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Amazon Is a Monopoly (marketplacepulse.com)

340 points by juokaz 12 hours ago | hide | past | web | favorite | 230 comments
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blairanderson 9 hours ago [-]

I run a consulting company for Amazon suppliers. We have roughly 2-dozen Amazon
suppliers and our first-hand experience is that Amazon is absolutely stifling
competition/business to the detriment of customer.
The biggest problem is `agreements that restrain trade` is a monopoly practice that
happens across the board. They're a black box AND have tiny support systems for their
marketplace.
One recent example. A client was on track to be selling $X-million this year of some
appliances. Our client was forced to to stop selling because of trump tariffs. Amazon won't
accept a "higher price" from our little company that only sells $Xm/year. I guarantee they're
talking everyday to the teams at frigidaire/honeywell/GE/etc.
If their systems would transparent this wouldn't be a problem but their algorithms have
blackbox variables for the big brands.
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scarface74 8 hours ago [-]

People have been complaining about basically the same thing with respect to Walmart
for decades.
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dylan604 7 hours ago [-]

Exactly this. I've worked for a company where Walmart was the largest retailer
for their product (DVDs). They were constantly being beat up to lower their
wholesale prices while also demanding a separate SKU with edited content.
Amazon is no different in this case (except not demanding edited content).
Whenever I asked about this, they said you still had to provide product for sale
wherever the customers were. The large retailers all want you to believe that
you can make up for the lower price in vast quantities their store front
provides.
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Findeton 1 hour ago [-]

Yeah, there's nothing inherently bad about monopolies. The problem
only arises when monopolies are forced into people by the government.
Instead, people choose Amazon on their own.
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alexgmcm 1 hour ago [-]

But Telecoms and the old Robber Barons had monopolies without
government forcing people.
I mean there are areas where peoples only choice of ISP is
Comcast and equally the Government wasn't forcing people to buy
Standard Oil.
Any monopoly is bad because it allows them to ignore consumers
as there is no competition.
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ernst_klim 29 minutes ago [-]

> But Telecoms and the old Robber Barons had monopolies
without government forcing people.
Telecoms were totally built by govs. Back in the days govs
were obsessed with controlling the means of
communication, so all the related biz was due to the
monopoly right.
> AT&T established a network of subsidiaries in the United
States and Canada that held a government-authorized
phone service monopoly, formalized with the Kingsbury
Commitment, throughout most of the twentieth century.
As for robber barons, that's mostly an antitrust myth to
scare people
> After 1900 it did not try to force competitors out of
business by underpricing them.[37] The federal
Commissioner of Corporations studied Standard's
operations from the period of 1904 to 1906[38] and
concluded that "beyond question ... the dominant position
of the Standard Oil Co. in the refining industry was due to
unfair practices—to abuse of the control of pipe-lines, to
railroad discriminations, and to unfair methods of
competition in the sale of the refined petroleum products".
[39] Due to competition from other firms, their market
share had gradually eroded to 70 percent by 1906 which
was the year when the antitrust case was filed against
Standard, and down to 64 percent by 1911 when Standard
was ordered broken up[40] and at least 147 refining
companies were competing with Standard including Gulf,
Texaco, and Shell.
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Nursie 9 minutes ago [-]

Utter, utter bollocks. See - Microsoft and the stagnation of the
web around IE 6.
There's plenty of problems with market capture by a single entity,
government or no.
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NeonVice 6 hours ago [-]

This can benefit the consumer at the expense of the supplier. The lower
Walmart can lower the price, the lower Walmart can offer the product.
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Isn’t that basically Adam Smith Capitalism 101 that any commodity
good’s profit tends toward $0?
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dodobirdlord 1 hour ago [-]

More or less. In a competitive system profit margins should trend
downward. They won't necessarily reach 0 in the limit, because at
some point you'll reach the point where everyone has something
better to do with their resources than move into your market and
undercut you (and you have no better prospect by undercutting
anyone else). A profit margin of 0 is a stable equilibrium, but
equilibria can also be reached when everyone's profit margin is
sufficiently low that the fixed costs of starting a competitive
business are larger than cumulative expected profits over a long
time horizon.
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TheOtherHobbes 0 minutes ago [-]

This factoid has failed so many times it's astonishing it
keeps being repeated. Any competitive system tends
towards monopoly/oligoply. Market mechanisms encourage
monopoly/cartel price/payment fixing that benefits
shareholders/owners through strong-arming of downstream
businesses, and - depending on the market - of customers.
There is no "moving into the market", because as soon as a
market consolidates around one or $very_small_number of
players, cost of entry and market capture make competition
impossible. So competition ends.
This is where we are now with tech. It's basically
impossible for anyone new to compete with Amazon,
Google, Facebook, etc. It's also where we are with
established players in other sectors such as Airbus.
The only two things that can break the logjam are
government action to split up monopolists, and the
invention of a new market space with a viably low cost of
entry.
cylinder 1 hour ago [-]

That doesn't invalidate the point
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weddpros 7 hours ago [-]

and the same goes abroad, in Europe and everywhere else
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joe_the_user 5 hours ago [-]

That sounds pretty terrible but I'm not sure if it relates to Amazon being a monopoly
in the usual sense.
Ford motor company is huge and may have, for all I know, abusive practices towards
it's suppliers. But Ford is certainly in the oligopoly, not monopoly category. Ford could
be absolutely the only game in town for a given small or medium sized company but
this doesn't mean Ford controls markets on the supplier end, which I believe is the
measure of monopoly control.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
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riffraff 1 hour ago [-]

isn't that monopsony? I think the situation for Amazon is different that for
Ford, but I'd agree it seems `single buyer` rather than `single provider`
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laughinghan 7 hours ago [-]

What does "Amazon won't accept" mean? Doesn't Amazon just show the lowest price
of all its current suppliers, and if the current lowest-priced supplier runs out, it shows
the next lowest price?
(No fan of Amazon here, just trying to understand what you're saying.)
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lotyrin 7 hours ago [-]
I imagine this is a supplier (as in B2B, Amazon is negociating prices for buying
bulk stock from them to sell on Amazon as Amazon), not a marketplace seller.
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social_quotient 9 hours ago [-]

For better coloring which tariff specifically?
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https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement/301Investig... This was first
implemented at 10% then pushed to 25% a few months later
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Arrezz 12 hours ago [-]

How we actually define a company to be a monopoly seems to be somewhat arbitrary? I
agree that Amazon engages in anticompetitive behaviour but I'm not sure that it can control
prices or exclude competition to that extent? I mean every company can affect that, at what
point does it become problematic?
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Alupis 10 hours ago [-]

> I'm not sure that it can control prices
Amazon very often competes directly with sellers on the Marketplace, and often
undercuts them on price.
There are products they sell below the purchase cost, sometimes below
manufacturing cost. You can't compete with that unless you have piles of money to
burn.
They sell at a loss until they shake everyone loose from a product, then dominate all
sales of that products on the Marketplace, raising prices to profitability when they feel
like it.
Don't forget they get all product sales information and statistics from every seller on
the Marketplace - basically all the market research necessary to pick only "winner"
products to sell. Then, when they feel like it, they require sellers to produce original
invoices proving purchase of the items. These invoices conveniently contain all
necessary information for Amazon to start buying the items directly themselves so
that they can sell the item at a loss until you can't compete anymore, leaving Amazon
as the sole source for the product.
Wanna be part of Vendor Central - selling directly to Amazon? They dictate the pricing
and strong-arm you into selling exclusively to them in many cases. There is no
negotiation - there is no adjusting pricing based on quantity ordered. And as much as
people might want to think Amazon just buys enough quantity to get what they want
- they don't. They just tell you what it will be.
> or exclude competition to that extent?
They can ban you from their Marketplace (the largest consumer Marketplace in the
world) at will, with little to zero recourse on your part, via an opaque "Seller
Performance" team that only responds to email, sometimes, and provides vague
responses to what policies you might have broken.
That is, if you somehow get the eye of the Seller Performance team upon you. The
reasons they go after certain sellers and leave others alone are as mysterious as the
team behind the decisions.
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Dylan16807 1 hour ago [-]

> They sell at a loss until they shake everyone loose from a product, then
dominate all sales of that products on the Marketplace, raising prices to
profitability when they feel like it.
This has actually happened? Can you point me to examples with price charts?
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catmanjan 15 minutes ago [-]

If he could amazon would be getting a spanking in court right now, I
wouldn't be surprised if it were true, but as for evidence...
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mk89 3 hours ago [-]

>The reasons they go after certain sellers and leave others alone are as
mysterious as the team behind the decisions.
Is there any report from sellers that were banned just because? I mean,
authentic sellers, not fake etc.
Edit: still googling, but it seems in many cases there is a ToS violation, like
multiple accounts, or shady practices. One seller got kicked because "we grew
up too quickly and we were unable to deliver in time". I am really wondering
which sellers got kicked despite being respectful of the rules. All of them,
including the user experience, because I think that's main reason amazon kicks
you out - if I can get scammed or my items don't ever make it on time, why
would I even bother using their service, instead of buying elsewhere?
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mikeash 9 hours ago [-]

So don’t sell on Amazon. There are tons of other options. Amazon is merely the
largest, not the only.
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Is that really still an option the bigger Amazon gets?
At what point is it a defacto monopoly? A huge share of people shop
exclusively on Amazon, particularly when compared to 10 years ago.
There's no sign it'll stop growing any time soon.
Choosing not to, or being prohibited from selling on Amazon effectively
blocks you out of a significant share of ecommerce sales. There's no way
around that.
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bko 7 hours ago [-]

