561–570 of 727 posts
What is the difference between this and the store brands at supermarkets?
Not much. Walmart crushed an art supply company by enticing them in, copying the product at a lower quality and price, then slowly reduced shelf space of the other guy as he deflated. He ended up worse off than when he started.
About 10 years ago I met the head of IT for B&H cameras in NYC. Among many things, he was in charge of the hosting for their online store. After he complained about dealing with physical servers, I asked him if he had ever considered using AWS ec2 for the website, and he replied that his boss refused because he believed that Amazon would pull data on B&H products and use it to compete more effectively. I'm not sure t…
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> Next time you want to buy something from Amazon, I would encourage you to find the seller's website directly or find them on eBay. eBay charges less seller fees and is not in the business of selling products directly. Last time I bought an item off eBay, it arrived shipped via Amazon Prime. Pretty sure the seller just bought it off Amazon and shipped it to my house... it was a weird turn of events. It wasn't a bran…
This is a common arbitrage tactic. Seller carries no inventory, lists multiple products on eBay for slightly higher than the Amazon price, and buys/ships from Amazon if anyone buys the eBay listing.
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It's almost like there should probably be some oversight on one of the most powerful entities on the planet to stop these anti-competitive practices.
Regulating them to a pure marketplace is the best outcome we an hope for, i.e. require them to divest any product they sell in the marketplace. India took some steps in that direction last year. Why not in the US?
America went from filing >50 antitrust lawsuits in the 1970s to ~5 in the past 2 decades.
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I have been chastised for not locking my desk for this exact concern. It does happen
Don’t let anyone chastise you for this. Most desk locks are easy to pick. Also, there are like 3 keys to have on your keychain to open like 80% of all manufactured locks like the ones in furniture. Deviant Ulam, a pen tester, gives a lot of talks on this topic.
Similarly, if you're presenting externally, it's a good idea to close open applications that are not relevant to prevent info leaks from Alt-Tabbing.
Actually having a competitor pay someone to come into your office to pick locks etc. is rare, comes with criminal liability and is easily detectable on security cameras.
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Yes. Anti-monopoly laws are about overall society health, not just consumer protection. Having only a few large companies controlling large segments has massive negative effects on suppliers, employee wages, etc. etc.
You might wish that this was the case, but in the US, the anti-trust law doesn't work this way. The law doesn't prohibit monopoly by itself. Monopolization is only prohibited if it restrains trade, or if the monopoly position was improperly gained. If Amazon attains monopoly position through superior products, innovation, or business acumen, it is very much legal in the US[1]. I think it's hard to argue that Amazon u…
Whether these could be sufficiently proved is a whole other matter.
What is the difference between this and the store brands at supermarkets?
we should really stop thinking there is always a direct parallel between web and physical equivalent. On the surface they look alike but the reality is that they are fundamentally different in scale and personalization/targeting/tracking possibilities which makes the online case completely different than the physical case. I can see all the products at costco, I cannot see all products on amazon for example. Besides,…
amazon doesn't have a monopoly in online retail, and i can go to any other website just as easily. far more easily than you can drive to a different store.
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> What really is the issue? This issue us that Amazon also dictates what you are allowed to sell your product for elsewhere. It would be one thing if they just used your own data and created a competing product, but the fact you cannot sell your product cheaper elsewhere is the issue.
Sorry, maybe I'm too tired to understand this, but why can't you do that exactly?
Anticompetitive practices include activities like price fixing, group boycotts, and exclusionary exclusive dealing contracts or trade association rules, and are generally grouped into two types: agreements between competitors, also referred to as horizontal conduct.