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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

#461

Post by duped »

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)

> 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.

This seems like a bad example given how its arguably led to massive consolidation in beer

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#462

Post by [deleted] »

wolverine876 wrote: post #357
elzbardico wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have evidence of the Washington Post doing that? I know evidence the contrary: The Post is clearly on the Democrat side, and it's Democrats that seek more regulation and who are suing Amazon.

[deleted]

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#463

Post by Schiendelman »

morkalork wrote: post #320
kmeisthax wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shouldn't the ad dollars be moving back in after super targeted advertising got neutered?

It kind of is. Look at magazines like Monocle, and websites like Uncrate, Hiconsumption, and Gearpatrol.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#464

Post by Guvante »

WalterBright wrote: post #244
pcurve wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> they collected 51.8% in fee. That's insane. Back in the 80's, my company sold compilers through third party mail order houses. They all demanded providing the product to them at 50% of their selling price. It's what having somebody else advertise, collect orders, process payments, ship, and deal with returns is always going to cost you. If it's unacceptable to your business, sell directly. My company did both.

You can't offer lower prices directly so Amazon forces all your customers to pay for their services whether they get them or not.

Or you can not be on Amazon but "just don't sell Windows if you don't want to pay extra" didn't work for Microsoft...

Amazon charges for all of those things still. This isn't 50% off and we deal with everything it is ~50% but you still take all economic risk.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#465

Post by Spivak »

TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #61

This seems extremely weak, even by recent FTC standards. Just in the past 2 years we've had the following e-commerce changes: - Shopify small store explosion - Google search adding products DIRECTLY to the search engine results - LLM vs Search Engine battle. Whoever controls the LLM controls the product listing. - Temu & Shein exploding onto the scene. WSJ just had an article on this yesterday. My real annoyance with…

> after REAL monopolies that actually hurt consumers, such as Apple and their closed App Store

I find this a funny comparison because Amazon and Apple are so similar in the business practices people complain about. Are you sure you're not just on the supplier side of Apple and the consumer side of Amazon?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#466

Post by taeric »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #440
taeric wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't confuse criticism of the FTC with praise for Amazon here. The FTC seems to be continuing weak cases, and at least some of us view that as very problematic. If we are going to rebuild some of the surrounding rules such that these practices are illegal, I'm all for it. If it turns out that I'm wrong and they do manage to make the market healthier with a suit against Amazon, great. This doesn't look strong in that…

there's no need, as the practices are already illegal, and the rules are already built, and the FTC is already filing strong cases like this one the criticism of this latest case, however, reeks of corporate worship from folks that know that Amazon is in the wrong (as the complaint documents)

This is not a strong case, is what a lot of us are asserting.

You can disagree there, but realize our disagreement here isn't that Amazon is a good company. It is on the strength of this case. It really feels like one that is being brought more for optics than otherwise.

I say this as someone that thought they should have had a strong case against Microsoft buying Activision. And yet, just look how that went. Maybe I'm wrong. Shouldn't take too long for us to find out, all told. I remember the stories of what Walmart did and still does in retail, though. It is obscene to see how that has played out in time.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#467

Post by civilitty »

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…

My favorites are HILETGO, KeeYees, AITRIP, "Oi ya gai", Treedix, and Gikfun.

I bought products from all these Amazon vendors last year, hilariously they're still around.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#468

Post by avereveard »

barryrandall wrote: post #365
karaterobot wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And the vast majority of the products are just rebrands from Alibaba. As a matter of fact, there's an entire economy centered around finding products on Alibaba to resell on Amazon.

It's a super interesting segment there are like millions details for the system to work even if the basic product is the same you can have your own barcode and serial number label attached, you can personalize the packaging, you will have to translate the manual, the are entire microverticals that exist just between the no brand manufacturer and the guy flipping the product on a marketplace even before shipping takes it out of the factory you're already paying like four or more services provider, plus coordinators to make all that happen.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#469

Post by thomastjeffery »

mrraj wrote: post #444
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…

From the Bloomberg article : "Chuck Gregorich, who sells fire pits and outdoor furniture, says turning a profit on Amazon is getting harder. One of his popular fire pits costs $200, of which Amazon takes $112 for its commission, warehouse storage, delivery and advertising. That leaves him with $88 to pay the manufacturer, ship the product in from China and cover his overhead." I have a hard time sympathizing here. Th…

Considering they have to pay 56% of their revenue to Amazon, how do you expect them to be able to afford locally manufactured products?

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#470

Post by taeric »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #435
taeric wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But can publishers live without Amazon? My point is that that question was never asked: practically all of the publishers that sell on Amazon's marketplace - including Amazon Publishing - agree that they want DRM incorporated into Amazon's digital marketplace platform.

Almost certainly they would be fine, given some time. Is why they were willing to strong arm Amazon into changing terms on how they sell ebooks.

And you seem to be dodging my point? My assertion/wager/whatever is that the publishers actively want it so that Amazon has to have DRM on their devices and sales. Just as they want it on libraries lending. Do I /know/ this? No. That is why I worded it as something that would shock me.

I agree that my willingness to wager on this would go down as I extend it to my larger guess, that they also have terms covering things that Amazon publishes. That said, it lowers my willingness, but it does not seem beyond the pale.

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