Considering that e-commerce sales only make up about 12% of
retail sales in the US, I think Amazon and e-commerce would
have to get a lot bigger.
> The first quarter 2019 e-commerce estimate increased 12.4
percent (±1.1%) from the first quarter of 2018 while total retail
sales increased 2.7 percent (±0.4%) in the same period. E-
commerce sales in the first quarter of 2019 accounted for 10.2
percent of total sales
I don't think e-commerce is the right market. Most companies
selling widgets just want to get their goods in consumer's hands.
They don't really care how. Amazon makes it easy and does a lot
of the work but sets the terms. Otherwise they'd be going after
that 87.6% that's not done through e-commerce.
[0]
https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/www/data/pdf/ec_current.p...
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arkh 1 hour ago [-]

> A huge share of people shop exclusively on Amazon
People should ask why. Is it the prices? No. Is it the
discoverability? No. It's because when you have a problem with
whatever you bought you get reimbursed. No "call Samsung
hotline", no "we'll add this totally not free warranty package in
your cart".
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It takes more than “a significant share.” Being excluded from
Walmart blocks you from a significant share of retail sales but
they’re not a monopoly.
If the argument is that Amazon might become a monopoly in
coming years, I can totally see that. But I don’t see how it is one
now.
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headsoup 5 hours ago [-]

And what if, more and more, the products you want are only on Amazon,
because of the deals made or conditions set by them?
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That would be really bad, but we're very far from that point.
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Depends on what products you want doesn't it? I'm not
trying to be sarcastic, I've noticed an increasing tendency
to not be able to find some products online outside of
Amazon, or there is a significant price difference.
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kortilla 1 hour ago [-]

If your example is amazon is the only place to buy
products and at a super cheap price, it sounds like
amazon is great for the consumer for that product.
Even ignoring that, do you have an example of
products that don’t exist outside of amazon (other
than amazon labeled products).
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jnbiche 6 hours ago [-]

> So don’t sell on Amazon.
Whether or not any individual sells on Amazon has absolutely nothing to
do with their anti-competitive practices.
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That's true, but the viability of other options limits their ability to
set prices or exclude competition.
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kortilla 1 hour ago [-]

But it has absolutely everything to do with determination of
monopoly status. If a seller can simply stop selling on amazon
and sell with Walmart/EBay/whatever instead, amazon clearly has
no monopoly. Same on the customer side.
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joe_the_user 5 hours ago [-]

Monopolies are usually defined in terms of sellers controlling the prices of the
goods they sell, rather than the buyer forcing the seller to change price.
Perhaps there's another definition for this situation.
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URSpider94 4 hours ago [-]

There is. It’s called a monopsony, a market where there is only one
buyer.
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disposition2 10 hours ago [-]

Are the actions of Amazon any different from what Walmart has done in the
past? Just about all you describe, Walmart has been doing for 20+ years
(probably closer to 30)
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Yes and no. Until recently, Walmart hasn't had a Marketplace - so while
Walmart has (and does) exploit their vendors with pricing and what-not,
they haven't been able to wield that club against their competition
directly like Amazon does.
People have also been saying Walmart is quite anti-competitive for years
for what that's worth too.
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perl4ever 9 hours ago [-]

"Until recently, Walmart hasn't had a Marketplace"
No? When exactly did they start selling large numbers of items on
their website that aren't in stores?
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"Marketplace" refers to 3rd parties selling on the platform.
Until recently, Walmart.com was exclusively products sold
by Walmart - now they let 3rd parties list and sell products
too (just like Amazon).
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jldugger 3 hours ago [-]

Are you familiar with a planogram? Walmart the
physical location is a platform, with paid placement
for premium locations on a shelf. Same goes for
virtually all national retailers.
Hell, Frito even has their own employees stock the
shelves, which is why the chip aisle tends to look
immaculate compared to the rest of the store.
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Third parties have been selling at physical Walmart
stores beside store brands for decades. The same
with every drug chain.
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KingHenryVIII 7 hours ago [-]

If you read the article, it implies that Walmart is also due for scrutiny.
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toasterlovin 10 hours ago [-]

> Amazon very often competes directly with sellers on the Marketplace, and
often undercuts them on price.
If Amazon can actually compete with you in a given product niche, then you're
not bringing any value to the table (since they own the customer relationship,
the fulfillment, the logistics, etc.), so why do you deserve to make money?
There are a gazillion product categories on Amazon. There's no way they can
bring products to market in all of them. They focus their attention on markets
where brand differentiation isn't very important. Usually those markets are that
way because what consumers care about is price, convenience, and surpassing
some minimum level of quality. Those are the spaces where Amazon puts
forward their own product. And if your livelihood is tied to being a relatively
generic brand in a product category where consumers really only care about
convenience and price, then you need to find a different way to make it in the
world.
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Being on Amazon's Marketplace (the largest in the world), every sale
gives Amazon all the statistics needed to pick only guaranteed profitable
products. The sellers actually pay Amazon for the privilege of providing
Amazon with these market tests!
Then Amazon requires the seller to produce invoices showing purchase
of the items, usually with some sort of vague threat of suspending your
account if they can't "verify the authenticity" of your products. The
invoice, of course, has everything needed for Amazon to start sourcing
the product themselves - and now they know your cost.
So they proceed to purchase the product, sell it at a loss until you can't
hang anymore, and now Amazon is the sole source for the product.
It's brilliant, actually. But it's definitely Anti-Competitive.
Just like the "dumb pipes" argument with Net Neutrality - If you wanna
run a Marketplace, you shouldn't be allowed to "compete" in the very
same Marketplace. You should not be allowed to collect and then abuse
all the data the Marketplace produces.
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> Being on Amazon's Marketplace (the largest in the world),
every sale gives Amazon all the statistics needed to pick only
guaranteed profitable products.
No, it does not. They are missing the most important piece of
information: Cost of Goods Sold. They also don't know where you
sourced the product. Or which features are important to
customers and which are not.
> Then Amazon requires the seller to produce invoices showing
purchase of the items, usually with some sort of vague threat of
suspending your account if they can't "verify the authenticity" of
your products.
This is only for trademarked products where the trademark owner
has registered with Amazon. And the purpose is to protect
consumers: by requiring proof that a product has been sourced
from an authorize reseller, rather than some factory making knock
offs or somebody buying stolen goods.
> So they proceed to purchase the product, sell it at a loss until
you can't hang anymore, and now Amazon is the sole source for
the product.
The only sellers this alleged strategy would harm are sellers who
are selling a trademarked brand for which they are not
authorized. But why should those sellers even be on Amazon? And
how would this be any different than Amazon buying these
products directly from the manufacturer and being the only seller
on their website? In other words, they don't need to do what
you're alleging. They are free to just claim certain products as 1st
party only.
Separately:
I sell speaker wire on Amazon. I compete against their Amazon
Basics brand. I have a viable business that is growing. Because I
know more about this market and its weird little crevices than
Amazon ever will.
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> This is only for trademarked products where the
trademark owner has registered with Amazon
I can tell you first hand, this is not true. This is the "official
party line", as it were, but not true in practice. Particularly
if you FBA anything.
Get enough returns of a product and Amazon will freeze the
listing until you provide an invoice - FBA and FBM.
For us, "enough" returns was 4 on a single ASIN in a week,
out of the thousands we carry. It's a totally random system.
> I have a viable business that is growing
I wish you best of luck! In our case, we're an ecommerce
company operating our own warehouse and multiple sales
channels including our own websites. Amazon is but one of
those channels, and we don't rely on it for company
livelihood. I would be terrified to live solely off Amazon,
knowing the rug can be yanked out at any time for any
reason and with zero recourse. You can do everything right
and still get canned.
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kevinsundar 10 hours ago [-]

I think you're underestimating how complicated that is to do. If
you've worked at any massive company its easy to understand
how freaking hard it would be to have the sales department, the
manufacturing and product design department, finance, business
analytics, and seller auditing teams all working together in unison
to pull this off. Yes its worth their time doing this for a few
commodities everyone buys but theres no way the can do this for
every single product category. In fact Amazon doesn't even make
much margin off ecommerce. It's AWS. So it probably isnt even
worth their time.
Is it theoretically possible? Yes. Practically? At scale, its hard to
say for sure.
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lttlrck 10 hours ago [-]

This seems little different to walmart or any other grocer or
retailer with own brand products alongside other suppliers in their
‘marketplace’. Should bricks and mortar stores also be dumb
pipes?
Is there evidence of Amazon driving a company out of business by
abusing this position? If there is then that could be a problem.
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> Is there evidence of Amazon driving a company out of
business by abusing this position? If there is then that
could be a problem.
No, it really is not a problem. Amazon does not have a
monopoly on consumer purchases. If your livelihood is
dependent on selling on Amazon, a company which sells
tons of products first party, then you need to be prepared
from day one for the possibility that Amazon is going to
bring a product to market in your category under the
Amazon Basics brand, or that they will go directly to the
manufacturer whose products you are selling.
Period.
Amazon isn't running their business so you can make
money. They're running it so they can make money. As long
as they think their interests are aligned with yours, then
there's a chance for you to participate profitably on their
platform. The minute that changes, you better have a plan
B.
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Is that not a conflict of interest then?
To operate a 3rd Party Marketplace while also
harvesting said marketplace's data and then
deliberately targeting top products, killing those 3rd
parties in the process?
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They're not your lawyer. They're allowed to
have a conflict of interest. Especially one that
you are fully aware of going into the
relationship.
I just don't get it. Do you think someone
selling a generic product that only
differentiates on price has some unalienable
right to make money on Amazon.com? Or that
some wholesaler buying branded products has
an inalienable right to somehow not get
squeezed out when the only value they
provide is placing POs with a vendor?
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We're discussing anti-competitive
behavior, and it seems this is a clear
exhibition of that.
It's not about what intrinsic value any
particular seller can bring - it's whether
or not Amazon has become a defacto
monopoly and/or practices anti-
competitive behaviors.
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dodobirdlord 47 minutes ago [-]

