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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

#581

Post by devnullbrain »

afavour wrote: post #499
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.

If Bezos were using this Washington Post for this purpose a member of the newsroom would immediately leak it. It would be a career defining story for that journalist. The fact that we’ve heard nothing strongly suggests it isn’t happening.

Just as the fact nobody is testing nuclear weapons suggests they don't exist.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#582

Post by berniedurfee »

8note wrote: post #555
BizarroLand wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think Amazon could destroy apple or Walmart just for kicks. Aramco? Air Canada? Samsung? Memory Express? Digikey? McMaster Carr? McDonald's? The Big R? Cantillion? Texas Instruments? "Show me a business" is quite vague

Why not McMaster Carr or even Digikey?

I’m sure Amazon has put a sizable dent in their sales without even really trying.

Amazon now has special search tools for buying fasteners that make it easier to find exactly what you need.

Prices are cheap, risk is high, but prices are cheap.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#583

Post by danielmarkbruce »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #469
mrraj wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They don't have to. They could get their own distribution channel. Distribution is a thing, you can't just complain that you don't have it for free.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#584

Post by dgreensp »

There are always so many blindly pro-business comments on stories like this, like when the Theranos stuff was happening, people were saying "come on, she was just pitching big returns and innovations like any start-up does," ignoring the difference between pitching and straight-up lying or deliberately misleading investors about current facts. Similarly, it seems like many commenters are defending Amazon not based on the facts or legalities of the situation, but just from a place of being more emotionally sympathetic to a giant corporation trying to make a lot of money through various business tactics.

We don't have a surplus of regulation in the US (contrary to what Republicans who want to get rid of the EPA, FDA, etc would say). When we actually have laws that say things like, you can't union-bust, you can't defraud investors, you can't behave monopolistically--and there may be subtleties to those laws that most people don't understand--and companies go so far as to violate those laws, it's a very good thing when they face consequences.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#585

Post by danielmarkbruce »

22289d wrote: post #537
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #474

Earlier 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…

> What exactly are YOU doing here that merits a payday? The hard part. Finding a product people want. If that were so easy, Amazon would just be a store, no sellers. That part they can't do themselves.

If you can do the hard part, then do all the easy parts and leave amazon out of the equation.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#586

Post by danielmarkbruce »

blibble wrote: post #347
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.

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…

Yeah, there is no risk spending billions on fulfillment centers. Amazon has never blown billions by spending too much on that.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#587

Post by wahern »

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.

Not to be confused (as I was) with FOB, free on board, a term in commercial sales law, especially wrt international shipping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOB_(shipping) I wouldn't be surprised if the similarity in acronyms isn't coincidental as in the abstract there's some conceptual, if not legal, overlap, and Amazon may have been aiming for something that read like authoritative legalese--the legal department must "always be selling" no less than the sales department. But neither would I be surprised if it was coincidental.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#588

Post by ameister14 »

trogdor wrote: post #543
ameister14 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm aware.

They are really saying, though, that without barriers to entry and in a competitive market, players that don't innovate don't survive.

>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).

The problem with that is that this is not a competitive market, so the player that wins is not innovating, they just have market power because of their size.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#589

Post by eslaught »

heleninboodler wrote: post #400
m463 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The UPPERCASENONSENSENAMES are so obvious it makes me wonder if this is a target-selection technique in the same vein as the 419 scammers use -- make it so only the most clueless people would ever buy your garbage product, so you get a lower percentage of people who are going to report you.

It's more like they flood the results so you literally can't find the quality product unless you know the brand name to search for. I can't be an expert in every vertical, so either I go to some sort of trusted review platform like Wirecutter, or I give up and buy whatever I can find on Amazon return decent reviews and hope for the best.

Re: FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power

#590

Post by wustangdan »

nwiswell wrote: post #362
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 can't help but think that Amazon should be replaced with a non-profit or regulated public utility that provides a single unified online marketplace, part of internet infrastructure like ICANN. Sellers would select among competing fulfillment services (warehouse+shipping). Platform referral fees would go toward customer remediation, anti-counterfeiting, and review integrity. I don't merely say this as a "fuck Amazon…

Don't you think if we turned USPS into this it would be a another billions of dollars a year waste for taxpayers? Do we really need to be subsidizing drop shippers?

> Amazon is not marshalling new capital to innovate or improve its digital marketplace. Rather, Amazon simply owns digital real estate and extracts rent, like some kind of futuristic dystopian corpo-baron.

What on earth are you on about? They own a url.

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