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Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

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Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#71

Post by foobarian »

vivekd wrote: post #21

Am I reading this right? Amazon accepted advertisers hawking junk ads which made ad prices more expensive and gave less relevant ads to their customers. This can't be a violation of any law or ethical rules... Does anyone seriously think serving only good and relevant ads is an ethical obligation. Can't retailers accept ads from anyone without vetting for quality control. The only thing I can think of here is FTC is…

Wait until you hear what that other company did. They inserted a whole extra ad slot in the search results! Half the organic results are now below the fold. sob

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#72

Post by metabagel »

WalterBright wrote: post #60
metabagel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer harm wasn’t originally a requirement for antitrust enforcement. It was added by conservative jurists mostly to make it difficult to successfully bring antitrust cases. And hey, it worked!

> It was added by conservative jurists mostly to make it difficult to successfully bring antitrust cases. Other than harm to consumers, what do you say is the harm from a trust? After all, aren't high prices an indicator of a monopoly? > And hey, it worked! And maybe it should. Imagine the hellfire and damnation stemming from having a free browser! I suppose I'll be damned forever for providing a free implementation…

(sigh) I think you're a lost cause, but maybe someone else will read this.

Monopolies tend to keep growing until they are broken up. Monopolies don't have to charge high prices to consumers if they can increase their profits at the expense of sellers. In the case of Amazon, sellers may be authors or publishers who get squeezed. They may be small businesses. They may be big businesses. There is additional harm to the consumer from the distorted marketplace which results.

You may not be aware, but Microsoft engaged in a lot of monopolistic activity, including preventing OEMs from including the BEOS operating system as a dual boot operation on systems which shipped with Windows. You may also not be aware that Microsoft tried to get Apple to kill their own browser, a.k.a. "knife the baby". Google it.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#73

Post by brucethemoose2 »

karaterobot wrote: post #34
vivekd wrote: post #21

Am I reading this right? Amazon accepted advertisers hawking junk ads which made ad prices more expensive and gave less relevant ads to their customers. This can't be a violation of any law or ethical rules... Does anyone seriously think serving only good and relevant ads is an ethical obligation. Can't retailers accept ads from anyone without vetting for quality control. The only thing I can think of here is FTC is…

Yeah, this was my reaction too. They run shitty ads and serve shitty search results: fair enough, take your business elsewhere. I'm not sure what the story is. I feel I must be missing something, because it's the FTC raising a stink and not just Vice. Whether it has merit or not, the FTC presumably is not just trying to get clicks. I'll wait until another (better) news source provides additional context before formin…

Here lies the issue:

> take your business elsewhere

You can't necessarily do that. Amazon is a pseudo monopoly.

But if the FTC is trying to use that as antitrust evidence against Amazon, it feels like a weak angle. Which is not a good sign given their recent history.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#74

Post by metabagel »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #40
metabagel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It proves they are a monopoly and harming consumers. Consumer harm is a keystone of antitrust enforcement.

It proves they are a monopoly It might show harm, but in no way does prove monopoly.

It does prove monopoly, because it demonstrates the exercise of monopoly power.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#75

Post by taeric »

WalterBright wrote: post #67
taeric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The case against Microsoft was that they used revenue from other markets to offer a browser for free so that they could prevent a competition in the browser space... There is an argument that the browser is a feature, not a product. But that is not the case for back then.

Both parties offered a free browser. Boo-hoo. Have you noticed that vast categories of computer programs are free today? Do you realize that every one of those was funded by revenue obtained elsewhere? That whole anti-trust case was chock full of jaw-dropping absurdities. BTW, the D Language Foundation is funded by donations. We charge $0 for our products. Anyone can also fork it and do whatever they please with the…

This is largely true, of course, but also a complete non sequitur? There have been free and donation based things for a long time. Shareware was very awesome, to me.

But to pretend Microsoft was not engaging in questionable practices feels very bullshit heavy. And an equivalency game here is very discrediting to both arguments.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#76

Post by steveBK123 »

foobarian wrote: post #71
vivekd wrote: post #21

Am I reading this right? Amazon accepted advertisers hawking junk ads which made ad prices more expensive and gave less relevant ads to their customers. This can't be a violation of any law or ethical rules... Does anyone seriously think serving only good and relevant ads is an ethical obligation. Can't retailers accept ads from anyone without vetting for quality control. The only thing I can think of here is FTC is…

Wait until you hear what that other company did. They inserted a whole extra ad slot in the search results! Half the organic results are now below the fold. sob

I buy a newspaper and half the pages are ads!!!

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#77

Post by dboreham »

taeric wrote: post #54
WalterBright wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The case against Microsoft was based on Microsoft giving away a free browser. That never made any antitrust sense - no consumer harm was ever demonstrated. Ironically, today every platform includes a free browser.

The case against Microsoft was that they used revenue from other markets to offer a browser for free so that they could prevent a competition in the browser space... There is an argument that the browser is a feature, not a product. But that is not the case for back then.

It wasn't so much offering a browser for free as compelling PC vendors to not bundle their competitor's browser. You might of course argue that a PC should have zero browsers bundled...

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#78

Post by steveBK123 »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #17

Vice’s site is basically unusable on mobile between the rendering issues and ads.

This is always an entertaining angle on the medias war on ad tech.. the fact that most of their websites are loaded with said awful ad tech.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#79

Post by WalterBright »

taeric wrote: post #75
WalterBright wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both parties offered a free browser. Boo-hoo. Have you noticed that vast categories of computer programs are free today? Do you realize that every one of those was funded by revenue obtained elsewhere? That whole anti-trust case was chock full of jaw-dropping absurdities. BTW, the D Language Foundation is funded by donations. We charge $0 for our products. Anyone can also fork it and do whatever they please with the…

This is largely true, of course, but also a complete non sequitur? There have been free and donation based things for a long time. Shareware was very awesome, to me. But to pretend Microsoft was not engaging in questionable practices feels very bullshit heavy. And an equivalency game here is very discrediting to both arguments.

What is "questionable" about it?

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#80

Post by Karunamon »

WalterBright wrote: post #45
vivekd wrote: post #21

Am I reading this right? Amazon accepted advertisers hawking junk ads which made ad prices more expensive and gave less relevant ads to their customers. This can't be a violation of any law or ethical rules... Does anyone seriously think serving only good and relevant ads is an ethical obligation. Can't retailers accept ads from anyone without vetting for quality control. The only thing I can think of here is FTC is…

The case against Microsoft was based on Microsoft giving away a free browser. That never made any antitrust sense - no consumer harm was ever demonstrated. Ironically, today every platform includes a free browser.

Classifying what Microsoft got in trouble for as merely "giving away a free browser" shows that their PR campaign was a resounding success.

It wasn't just having IE be distributed with the operating system, or even having it be the default (as the EU later got upset about). They would have been perfectly fine in this position had they not attempted to use it anti-competitively: coercing OEMs to not include competing browsers like Netscape on pain of financial penalties.

That is textbook monopoly abuse.

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