17 of their ever increasingly shitty website behind legions of MINFARTO, PATRONICS and GIBRANKER aliexpress garbage - customer service staff with an inability to understand simple e…

I would believe those are actual brand names. Has anyone created software or a web site to generate hilarious Amazon brand names automatically? Edit: Looks like there are lots of AI-fueled Amazon/business name generators. Most of the names weren't as funny as your examples, though I got some good ones (electrofakes.com, etc.) from prompts like "low quality tech products" and "cheap knockoff technology products." Anot…

I mean, MINFARTO has legs.

But then again, I remember seeing COBY products right next to SONY products and I guess they're still around. :)

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#429

Post by steveBK123 »

nwiswell wrote: post #352
steveBK123 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, it makes me wonder what % of consumer goods for sale via FBA are from retail theft rings. 52% fees on stuff that cost you $0 ain't bad. Otherwise, it's very very bad.

The 52% is dominated by small crap items that basically cost $0 in bulk from China (cables, phone cases, etc) On these items Amazon fully realizes they can charge 90% and the seller is still making a profit, so they do. If you're selling appliances or TVs or computers the % is not nearly that bad.

Would be curious to see numbers on the bigger items. Have you used FBA?

The warehouse and shipping fees on such large & heavy items would be onerous would be my guess.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#430

Post by vhiremath4 »

Yeah I’m kinda on the fence about this. On one hand, I see the case that this diminishes the open market. On the other hand, Amazon is doing this all within their own ecosystem. So it’s a bit disingenuous for the FTC to say that this has nothing to do with their size. The problem the FTC keeps skirting around on anticompetitive is the fact that the internet favors power differentials, so we’d have to ding any company that has massive market distribution and tweaks their platform to favor participants exclusively on their network

Network effects have not been accounted for in antitrust. That’s the core of the problem. Not the fact that Amazon is tweaking algos. Every major player is doing that.

I like Jerry Chen’s piece on “The New Moats” (ahead of its time published in 2017) that calls out the progression of tech going from systems of engagement -> systems of record -> systems of intelligence. It feels like this is one (of many) consequences of that progression:

https://news.greylock.com/the-new-moats-53f61aeac2d9

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