> We're discussing anti-
competitive behavior, and it
seems this is a clear exhibition of
that.
It's not anti-competitive
behavior, it's just ordinary
competitive behavior. Sometimes
Amazon decides to compete with
the sellers on its platform, and
woe betide them when it
happens because Amazon is an
extremely competitive business.
Anti-competitive behavior is
when you interfere in someone
else's ability to compete with
you. No amount of outcompeting
competitors can make a business
anti-competitive. It's almost a
tautology.
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Amazon doesn’t have a
monopoly. They sell less than
Walmart. You can take your
products elsewhere. Your
problem is with Amazon doing on
their platform what every brick
and mortar does in their own
stores.
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bduerst 10 hours ago [-]

For years Amazon had banned Chromecast and AppleTV devices from it's entire
marketplace when they competed with their Firestick device.
Not only did Amazon not carry it, but Amazon also prevented third party sellers from
listing the competing devices as well. That is textbook anti-competitive behavior,
which is probably why Amazon finally started selling them again recently.
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But aren’t you kind of making the opposite point? While Amazon wouldn’t sell
AppleTVs and Chromecasts, neither Apple nor Google had any trouble reaching
customers. If Amazon was a monopoly that wouldn’t be the case.
Apple also sells third party hardware on their site. Should they be forced to sell
Dells besides their Macs?
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- If Google removed Amazon from search results, then that would be
anti-competitive behavior.
- If Apple banned the Amazon app from iTunes, then that would be anti-
competitive behavior.
You can still access Amazon in all these situations at amazon.com, and
just like with the chromecast and Apple TV, whether or not there is
access somewhere is irrelevant to the nature of the behavior being anti-
competitive. Amazon was being anti-competitive by banning competing
devices on it's - platform.
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Apple bans all sorts of apps from their store. Is every app that
Apple bans “anticompetitive”?
Google removes and deprioritizes sites all the time that breaks
rules. CVS stop selling cigarettes in their stores.
CloudFlare just kicked off 8Chan.
Spotify bans musicians. Which one of these are anti competitive
and which ones aren’t?
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xmprt 1 hour ago [-]

All of those scenarios are where there was a terms of
service violation. When Google or Apple decide to ban their
competition for no reason other than it being competition,
it's anti-competitive.
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lanevorockz 50 minutes ago [-]

Amazon can behave like that because they act as a store, by taking
responsibility for the delivery and covering returns/refunds. It means that
amazon incurs in Losses to be classified as such. To be honest, that is the
genius of amazon. A store backed ebay.
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StreamBright 25 minutes ago [-]

Pretty much how Apple does not sell other phone brands? Stores have the
power of deciding what they sell and what they do not sell. This is not anti-
competitive by default.
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trappist 6 hours ago [-]

Economist Israel Kirzner insisted that monopoly analysis is only applicable when the
possibility of competition is eliminated, either legally or by the producer's sole control
of the total supply of a resource necessary for the production of a good or service,
and that the term should therefore be defined as such. In which case Amazon is not a
monopoly, and we shouldn't be surprised to see continually falling prices and
increasing quality.
http://rationalargumentator.com/issue118/Kirzner3.html
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losteric 11 hours ago [-]

General understanding of monopolies is quite arbitrary because the general public is
ignorant, perhaps by design.
Wikipedia has a long but layman-accessible section on Europe's competition laws:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Law
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stcredzero 12 hours ago [-]

I agree that Amazon engages in anticompetitive behaviour but I'm not sure that it can
control prices or exclude competition to that extent?
Has Amazon come up with a way to dominate markets without controlling prices or
excluding competition? Right at this moment, my answer is, "maybe?"
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foota 10 hours ago [-]

The classical theory has been that it doesn't matter if you dominate the market
if you don't cause some harm (i.e., actively exclude competition or raise prices)
as a result.
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philipov 10 hours ago [-]

Likewise, if you cause harm, it doesn't matter if you technically dominate
the market. The key word is trust, not monopoly.
Cartels are also bad for markets, but aren't monopolies either.
Monopolies have become a deprecated technology, but vertical
integration lives on in new ways that resemble a feudal system more
than a single empire. The economy as a whole has gotten so big that
there is room for more than a single player at the top, and so we get
cartel-like behavior between the largest players instead of full-blown
monopolies. Each of them is large enough that they can ignore unrest
from their customer base, and as a result they have more incentive to
cooperate than to compete. The difference between Microsoft and Apple
isn't the quality of their product anymore, it's a brand of tribal identity.
As abusive, anti-competitive practices continue to be improved on, we
should not be constrained by outdated theories that only focus on 19th
and 20th century phenomena.
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As abusive, anti-competitive practices continue to be improved
on, we should not be constrained by outdated theories that only
focus on 19th and 20th century phenomena.
The same applies to censorship. Manufacturing Consent described
how the western powers could have the effect of censorship
without outright censorship, and that's from over 3 decades ago.
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danmaz74 9 hours ago [-]

The word is trust only because of historical reasons. At the time
when this became an issue, companies couldn't operate across US
state borders. The solution was to create trusts which owned the
various branches created in each state.
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Armisael16 10 hours ago [-]

That’s actually a newer theory dating back to Robert Bork’s 1978 book
The Antitrust Paradox. It is not at all clear that consumer welfare was a
goal of the Sherman Act.
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changoplatanero 11 hours ago [-]

I think we should call it hypercompetitive instead of anticompetitive.
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Why is that a more appropriate term for behaviors that reduce competition?
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Nasrudith 10 hours ago [-]

If sub-divided into how they do it perhaps? One would be "things that
anyone with enough scale and willingness to take low margins could
technically do" as opposed "things that serve only to lock out
competition".
For the later if there is a proprietary format on something major and it
shuts out competition for no benefit like say "screws only they
manufacture and cannot easily take other standards" that would be
"anti-competitive" as it does nothing to compete better.
For the previous say "better infastructure to lower per unit cost" and
producing at an industry standard percentage profit margin could be
called hypercompetitive as it does nothing to stop those with sufficient
capital from scaling up.
In practice however both are classically anti-competitive. The later would
by definition reduce the number of potential competitors to those with
more resources.
There could be some arguements about how they are relatively bad they
are and should be treated. Even if both should be "illegal" they are two
different types like say arson and murder.
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In your opinion why are behaviors that reduce competition bad? If the
answer is it harms consumers... Amazon isn't hurting consumers so you
should be okay with it?
Amazon got this big because no one wanted to be as customer obsessed
as Amazon. Not because they stifled competition.
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If they are reducing competition, they are hurting consumers.
Competition breeds innovation - lower prices, better customer
service, new ways of doing things... none of those things happen
without competition, because there is no incentive to improve.
Look at Comcast / AT&T regional monopolies, which started out
promising lower prices until they cornered markets then started
raising prices while lowering service quality... or, even before that,
Bell Labs suppressed inventions like early hard drives out of fear it
would hurt their telephone monopoly.
reply

> If they are reducing competition, they are hurting
consumers.
Not if they are reducing competition by virtue of causing
less-competitive businesses to lose market share. I feel like
there's some cart-before-horse going on in your
perspective on this. Competition is wonderful. Competition
is amazing. Competition is good for consumers because
competitive businesses drive less competitive businesses
out of business. Amazon is a perfect example of everything
we want to see, panning out in just the way we want.
Amazon has materially raised the bar of customer
satisfaction, and if Amazon's competition wants to stay in
business, they will have to do even better. I look forward to
seeing what they come up with!
reply

"Competition breeds innovation - lower prices, better
customer service, new ways of doing things... none of
those things happen without competition, because there is
no incentive to improve."
Those are the three things Amazon has done amazing at
(lower prices, better customer service, new ways of doing
things). Isn't that a paradox? You take the stance that only
competition can breed this but in this case Amazon has
done those things while still reducing competition. In fact,
it is helping consumers that has led to people buying things
on Amazon and it getting this big. Not the other way
around.
Is it that people are afraid that at some point Amazon
might stop doing these things? I agree that if what amazon
is doing has lead to higher prices, worse customer service,
and stagnant methods of doing things that would be bad.
But thats not whats happening here.
reply
adventured 10 hours ago [-]

> You take the stance that only competition can
breed this but in this case reducing competition has
breed these points too.
It's neither.
It wasn't active competition (or the lack of it, or it
being reduced) that generated that outcome. It was
Bezos (just as it was Sam Walton before him), he
dictated that approach as the basis for Amazon's
best likely ability to reach massive scale. There were
no possible alternatives, if the goal was to get very
large as a retailer. Amazon is Jeff Bezos, he has
raised it like a child from day one, totally in control
of what it is and what it became.
Bezos was facing a scenario of: approach it that way,
or Walmart will take care of it for you eventually and
make you redundant.
More precisely it was Bezos looking at the future and
having to compete with a Walmart that fully
awakened to online retailing. In that future forecast
sense it was motivated by the threat / fear of
competition that would inevitably crush a smaller
Amazon. And if it wasn't Amazon or Walmart,
someone would have done it most likely, Bezos
surely understood that; that the Internet would
make a mega platform like Amazon possible.
For another example of this premise in action:
Microsoft wasn't so wildly aggressive and competitive
due to the marketplace, or other competition or
animal spirits in the water, it was solely due to the
personality of Bill Gates. It mirrored his personality,
aggressive nature and competitiveness. Gates
ultimately made Microsoft in his image (that earlier
version of Microsoft anyway). He dictated what it
became, he controlled the growth and nature of its
culture (and once you set that in order, it flows in
that mold forward, a persistent mimic, until
something breaks it).
reply

