What's the alternative?
Nationalize all online selling, and have a central pricing authority?
Where does one draw the line, with an interest in not taking it to the extreme?
FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
541–550 of 930 posts
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that AWS is actually not a part of this lawsuit. So that is mostly not relevant.
Is that explicitly the case? Because the same antics apply to the marketplace and the copying of ecosystem participant services there too..
Is what explicitly the case? The PDF for the allegations of this case are in the link. No mention of AWS.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s the problem here? If you don’t have a durable competitive advantage then you’re going to get eaten up. First movers should not get a license to continue to reap a profit in a competitive market absent real innovation, which would come in the form of reputation (trademark) or technology (patent). Drop shippers who can be displaced by Amazon in the way you discuss have neither. They already made a profit on the…
They aren't being eaten because of innovation, they are being eaten because of monopolization.
The person you are responding to was saying that dropshippers are being eaten because the products they are selling lack innovation.
For example, Amazon cannot swoop in and sell a cheaper Amazon Basics version of a product to which you own a critical patent.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but the argument is that drop-shippers aren’t really producing any value. It’s not like they’re putting banners over their product pics saying “hey, you know you can buy this exact same product for like half the price on alibaba if you’re willing to wait a couple more weeks for it right?”. I don’t like Amazon consolidating this much power either but if they can push you out of your business that easily you weren…
Show me a business that Amazon couldn't destroy just for kicks. Also, it's not like you have any choices. If you manufacture your products yourself, you have to fund a massive venture to handle the workload. If you outsource the products, then the companies you pay to manufacture your stuff can easily make knockoffs and then let drop shippers undercut you with inferior versions of your own products. Look at a lot of…
Apple Iphone, airpods, ipad, macbook. Google search. Coke. Boeing. Caterpillar. Goldman Sachs. AirBnB. Exxon. AutoDesk. BlackRock. CME. Costco. JP Morgan Chase. Mastercard, Visa, Nike, TSMC and a thousand others.
They started out as a retailer, and opened up a bunch of their infrastructure to competitors. The idea that they'd make it easy for competitors using their infrastructure to beat them makes zero sense.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but the argument is that drop-shippers aren’t really producing any value. It’s not like they’re putting banners over their product pics saying “hey, you know you can buy this exact same product for like half the price on alibaba if you’re willing to wait a couple more weeks for it right?”. I don’t like Amazon consolidating this much power either but if they can push you out of your business that easily you weren…
Show me a business that Amazon couldn't destroy just for kicks. Also, it's not like you have any choices. If you manufacture your products yourself, you have to fund a massive venture to handle the workload. If you outsource the products, then the companies you pay to manufacture your stuff can easily make knockoffs and then let drop shippers undercut you with inferior versions of your own products. Look at a lot of…
It’s not connecting for me how breaking up monopolies is going to stop Chinese clones of Western products from winning price wars. It might change how the margin gets carved up between the people who make the clones and various middlemen but how would it stop the overall trend of cloned products?
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why shouldn't they? You've arranged to have product you didn't create shipped to a warehouse you don't operate to be stored by a system you don't maintain to be sold on a storefront under a brand you made up and that you didn't create to be fulfilled by a shipping apparatus instead of you going to the UPS Store. What exactly are YOU doing here that merits a payday? Mediating a relationship between Amazon and a Chines…
If it's legal they should do it because it's evidently profitable. If it's not legal then they shouldn't do it because it's illegal. Which is really the question at hand. You're criticism seems to be grounded in a distaste for the kind of business being done (and I think it's quite fair to be critical of the business model based on cheap Chinese labor). But that's not really relevant to the question of did Amazon uti…
> If it's legal they should do it because it's evidently profitable.
Is it? The moaning from higher in the comment tree seems to disagree with that assertion.
Maybe it was once profitable, but it seems as Amazon's reputation for hosting tons of cheap resold goods gets worse, it's becoming significantly less so. I personally have known for years that it's possible to oftentimes find the gadgets sold for $15-20 on Amazon on AliExpress for a few bucks. This isn't exactly arcane information anymore.
> You're criticism seems to be grounded in a distaste for the kind of business being done (and I think it's quite fair to be critical of the business model based on cheap Chinese labor).
My criticism is that the same people who cry from the rooftops about how free commerce is essential and how they have a right to sell marked up goods under any name they like to people who can't trace their supply chain have zero basis to complain when consumers get wise to their shenanigains and go elsewhere. It's literally this kind of "business owner"'s fault that Amazon is becoming near unusable now. I'm not shocked one bit that Amazon is cracking the whip; their reputation is on the line and has been trending steadily down for years.
"Buyer beware" they chant. Until the buyers start bewaring, and then they start whining about unfair competition and high fees for their store that is entirely operated by a third party and literally cannot exist without it.
Amazon is no angel here either of course. They have monopolized the absolute shit out of online retail, one of the ways they did was offering reseller services and getting businesses on their platform in the first place. Neither "side" of this is right, per se. Both of them would send me as a customer up the proverbial river to make a single dollar. As far as I'm concerned, them fighting in court is strictly entertainment, apart from whatever precedents get set that might affect other businesses I actually give a shit about down the line.
But like, the businesses I give a shit about are like, local ones. Ones run by people, to serve people. Not ones pulling tag clouds from trending social media topics or buying ad space on instagram to sell an egg beater shaped like a cat for $35 that they got from a Chinese manufacturer for $5.50/10,000 and dropshipped to people. This is just that, with an extra step. And the entity that's the extra step is realizing how raw of a deal it is, and they want a heftier cut to put up with these middle men. And on that particular point I don't blame them one bit.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple mostly prevents narrow targeting on iOS now
So basically, Apple's focus on user privacy had the knock-on effect of ruining Amazon's potential competition? That's astoundingly rich
Amazon's "potential competition" in this case is driven by ads via Meta (or maybe Google). I'm all for Apple preventing Meta from spying on me, even if it makes it hard for small companies to advertise to me.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#548In my opinion, as an ex-employee, Amazon is intentionally abusive to its sellers, content creators, customers, and employees. I'll never buy or sell anything on Amazon again (or patron their related businesses, like Zappos, Abe Books, etc.), but I hope this lawsuit changes things for those who do.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#549FBA 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…
Go sell in Temu or Walmart. No one is stopping you.
Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power
#550Earlier 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…
Disclaimer: Former FBA seller here. > So every time you think you've got just the right size/weight/price balance you get screwed. And where else are you going to go? You've skirted around the obvious question: Why did you pick FBA to begin with? Amazon sellers existed long before FBA. They did their own shipping, so almost none of those fees apply. Many sellers continue to do well on the Amazon platform while not be…
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