This is my point exactly. Someone was going
to do it. Amazon did it. So if today its Amazon
and tomorrow someone else, why be up in
arms about it?
reply
Supermancho 9 hours ago [-]

> So if today its Amazon and tomorrow
someone else, why be up in arms about
it
Because it doesn't matter who
ultimately made an anti-competitive
world marketplace, it's still anti-
competitive and ultimately impossible
to run morally when you participate in it
in parallel. eg if ebay was undercutting
other people's auctions via buyout
prices under their own brand
reply

But doesn't the customer benefit
in that scenario? They get the
items they want for a lower price
from a brand they trust (they're
on their website for a reason).
And if the customer is
benefitting, isn't that the best
outcome of capitalism?
In that scenerio, and captialism
in general, eBay doesn't owe
sellers on its marketplace the
right to sell items at all. They've
just been given a chance to
make hay while the sun shines.
reply
Supermancho 4 hours ago [-

]
Benefits are not static.
What's good in the short
term, doesn't necessarily
mean it's good long term.
Following the capitalistic
ethos, once you have less
competition, you can raise
your price to match what
the customer can afford
(which is not competitive,
it's exploitative) as
opposed to what the
market will bear (because
there is no market, just a
limited or singular
purveyor). This is
economics 101 stuff. China
survives this by
government control and
investment in the
monopolistic companies
and ignores IP, allowing
small companies to have
opportunity to make
knock-offs and creating
limited theater attrition.
When these companies
start being noticed (either
profit impacts or potential
efficiency improvement
opportunities, whatever),
they are either purchased
into the fold or forced out
of business by
governmental mandate.
The US is not unique, but
it's also not as free, for
reasons that people don't
point out very often...ie
the draconian enforcement
of IP is multi-edged.
reply
kevinsundar 3 hours
ago [-]
I agree with
everything you say.
However, everything
you mentioned
about how Amazon
could act in the
future is
speculation. I agree
that when / if they
start raising prices
they should be
considered a
monopoly and
heavily scrutinized
and possibly
regulated. But at
this point, there is
no justification in
doing that as they
haven't crossed that
line.
I feel like a lot of
people jump to
attack Amazon on
the basis of what
they could do
(because they're so
big) instead of what
they're doing
currently.
reply
adventured 10 hours ago [-]

> So if today its Amazon and tomorrow
someone else, why be up in arms about
it?
Because - I believe - people are
overwhelmingly reactionary, easy to
excite and short-term focused.
Microsoft was the end of the world.
Google is the end of the world. IBM
before them. Yesterday Walmart was
the destroyer of worlds that was going
to kill every small business in every
town in America. Countless articles
were written for a decade espousing
that as fact, inevitable, unstoppable.
They were pure evil, everyone knew it.
Nobody could compete with them. That
reactionary emotionalism against The
Corporate Overlords, is now retrained
on Amazon as the destroyer of worlds,
the evil entity that will crush everyone.
Tomorrow it will be someone else.
The most interesting story about
Amazon - which is being almost
universally ignored - is that the growth
in their retail business has already
mostly stopped (some shareholders are
finally noticing). In the next few years
that growth will continue to trend
toward between zero and low single
digits. The mighty retail conquerer of
worlds is running out of retail growth
and mostly that is being ignored
because it doesn't bolster the story of
the moment that Amazon is going to
eat everything.
reply
malandrew 11 hours ago [-]

If a company is orders of magnitudes better at providing value for
consumers such that competitors can't even keep up and go out of
business, is that anti-trust behavior?
reply
OrgNet 7 hours ago [-]

> I agree that Amazon engages in anticompetitive behaviour but I'm not sure that it
can control prices
https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/08/05/2129248/amazon-sque...
reply
higherkinded 7 hours ago [-]

No it's not, and you still have a burden of a proof on your shoulders. It probably is, indeed,
kept up by some degree of anti-competitive practices but it's still not a monopoly but a
member of what you call oligopoly, providing a lot of cheap stuff in every of its areas of
competition.
I'd like to point out as well that sanctions (not necessarily well-deserved) against Amazon
will just destroy some workplaces, mostly lower-qualified ones, which will cause quite a bit
of a problem.
reply
daveFNbuck 6 hours ago [-]

The interviewee didn't define monopoly by anti-competitive behavior.
> Is Amazon a monopoly?
> Yes, monopoly power is defined as the power to control prices or exclude
competition. Amazon has the power to do both. But being a monopoly on its own is
not illegal under the antitrust laws. Illegal monopolization requires both 1) monopoly
power and 2) that the firm acquired, enhanced, or maintained that power by using
exclusionary conduct.
reply
AnthonyMouse 6 hours ago [-]

> Amazon has the power to do both.
No they don't.
If Amazon significantly raises prices it charges customers, or lowers prices it
pays suppliers, to above/below what Walmart or a hundred others do, are the
customers and suppliers going to stay with them? No. When they don't put you
in their store, can they also prevent you from reaching the same customers
through any other store? No.
The fact that they can choose not to buy from you, or won't pay more than a
given price, doesn't make them a monopoly. Anybody can do that. The mom
and pop coffee shop on the same corner with six other mom and pop coffee
shops, a Dunken Donuts and two Starbucks can do that. But the fact that they
won't do business with you doesn't mean you can't sell your goods for a similar
price to the same end customers through a hundred competitors, which is why
they're not a monopoly.
reply

You appear to be only referring to the retail side of Amazon, not the
platform side where the article mentions Amazon has numerous
restrictive practices in place and set the price through these by excluding
competition and competing through their own retail lines, regardless of
other (uncompetitive) options
reply
cryptica 2 hours ago [-]

Amazon could drive companies within entire product sectors to
bankruptcy simply by lowering the price of that product category
on Amazon. The problem is that they can afford to do this in a
sustainable way because they have so many other product lines.
When other big chains like Walmart do similar things, it does not
have the same effect because people don't go to Walmart to buy
just one item. Amazon is different; if they lower the price of an
item, consumers react quickly and that can put other websites
which specialize in that item out of business. Then when all major
competitors within the item category are out of business, Amazon
can increase the price to any amount it wants and use the extra
proceeds to continue the process with different item categories.
reply
IloveHN84 3 hours ago [-]

Well, years ago, when Amazon wasn't a monopoly, who had the choice to make it one?
The final user.
Personally, I've never used Amazon before seeing a friend ordering a fairly huge amount of
stuff from there. Prior to that, I was a not-so-obsessed-from-ecommerce eBay user, where I
placed an order maybe every 4-5 months. I've started using Amazon because of its
returning policy, which is better that eBay's, but by doing so, i've also increased the amount
of stuff bought on the platform, because of time. Getting older and having more
responsibilities, you've to save some time, then Amazon comes to rescue when it comes to
generic stuff.
I guess now it's really late to blame Amazon for the monopoly, as well as Microsoft did in
90s with PCs and Google is doing nowadays with Android+Chrome.
Sure, there are alternatives, but the final decision on who gets the monopoly is the user
reply
mrtksn 2 hours ago [-]

Aren't they playing really nice and even operating at loss until they become a
monopoly? It's not really a choice if a company is giving you free stuff.
Probably it's the same idea with Uber: We can have really nice rides at good prices
because rich people are co-paying our rides. When it's only Uber out there, they can
start testing our patience while maximising the profits.
Amazon and Uber are not really selling some high margin tech products, their core
innovations are not in the product but the business operations and strategies.
reply

> Aren't they playing really nice and even operating at loss until they become a
monopoly?
No, they aren't. They publish their financial statement every quarter. Generally
their revenue is very close to their expenses. Given that, it's impossible that
"operating at loss" is an accurate characterization of their business strategy.
Jeff Bezos has a saying; "Your margin is my opportunity." It lays out pretty
clearly what Amazon's actual business strategy is, and it lines up well with their
financial statements. Target a very small profit margin, move into every
possible market by accepting a lower profit margin than incumbents, make
money by leveraging scale and network effects to drive down costs in ways
that other businesses can't replicate.
reply
mrtksn 8 minutes ago [-]

What I meant was pre-monopoly. The times when a company is
constantly loosing money, like Uber.
Anyway, what happens when there are no competitors because the
margins are too slim to be profitable without being at Amazon scale? If
they are not a charity these margins will get fattier as much as their
hearts desires. Their potential competitors won't be able to say "your fat
margins are my opportunity" because Amazon will be able to do all kinds
of anti-competative things.
Thanks god we have laws that keeps monopolies in check but sometimes
these laws can move quite slowly and the damage may not be possbible
to repair. Like with the case with Mocrosoft and Google.
reply
indopedia 10 hours ago [-]

She forgets that the Amazon marketplace is made up of sellers and the prices aren't
controlled by Amazon for a lot of their products. These are inherited from the distributor in
most cases. Sure Amazon fulfills the orders but it's not like Walmart that controls the entire
process. There is more freedom in Amazon.
Anyways, this is just the hip thing of today. How about making a service better than
Amazon? No that's impossible?? Well you can bet there are a million people trying right now
so there are and will be plenty more alternatives.
reply
c2h5oh 20 minutes ago [-]

> She forgets that the Amazon marketplace is made up of sellers and the prices
aren't controlled by Amazon for a lot of their products.
1. Amazon requires you to sell your products at the price that is not higher than at
any other channel you use to sell.
Even if there was a competitor that allowed you to offer a lower price because of
lower fees (important on high price, low margin stuff like computers) you can't.
2. Access to many traffic/buyer driving features of Amazon is conditional on the
product being offered at the lowest price it was ever sold
3. Buy box algorithm, which is a black box, is known for kicking out sellers who raised
their prices.
Sellers are forced to cut deeper and deeper into their margins to account for inflation,
new duties, new requirements from Amazon (prepaid return shipping) and Amazon
fees (new long term storage fees, being charged a refund fee, even if Amazon
shipped your product late from their warehouse).
> How about making a service better than Amazon? No that's impossible?? Well you
can bet there are a million people trying right now so there are and will be plenty
more alternatives.
How about creating a better mobile carrier or ISP? All US options are inferior and
much more expensive than what you'd get in Europe.
Haven't happened because it's next to impossible to compete with big guys without
first sinking many billions in infrastructure? who would have guessed..
reply
youeseh 10 hours ago [-]
> Anyways, this is just the hip thing of today
Observing that Amazon may be monopolizing isn't a new observation.
When they began competing against their vendors is when they crossed the line, in
my opinion. The same goes for any marketplace. It is one thing to provide your
vendors the tools and information they need to operate better, but then to act on that
information yourself - the operator of the marketplace - that is pretty shady.
reply

Yes but EVERY retailer does this. Every single store brand product you see
(Costco, Target, Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, etc.) is a result of this. Cheaper
products that meet the same demand as brand name vendor goods.
In fact customers are already trained for this. I walk into a store and I
immediately price compare against the store brand. So if people doing the
same on Amazon, why shouldn't Amazon be allowed to fulfill that? This was a
thing in retailers a long time before Amazon started doing it.
If you look around in retail stores today its easy to see how everyone strong
arms vendors just the same. For example, ever notice that all of Target's pen
section all have a certain color and text printed on the bottom of their
packaging indicating the type of pen (Gel, ballpoint, etc)? Target has forced
every single vendor (massive companies like Bic, Sharpie, etc.) that sells
writing implements in Target to change their packaging, create new SKUs, do
different production runs, and handle the logistics of different versions of the
same pen. All to be undercut in price by the Target brand pen.
reply
__jal 8 hours ago [-]

> why shouldn't Amazon be allowed
Antitrust law used to address this. Monopolies are not allowed to do
things that non-monopolies are allowed to do, because the effects of
monopolies doing them are different than the effects of non-monopolies
doing it.
Of course, Bork rewrote monopoly policy in a way that opens the door to
exactly the sort of monopolies we now have. But it isn't as if this is some
new notion invented because people hate Amazon; it used to be the
rule.
reply

Monopolies weren't allowed to do things that non-monopolies are
allowed to do because they would have an outsized ability to harm
consumers as a monopoly. But Amazon has repeatedly shown that
it isn't harming consumers. In fact, it's pushed other retailers to
better the customer experience or go out of business. Should a
company be split up just because it's doing its customers good
and got too big because... they're doing their customers good and
people like that and want to give them their money?
reply
JMTQp8lwXL 7 hours ago [-]

Every operator of a marketplace seems to compete with its participants. The
iOS App Store. Amazon.com. Stock markets have "market makers".
Not saying it's correct by any measure, but it doesn't seem like an unusual
practice.
reply

Never said it was a "new" observation. They could shut down all sellers in the
Marketplace and take it on themselves. Would that suck? Yes. But is that legal
for them to do? Also yes. This isn't a charity business people, we don't all own
Amazon, this is some guys painstaking work remember.
reply
youeseh 8 hours ago [-]

Let's say you run a business. You're still supposed to abide by laws in
your location of business, despite how hard you work. There are laws to
protect vendors against marketplaces. They're called anti-trust laws.
Amazon is a very big business. It doesn't need your sympathy.
reply

You are ostensibly correct but basically incorrect.
If you sell a product on Walmart and Amazon, Amazon forces you to sell it at the
same price or they will not offer it immediately for sale. They change the page to
make it look entirely out of stock.
reply

More like "if you sell a product that they already have because it's from the
same distributor and is the exact same product".
Well then what do you bring to the table for their consumers and why on earth
would they pay more for yours. Don't like it? Try ebay.
reply
shkkmo 6 hours ago [-]

> More like "if you sell a product that they already have because it's
from the same distributor and is the exact same product".
"More like"? That is a completely different scenario.
reply
themagician 9 hours ago [-]

> Anyways, this is just the hip thing of today. How about making a service better than
Amazon? No that's impossible?? Well you can bet there are a million people trying
right now so there are and will be plenty more alternatives.
Someone did try. Jet.com. Walmart bought them almost instantly.
reply
ehsankia 7 hours ago [-]

Google has been trying for years with Express and has barely made a dent. If
Google can't, then I honestly don't know who can...
reply
themagician 3 hours ago [-]

That’s a weird thing to say. Google fails at like 90% of the things they
do, especially when they try and do it from scratch. Some things they
have even failed at multiple times.
reply
christiansakai 6 hours ago [-]

Burner account? Shame on you.
reply
gwright 10 hours ago [-]

> There is more freedom in Amazon.
I have a friend who has been an online merchant for many years selling through their
own website, Ebay, and Amazon.
I suspect they would burst out laughing, fall down, and start rolling around on the
ground in hysterics if I repeated that to him.
reply
indopedia 10 hours ago [flagged] [+2]
acover 11 hours ago [-]

As governments seem slow to action, would coordinating consumers shopping help combat
the monopoly power of some industry? For example, having an app that notifies you to try
and buy from a competitor like walmart for a few days to pressure amazon into bargaining?
reply

And why would consumers coordinate against a company that is benefiting them with
lower prices, great customer service, and insanely fast shipping now (I live in a small
town of 40,000 - 3 hours from any major metropolis and get 1 day shipping)?
Honestly I'm pretty impressed how such a massive company still seems to do a
majority of their customers good, without even making them pay more. I'd say most
of the people I know who use amazon are pretty happy with the service they are
getting. To the average consumer whose looking out for their own personal bottom
line, whats the benefit of coordinating against them?
reply
tracker1 10 hours ago [-]

In many ways, they've out Walmarted Walmart.
reply

There wouldn't be! However, if your assumptions that consumers are all happy
with amazon are incorrect and there are things they would like changed at
amazon then there would be an advantage to collective bargaining to combat
amazon's monopoly power.
Also, such collective bargaining could be used to bargain with companies other
than amazon.
reply

Fair point. I'm not saying that all consumers are happy. But for collective
bargaining to work you pretty much have to be the majority or its hard
to do much.
reply
mvid 10 hours ago [-]

Wouldn’t that kind of behavior make a company seem less like a monopoly, and
extend the time to government intervention?
reply

No, I believe it will make them appear like a monopoly and the consumers as a
monopsony.
For example, imagine if amazon caves to the consumer group and makes
toothpaste $1. Then suddenly the other sellers of toothpaste all charge $1.
That would show amazon had pricing power over the market and that amazon
is in fact a monopoly. Further it would show that amazon was using it's
monopoly power to gain excess profits.
Note: I'm not an expert in economics and have a habit of being wrong.
reply
URSpider94 3 hours ago [-]

What you have described is an oligopoly. Think airlines, or gasoline, or
soda. All airline tickets from point A to point B in coach are basically
interchangeable, so if one airline has a fare sale, everyone else has to
follow or risk flying empty planes. Same, if one gas station on the corner
is $.05 cheaper than the other one, they’ll get all the business.
Airlines and gas stations are most, most definitely not monopolies.
reply

being a monopoly on its own is not illegal under the antitrust laws. Illegal monopolization
requires both 1) monopoly power and 2) that the firm acquired, enhanced, or maintained
that power by using exclusionary conduct.
Exclusionary conduct includes things like predatory pricing, exclusive agreements, refusing
to deal with a company, most-favored nation clauses, designing your product or service in a
way that excludes competition, and more types of anticompetitive behavior.
How is the above different from "having a moat?" Isn't any company that starts and
maintains a curated "ecosystem" engaging in some of these behaviors? Isn't Apple guilty of
refusing to deal with certain companies and designing their product or service in a way that
excludes competition? For that matter, aren't most of the tech giants?
reply
DenisM 9 hours ago [-]

A company that has a monopoly has to follow more rules than other companies
because it can do more damage. Certain kind of moat-building is severely restricted
for them, such as exclusive contracts or deliberate technology lock-in, while other
methods are still legal, such as brand recognition or a rich partner ecosystem or
simply a superior product.
>Apple guilty of refusing to deal with certain companies
Apple does not have anywhere near a monopoly in any of the markets they are in
[+], hence the anti-trust rules do not apply to them. By contrast these rules do apply
to Microsoft and Google, for example.
[+] in the eyes of the law monopoly means control of a market, and market is
comprised of interchangeable goods. In this case iPhones and Androids are
interchangeable - a consumer is free to buy a Samsung or an Apple phone and
neither company is running the risk of excluding the other. Hence the consumer is in
no danger of being deprived of choice, and there is no monopoly.
reply
pessimizer 9 hours ago [-]

It's not at all. "Having a moat" specifically designates anticompetitive activity that can
only be engaged in by a huge player in a particular market. It has no other meaning.
reply

yes her definitions are very liberal, in more ways than one
reply
OnlineCourage 5 hours ago [-]

I have actually started adopting other online vendors because Amazon's quality control and
customer support is so atrocious. I think Amazon will end up digging its own grave by
building this huge adoption for online buyong, training competition how to do online retail
right, and then die from a million cuts as thousands of specialty vendors step in. Their
search sucks too...you just get fed paid advertisements for crap. AWS is amazing but I no
longer trust Amazon as a place to buy physical items.
reply
patrickfatrick 5 hours ago [-]
Amazon’s customer support “atrocious”? Literally only heard of great experiences with
their customer support from people I’ve talked to.
reply
amznnnnn 3 hours ago [-]

Hey, would you mind explaining how customer service has been atrocious for you? We
place a lot of importance on the customer experience, and feedback will help us
improve our services.
reply
TylerE 5 hours ago [-]

How much does Amazon even care about retail?
Isn't AWS way more profitable than everything else they do combined?
reply
sjg007 5 hours ago [-]

I agree. I think Bezos would too.
reply

I wish this elaborated more on how Amazon is a monopoly. The interviewee defines it as
having the power to set prices and exclude competition. I don’t see either of those
happening. There’s a ton of competition, more than enough to severely limit their ability to
set prices.
reply
scoofy 9 hours ago [-]

You're looking at it as the customer being the people buying things off of amazon.
They are in a sense, but not the sense that is important here.
The the sellers on amazon are customers of their marketplace. Much like Colgate and
Crest might fight over ideal shelf space in a supermarket (and be changed accordingly
by the market), the sellers on amazon must pay the price to be on amazon. Amazon
has the power to set prices of appearing in their marketplace, where, and for what
keywords. Amazon is also now selling their own merchandise on those same (digital)
shelves. There are few alternatives to amazon for online retailers. So, to reach
customers, many retailers must use amazon, despite the rent-collection they do. The
next marketplace for online retail is walmart.com, which, and lets be honest, when
was the last time any of us went to walmart.com...
reply

There are plenty of alternatives to Amazon for sellers too. None of them are as
big, but they are there.
If Amazon has the power to set prices, why are their prices the same as
everyone else’s?
reply
scoofy 8 hours ago [-]

We don't see the price to use amazon to sell things. We only see the
retail price. A marketplace can be using monopolistic-pricing to capture
returns from the retailer.
reply
nickik 25 minutes ago [-]

No it is not. Unless you can't buy basically the same stuff from lots of other places this is
simple the usual whining about 'big cooperations'.
The reality is that amazon overs good prices and people like to shop there.
And yes, suppliers are gone complain, that amazon is evil, just like suppliers complain that
walmarket is evil, just as suppliers always claim whatever larger reseller they sell to is a evil
monopoly.
The definition of a monopoly in economics is if that seller can essentially employ monopoly
pricing, but amazon prices are not incredible higher compared to the competition.
reply
EngineerWannabe 3 hours ago [-]

Unless Walmart Canada,No Frills,Sobeys or any other retailer compete with Amazon,we will
still read these news.Amazon prime is great if you don't find enough time to go shopping for
minor things.Amazon is great for non-perishable item shopping if you compare its prices
with other retailers.
Why would I pay $4.99,at Sobeys, for a jar of nescafe if I can get it from Amazon for $3.97?
reply
mlguy456 5 hours ago [-]

This is an attempt to divert attention from real monopolies like Comcast and healthcare
monsters. What we really need in the tech space is UK-style laws to enforce competition
between ISPs, GDPR-style laws to protect personal data and CA-style prohibition on NDAs.
But politicans won't get paid for any of this. Instead they go for easy and profitable targets,
such as pretending to care that Amazon is a monopoly.
reply
rb808 10 hours ago [-]

I think I can generalize that the problem with Amazon is similar to many of the modern tech
companies in that they're super well funded and aren't expected to make a profit which
allows them to undercut incumbents.
Amazon can price lower than Target/Wallmart/B&N/Local Stores, lose money every year
while the competition slowly dies.
Uber can price lower than local taxis, lose money every year while the competition slowly
dies.
Tesla can price lower than Ford/Toyota/Merc, lose money every year while the competition
slowly dies.
AirBnB can price lower than Hilton/Marriot/Locals, lose money every year while the
competition slowly dies.
WeWork can price lower than office buildings, lose money every year while the competition
slowly dies.
The problem is low interest rates and another tech bubble.
reply
mbesto 9 hours ago [-]

> and aren't expected to make a profit
Sorry to be harsh, but this "no profit" trope specifically when it comes to Amazon
needs to die in a hot fire.
"“Percentage margins are not one of the things we are seeking to optimize. It’s the
absolute dollar free cash flow per share that you want to maximize, and if you can do
that by lowering margins, we would do that. So if you could take the free cash flow,
that’s something that investors can spend. Investors can’t spend percentage
margins.” “What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount.
Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they
actually make, and a multiple of that.” “When forced to choose between optimizing
the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future
cash flows, we’ll take the cash flows.” Jeff Bezos is very focused on this “absolute
dollar free cash flow metric.” You will see many people talk about Amazon’s focus on
“growth” vs. margins, but the right focus is instead absolute dollar fee cash flow."[0]
Amazon optimizes for FCF and continually reinvests its "profits" back into the
company. Check out their FCF:
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/amzn/financials/...
> Amazon is similar to many of the modern tech companies in that they're super well
funded
So you mean Amazon is funding their growth with their customers cash flow? I don't
get how that's a problem.
If you want to talk about Uber, Lyft, WeWork...that's another thing. The unit
economics are just simply not there. Amazon should not be in the same discussion as
those companies.
[0] - https://25iq.com/2014/04/26/a-dozen-things-i-have-learned-fr...
reply
snarfy 8 hours ago [-]

When you reinvest your profits back into the company, your net profits are zero
and you don't pay any taxes. This is where the distortion comes in. It's
government subsidized growth. At this point it's grown over all the competitors
and affects the market.
reply
mbesto 7 hours ago [-]

If what you're suggesting is so exploitable (e.g. government subsidized
growth) then why don't their competitors do the same? You're aware
that most F500 don't pay taxes right?
reply
parasubvert 8 hours ago [-]

Re-investment for the long term is government subsidized growth?
That's a new one. I have to disagree pretty strongly that this is a
distortion of anything, it's capitalism 101 in the face of a progressive
corporate profit tax. If the US government wants to tax all business
activity regardless of profit, they can do what the rest of the Western
world has done and introduce a VAT.
Amazon is otherwise doing a masterful exercise of long term planning
and competition.
reply
nine_k 8 hours ago [-]

They are financed by investors initially, and are not paying back in
cash. They re-invest their profits, in other words, keep them to
themselves.
The investors are paid back by the rising stock, which means by
more investors who want to buy the stock and raise the price by
their demand.
This is indeed brilliant, and overpowers any org that needs to
return part of its profits back to investors, lenders, etc.
reply
notyourwork 8 hours ago [-]

I think that’s a completely different issue from ops concern regarding not
turning a profit.
reply
sjy 7 hours ago [-]

Is that right? Shouldn't the reinvestment involve a significant amount of
capital expenditure which is not immediately deductible?
reply
lisper 10 hours ago [-]

I'm not a huge Uber fan, but in their case at least I don't think you're being entirely
fair. My home airport is SFO. The official taxis there have an extremely annoying
pricing policy: if your destination is more than 20 miles form the airport they add a
$50 surcharge to the cost of your trip. (I live 25 miles away.) And you can't summon
a cab with an app. If you're at the airport they are very convenient. If you are
anywhere else taxies are hopeless. In the face of such abject stupidity on the part of
the taxis, I use Uber (well, Lyft) despite my sympathies for professional drivers. If the
taxi companies weren't behaving like such utter and complete morons for years it
would be easier to sympathize with them.
reply
tj-teej 10 hours ago [-]

Serious question: once the taxi industry has died what makes you believe that
Uber won't implement similar policies?
reply
abakker 10 hours ago [-]

Nothing. As the saying goes, “get while the getting is good”.
If I don’t take the cheap fare today, it doesn’t buy me anything in the
long run anyway. Present dollars saved are a certainty, and if history
repeats, there is a reasonable likelihood of future disruption being my
easy-our for an anticompetitive Uber.
reply

I don't know if it's a good strategy to wait as long as it took Uber
to supplant taxis for something to supplant Uber. If it follows that
pattern, you won't live to see it, so "easy-out" is probably not the
greatest descriptor.
That being said, your individual boycott will have a minuscule
effect, and money in your pocket is good. I just can't imagine that
capitalism is meant to work like this; paying people to use your
product until all the competition is gone, then once you're a
monopoly jacking prices up to infinity, ditching quality, and
regulating or buying out any potential upstarts.
reply
abakker 9 hours ago [-]

A cynical person might say that it is meant to work exactly
like this. Killing off older companies seems likely to be a
service to progress and the economy. (not to the
employees, which is a reason why I'm not a genuine
advocate of pure capitalism). nevertheless, There are
organizational, bureaucratic, and process debts in addition
to technical debt, and I think capitalism acknowledges that
in the end, those debts never get paid. Borrow against the
future and burn out bright and fast. The good news, is
except for capital itself, borrowing technology/process/and
bureaucracy against the future is borrowing from yourself,
not creditors.
reply
AmericanChopper 8 hours ago [-]

Every dollar of funding that Uber receives comes
from an investor that believes there is a long term
business model in Uber. Even the short horizon
investors have to believe that, otherwise they would
have nobody to sell their shares to in the short term.
In terms of killing competition, price wars almost
always benefit consumers. Prices go down during a
price war, and if the industry is susceptible to them,
then another one will occur after the war is over.
Look at the airline industry, it’s full of price war
cycles. A carrier will try compete on a route, drive
prices down, and sometimes this will result in
carriers leaving the competition, and prices going
back up again afterwards. When that happens, some
time will pass, and it will happen again.
The worst outcome for consumers is that the market
returns to a non-competitive state when the dust
settles. In that case, consumers are just back where
they started, after having temporarily enjoyed the
benefits of the price war. If the market ends up in an
unreasonably non-competitive state after the price
war, then the victor has just set themselves up for
anti-trust action.
Every mainstream capitalist economist I’ve ever
heard of has firmly believed that regulating
competition is an essential part of a capitalist
economy. So if you think that’s not happening, it
would seem to be a failure of government more that
a failure of capitalist economics.
reply
prepend 8 hours ago [-]

I think it will be easier to identify pricing problems with Uber than the
50+ different taxi markets. Uber and Lyft can adjust prices quite easily,
while taxi markets require local regulators to approve changes.
There’s also an issue that theoretically Uber and Lyft compete, where in
every city in the US, pretty much, taxis don’t compete on price once it is
set for a market.
Uber/Lyft might start having anti-consumer prices once they kill all the
taxis, but I think they will be subject to closer scrutiny than trying to
take on local taxis.
reply
dahfizz 9 hours ago [-]

Uber doesn't have the government protections existing cabs do. If Uber
starts mistreating their customers, the customers have plenty of other
rideshare alternatives.
reply
jimbokun 9 hours ago [-]

Then it's time to apply anti-trust law to Uber.
(Assuming Lyft or other companies are no longer viable competitors.)
reply
ken 9 hours ago [-]

Why not try to apply that to taxis now? Alternatively: why would
the government care that a new monopoly replaced what is
essentially an old government-approved one?
reply
dlgeek 8 hours ago [-]

Because they no longer get a massive cut?
reply
yawz 9 hours ago [-]

I can ask a similar question: What makes you think that Uber can
destroy/prevent the system/model that disrupts another (future) unfair
market that it benefitted from?
I don't think that Uber is a good example in the original context.
reply

Because they can buy out the competition before you've even
heard of them?
reply
prepend 8 hours ago [-]

That didn’t work for taxis.
reply
robryan 10 hours ago [-]

I don’t think the barrier to entry in a single city market is particularly
high. Short of exclusivity on self driving cars I think Uber is only ever
one price rise away from losing dominance in a city.
reply
anonuser123456 9 hours ago [-]

Lyft?
reply

Seems quite fair to me. Uber is using VC money to crush competition without
worrying about making money. It is also true that traditional taxis suck. This is
an orthogonal fact.
reply

How do you know how much Uber would cost if they had to raise their prices
high enough to have a marginal profit on each ride?
reply

I would still take Uber (well, Lyft) almost always. There's a lot of added
value to me just in the app even if there were no price advantage.
reply
jiveturkey 9 hours ago [-]

take a taxi to the marriot next door. then uber from there.
reply

Having to carry my bags a short distance vs having to transfer then from
one vehicle to another is kind of a wash for me in terms of hassle.
reply
gamblor956 10 hours ago [-]

Tesla can price lower than Ford/Toyota/Merc, lose money every year while the
Teslas are priced higher than Fords and Toyotas, Tesla loses money every year while
its competition rakes in billions in profits every year, and sell more cars each month
than Tesla in a year...
Wework also rents all of its locations (either from its CEO or from third-party
landlords). It has massive liabilities on its books that it can't leverage; the landlords
have large liabilities as well but they have the type of liabilities they can (and do)
borrow against.
reply
bmmayer1 9 hours ago [-]

That said, none of the companies you mention are monopolies -- they all set prices
lower than competitors, not higher, and none of them have little to no competition. In
fact every single company in your list included major competitors that make billions of
dollars.
reply
nickik 22 minutes ago [-]

> Tesla can price lower than Ford/Toyota/Merc, lose money every year while the
That is just wrong. Tesla can lower prices (or rather get more profit from EV) because
they have strategically invested in the necessary supply chain.
The idea that Tesla is systematically losing money from their sales and thus
undercutting the competition is seriously wrong.
I don't know about those others, but the idea that all those companies are just living
of debt sound pretty wrong to me. These companies are more efficent, and that is
where they make up the difference.
reply
jamborta 9 hours ago [-]

> WeWork can price lower than office buildings, lose money every year while the
I was looking for office space last week in London, WeWork is the most expensive one
on the market by far.
reply
anonuser123456 9 hours ago [-]

Yes, interest rates are why technology companies have competitive advantages.
Because NO ONE ELSE has access to those interest rates. Just tech companies.
reply
ian0 8 hours ago [-]

Thats not a monopoly. Thats.. common business sense? I mean even local stores
price lower than competitors as a strategy! The fact that there is competitors to all
these companies goes to show it isn't a monopoly.
reply
coding123 9 hours ago [-]

Well you're not exactly doing a fair comparison for AirBnB because the actual owner
sets the price. AirBNB doesn't set the price. Uber, on the other hand, does.
reply
Florin_Andrei 10 hours ago [-]

> Tesla can price lower than Ford/Toyota/Merc, lose money every year while the
That was a bad example.
reply
m463 8 hours ago [-]

I think telsa is basically disruptive.
On the other hand, many years ago, I thought there was a complaint about
foreign "dumping" to destroy domestic minivan production.
reply
enjoyyourlife 9 hours ago [-]

It was not. They price lower for luxury cars than other companies.
reply
And what about Alphabet?
reply
liability 11 hours ago [-]

All of these companies (Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Facebook, etc) are very fortunate
that the others exist because every single goddamn time anybody criticizes one,
somebody will try to derail the discussion with "well what about [one of the others]?"
They all suck. Stop trying to use one to justify another.
reply
jklinger410 11 hours ago [-]

>somebody will try to derail the discussion
Pointing out competitors to a supposed monopoly is not derailing the
conversation. It is the conversation.
reply
whatshisface 11 hours ago [-]

Amazon is probably not a monopoly in the advertising market, but
Alphabet doesn't run an online store.
reply

How about we meta-compare instead:
http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/amazon-to-take-almost-50-
per...
And that's e-commerce, if you add in offline shopping:
https://www.thebalancesmb.com/compare-brick-and-mortar-
store...
So yes, Google has a much larger market share of "search" than
Amazon has a market share of "commerce".
reply
Dylan16807 1 hour ago [-]

So you agree that you're not pointing out a competitor.
You're just naming another company that does bad things,
serving no purpose except distraction.
reply
jklinger410 10 hours ago [-]

https://shopping.google.com
reply
bhandziuk 9 hours ago [-]

I'm also having a garage sale this weekend but that's not
really competition to Amazon
reply
xeromal 10 hours ago [-]

What % of the word uses that?
reply

Perhaps at this point Microsoft should sue the US government to get their
money back because of the frivolous anti-monopoly lawsuit it used against
them, in the face of evidence FAANG. (I'm being sarcastic here, and sadly
suggesting MS would have a case)
reply

Yes, what about Alphabet? Why is this mention relevant to the topic of whether
Amazon is a monopoly?
reply
raven105x 11 hours ago [-]

For clarification: Monopolies can result from anti-competitive practices, or an overwhelming
competitive advantage. Talking about the latter here
The 'anti-trust' and 'monopoly' arguments strike me as hypocritical and self-contradictory in
the context of capitalism. We encourage businesses to compete and succeed, yet when they
do so disproportionally, everyone suddenly feels entitled to intervene in their structure,
policies & processes - and best of all, we have no objective guidelines or criteria for when
this should happen.
The question then becomes: who gets to decide when to bring forth these concerns, and
what's their agenda? Food for thought.
reply
theturtletalks 11 hours ago [-]

I remember reading about an anti-trust case against Microsoft in the 90s since they
included Microsoft Explorer with the OS. They were forced to separate the two, but
Chromebook does the same thing without consequences. The rules for Antitrust keep
changing and companies are integrating vertically and horizontally quickly before the
law catches up.
reply
jdietrich 10 hours ago [-]

>Chromebook does the same thing without consequences
It's not the same at all. Microsoft were forced to unbundle IE from Windows
because they were using their market dominance in one area (operating
systems) to give themselves an artificial advantage in another area (web
browsers). This bundling shielded IE from competition and squeezed other
players out of the web browser market. Apple are within their rights to bundle
Safari with MacOS, because MacOS only has a minority market share; same
goes for ChromeOS. You can't be sanctioned for exploiting a dominant market
position if you don't have a dominant market position.
https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/273591/eu_microsoft...
reply
watertom 8 hours ago [-]

Once Microsoft unbundled the browser they started using their monopoly
position to force OEM's to include the browser or facing increased costs
for the Windows OS, and since and OEM couldn't sell a computer if it
didn't have windows installed it left the OEM no option but to add the
browser the OS.
Microsoft's grip was so tight that they prevented IBM from bundled OS/2
on IBM pc's, windows was alwasys installed and OS/2 needed to be a
separate line item.
reply

Ok so dominating the market is an important factor for anti-trust
litigation. Google is dominating the search market and used this to push
Chrome (searching from the url address bar was one of the main
reasons people switched). Is that not the same as what Microsoft did?
Now they dominate both markets and leveraged both to grow the other.
reply
Google were sanctioned in 2017 for exploiting their dominance in
the search market to promote their other services.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/27/15872354/google-eu-fine-
a...
reply

This is the EU, and a failure of technically understanding
how internet search works. The google shopping carousel is
basically search ads with pictures. Every listing is paid to be
there, and is even set up in the same place that you set up
Google search ads.
reply

This is the EU. What has the US done to limit or sanction
Google? Why was Microsoft pursued and Google not? Both
were using one market dominance to push another.
reply
sjy 7 hours ago [-]

Google wasn't a dominant search engine at the time
of the Microsoft litigation, and different people were
in charge of the Justice Department by the time that
it became one. Not every potential crime is or can be
prosecuted – especially when there is a lot of room
for legal debate as to whether the conduct was
criminal, and the defendant is well-resourced.
reply
tracker1 10 hours ago [-]

IIRC, the US hasn't done much at all, until pretty
recently. I think recent actions of Google/YouTube,
Twitter and Facebook are catching a lot of regulatory
attention at this point.
reply

C'mon.
Microsoft controlled Windows, an operating system. A browser is a
thing that can be included in an operating system. Google controls
google.com, a website. A browser is not something that can be
included in a website.
reply

Yes but is Google search not the default search engine for
Chrome? Just like IE was the default search browser for
Windows.
reply

They are not using their browser monopoly (which
doesn't exist) to force people to use their search
product. That would be the corollary to the Windows
-> Internet Explorer case.
reply
How about using Android dominance to push
their search or other services? They were
forced to unbundle in the EU but no action
from the US. If they were held to the same
anti trust standard Microsoft faced, they
would’ve had anti trust cases against them
already.
reply

They're nowhere near a monopoly in
the U.S. (and, I would imagine,
Western Europe) and Google doesn't
even work in China. I'm just not seeing
it.
reply

They are arguably using their browser
dominance to prop up their search engine
dominance.
reply
AnimalMuppet 10 hours ago [-]

Chromebook doesn't have the market share that Windows had in the 90s. In
the context of antitrust cases, market share matters.
Also note that Google's market share in search isn't relevant. Chromebook's
market share in OSes is what matters for this particular case.
reply

But Google has a way bigger search market share than Microsoft had
browser market share at the time. And Google leverages Chrome to
build and maintain search market dominance by making Google the
default search engine on Chrome. Microsoft wasn’t doing that with IE.
It’s not like Microsoft was stopping Netscape on Windows. All things
considered, Google is showing more signs of being a monopoly than
Microsoft was at the time.
reply
AnimalMuppet 9 hours ago [-]

Getting a monopoly isn't necessarily an antitrust issue. The
primary issue is if you have a monopoly on X, and you use that
monopoly to try to gain market share in Y. So, Microsoft had a
monopoly on PC operating systems, and they were using that to
try to increase their dominance in web browsers. That's using
your X to try to extend control of Y. (They weren't stopping
Netscape on Windows, but they were trying very hard to reduce
their market share as much as possible - to the point that they
were paying websites to introduce Netscape-incompatible
features. Internally, they said, "Try to make using Netscape a
jarring experience".)
Google, arguably, has an effective monopoly on search. That's
their X. They do not have a monopoly on PC operating systems, or
portable operating systems. They are using their Y to try to
maintain their X, which, so far as I know (but IANAL) is not an
antitrust issue.
reply
tareqak 10 hours ago [-]

It is not as simple as you make it out to be.
United States v. Microsoft Corporation, 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001),[1] was a
noted American antitrust law case in which the U.S. government accused
Microsoft of illegally maintaining its monopoly position in the PC market
primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC
manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other
programs such as Netscape and Java [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
reply

“The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to
bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its
Windows operating system. Bundling them is alleged to have been
responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows
user had a copy of IE. It was further alleged that this restricted the
market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or
Opera), since it typically took a while to download or purchase such
software at a store.”
How is different than what Chromebook does? Or what Google does
bundling Google search with Chrome as the default search engine?
reply

>How is different than what Chromebook does? Or what Google
does bundling Google search with Chrome as the default search
engine?
ChromeOS doesn't have a dominant position in the operating
systems market, so there's no case to answer - you can't exploit
dominance that you don't have. Android does have a dominant
position in the mobile OS market, so Google are being forced to
unbundle Chrome and Google Search from Android.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/technology/google-eu-
andr...
reply

The EU forced them to unbundle, not the US. We’re
discussing US anti-trust cases which Google has not faced
after years on dominance. And regardless, it’s too late.
Google has already established dominance so unbundling
now won’t stop people from downloading Chrome on
Android. And how are they unbundling google search when
it’s built into their voice search and google assistant?
reply
taeric 11 hours ago [-]

This is an argument that doesn't feel to be in good faith, but to just stir
reactions.
reply

I can see why it seems that way but no one has been able to explain to
me why Microsoft was pursued for antitrust litigation and Google was not
for doing the exact same thing. Maybe instead of accusing someone of
stirring up reactions, explain the double standard.
reply
matthewmacleod 10 hours ago [-]

The core problem here is that you see the “thing” as “bundling a
browser”, so your logical conclusion it that it is the “exact same
thing”.
In reality, Microsoft was accused of several different acts -
monopolisation, unlawful tying arrangements, unlawful exclusive
dealing arrangements. It was not merely the fact that Microsoft
bundled a browser, but the whole ecosystem and market position
around that action. It is perfectly possible for two people or
companies to perform the same action, and for it to be unlawful
for one of them, because of the other circumstances surrounding
the action.
It n a modern context, Google is not in the same position as
Microsoft of the 90s. Microsoft, as the only viable provider of
consumer operating systems, was in a unique market position.
This alone is reason enough to scrutinise decisions to bundle
products.
reply

“The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was
allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web
browser software with its Windows operating system.
Bundling them is alleged to have been responsible for
Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows
user had a copy of IE. It was further alleged that this
restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as
Netscape Navigator or Opera), since it typically took a while
to download or purchase such software at a store.”
That’s straight from the wiki. It was mainly about bundling.
Yes market dominance was a factor but Google has
dominance in the search market and they were never
forced to unbundle any of their services in the US. They
also “bundle” search with Chrome so how is that any
different?
reply
matthewmacleod 9 hours ago [-]

No – the issue is not bundling. Bundling in general is
not a problem. Companies bundle things all the time,
and it should be immediately obvious that this isn't a
problem.
But bundling can become a problem when the
company doing the bundling has an outsized effect
on the market generally. This means that when a
company (e.g. Microsoft) has total market
dominance in a category, then bundling software for
which there is already a third-party market, using
privileged access to your own APIs—particularly
when you talk about wanting to "extinguish" and
"smother" rivals–it can become a problem where it
otherwise wouldn't be.
Note that Google has had several antitrust
investigations launched against it, including the
ongoing US one.
reply

There is substantial prior research into those questions, some of which made it all the
way to law.
It's an interesting topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Law
reply
oarabbus_ 11 hours ago [-]

This is a strange take. Monopolies are decidedly anti-capitalist, stifling growth and
competition. I'd recommend reading up on antitrust law origins as consumer abuse is
common as well.
reply
Ididntdothis 11 hours ago [-]

Don’t confuse capitalism with competitive markets. Capitalism love monopolies
as soon as they have the lead.
reply
aiyodev 11 hours ago [-]

In the 2000s, the US federal government used anti-trust to keep local and state
governments from passing laws banning internet sales of products. If they hadn’t
done this Amazon would have never has the success it has. It’s only fair that the
government stops Amazon’s anti-competitive behavior as well. Big companies should
compete with small companies and customers should choose the winner.
reply
rrggrr 11 hours ago [-]

If eBay, UPS, Walmart, Rackspace, Oracle and Dropbox (post Hellosign acquisition) merged -
- you would have a near approximation of the market impact of Amazon. If it's not a
monopoly then it's something worse.
reply
DickingAround 11 hours ago [-]

How do you figure? Amazon makes less than half the revenue of Walmart. Personally
it seems kind of silly to talk about any of them as a 'monopoly' when I literally use a
competitor to each of the biggies (Amazon, Apple, Google, etc.) every week. Why
does anyone consider these companies a 'monopoly' when I'm easily and conveniently
getting the same product from someone else?
reply
crazygringo 11 hours ago [-]

They're each (arguably) a monopoly in their own principal market(s) which
(mostly) aren't the same.
You're not buying toilet paper from Apple.
You're not searching the internet with Amazon.
For the discussion to make sense, you have to specify which market you're
looking at -- a company can have a monopoly in one market (e.g. search) but
not in another (e.g. mobile phones).
reply
perl4ever 9 hours ago [-]

I'm not buying toilet paper from Amazon or searching the internet with
Apple!
reply
paulcarroty 10 hours ago [-]

> Amazon gives its own private label products and first-party products an advantage over
competitors in a number of ways, from algorithmic ranking, to the buy box, to premium
advertising, to direct to consumer marketing, to exclusive customer reviews.
Alphabet does absolutely the same but have more power in advertising & page ranking plus
collects petabytes users data using Chrome browser and Android platform.
Walmart, Google Clouds, Azure are alive and still grows up, so this article use over-dramatic
effects like TV show.
reply
smt88 10 hours ago [-]

Let me restate the article's argument:
Amazon has enough monopoly power in certain categories to abuse that power to
harm competition, and Amazon chooses to do so.
Would you still disagree?
reply

______ has enough monopoly power in certain categories to abuse that power
to harm competition, and ______ chooses to do so.
This generalizes nicely!
What if a company has enough power in certain categories to abuse that power
to harm competition, not directly for itself, but for its clients and advertisers?
I'm thinking about YouTube here. YouTube has enough power in certain
categories to abuse that power to harm media enterprises on the YouTube
platform. Some people argue that YouTube does so to the benefit of other
media enterprises who happen to pay YouTube for advertisement.
reply
Areading314 5 hours ago [-]

Couldn't read this because of the huge, glaring falsehood on the first page. Monopoly does
NOT mean "power to affect prices". It is defined as having exclusive control of the supply of
a good within a market. Redefining monopoly to fit your argument is just lazy clickbaiting.
reply
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