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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

It’s also worth noting that Amazon has said as soon as those products support Prime Video apps they’ll allow them back on. It’s perhaps more reasonable that you don’t want to sell productd that are leveraging an anticompetitive position against you. So it’s kind of an antitrust tête-à-tête.

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The products already "support" Prime Video apps. Amazon has just chosen not to create said apps. Amazon's language in this case is proof enough to me of its bad faith. But the point remains that this is a relatively minor case of anti-competitiveness, and I don't think the public interest would be served by breaking the company up.

>It’s also worth noting that Amazon has said as soon as those products support Prime Video apps they’ll allow them back on

source? IIRC amazon claimed it was confusing for its users if they sold the chromecast and their firestick at the same time.

Looking at the hundreds of duplicate Marketplace listings for pretty much every product ever, it's hard to get too excited about this argument.

Is Google banning Prime Video from using chromecast? I thought chromecast used an open API and anyone could cast to it.

https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender_integr...

No, but they have retaliated and blocked youtube on Alexa devices (Echo Show). I know Amazon struck first, but both sides are guilty of the same childish behavior at this point.

Echo Show violated Youtube's TOS, which is why they withdrew support from Amazon. If Amazon followed the rules and included the channels and subscriber functionality, they could use it like everyone else.

What anticompetitive position is being leveraged against Amazon in this case? The chromecast doesn't pretend to be an open marketplace for any apps. Amazon does pretend it's an open marketplace for goods.

Source? Last I checked, AppleTV has Prime Video and Google is not blocking Amazon from adding Chromecast to Amazon apps. Amazon is choosing not to add the feature.

>But it’s Amazon’s own fault that Prime Video doesn’t work with Chromecast. Amazon has the power to make it happen.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16738752/google-youtube-a...

The Google chromecast store does not allow you to purchase amazon firesticks.

And I can't buy Windows laptops at an Apple store. That's because Apple stores only sell Apple products, nothing else. People don't go to an Apple store when they want to buy some arbitrary item. People do go to Amazon when they want to buy an arbitrary item, because Amazon sells almost everything (but not chromecasts).

If Amazon only sold Amazon products and accessories for those products, that would be an insightful observation. As it is, I think you're missing that these two stores are different in kind.

* Google refuses to support Amazon Prime Video on Chromecast.

* Amazon refuses to sell Chromecast devices.

There's nothing really "anti-competitive" going on here. Two consumer tech giants are refusing to support each others' stuff. That's it. Consumers are free to pick one, or both!

Chromecast is a feature that you develop on your own apps - i.e. Amazon can add it to their Prime App. Google isn't preventing Amazon Prime from having Chromecast support.

This is some pretty high level misinformation. Amazon (or anyone) can write apps against the Cast API (https://developers.google.com/cast/). Amazon has just chosen not to.

Yeah I don't get it either. It doesn't impact consumer's ability to get either product.

Would we force Ford dealerships to sell Hondas as well? For Whole Foods to carry Safeway-branded products?

Of course not.

Your car dealership analogy doesn’t hold any water. Amazon is an “open” marketplace with millions of products, some of which are amazon private label and compete against other third party sellers on Amazon. Amazons track record with this is ugly http://fortune.com/2016/04/20/amazon-copies-merchants/

This is more akin to a scenario if apple were to block Spotify from the App Store because apple provides a competing service to theirs, totally leveraging and abusing their power to diminish competition. It’s hard to argue that not allowing them to sell the physical product on amazon isn’t anti-competitive, regardless if amazon does or doesn’t develop chrome cast capabilities into fire sticks.

This is laughable - >> Both the Apple TV and Chromecast were pulled from Amazon in late 2015. The company’s justification for the move was that consumers would be confused and frustrated if they purchased streaming devices that didn’t offer a direct, convenient way to view Amazon Prime Video content https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/12/14/16777508/...

How is Amazon any more an "open" marketplace compared to a grocery store? Because it's online?

I would say so, they are not limited to a certain amount of shelf space or square footage like grocery stores are. On average, grocery stores work much more intimately with their vendors than amazon works with theirs (or did, now that they’re breaking into the grocery business).

I was mainly thinking of how an unlimited number of third parties can essentially sell whatever they please on Amazon, unless of course you’re google or apple selling a competing product that doesn’t help amazon achieve their goals for an ancillary service that has nothing to do with their online marketplace. I can’t think of a good analogy to a grocery store scenario.

Amazon calls itself "The Everything Store" and has enough market share that it is legally reasonable to think about if it is a deal facto monopoly governed by antitrust law

Monopoly? There is nothing stopping other companies from selling the same things Amazon does.

Any what is Amazon's share of all retail sales? My understanding it's in the single digit percentages.

Amazon had 4% of US retail sales in 2017, although that's 44% of US online retail sales. Online sales were 9% of retail sales.

Apple policy is in fact to block aps that compete with iOS standard apps, unless the are so popular that apple is forced to concede

Can you point to anything in particular? I can't find any examples of them doing this recently. I saw something from 2008 but since then they have likely realized they would open themselves up to anticompetitive claims if they continued.

I'm just transferring rumors, but I've read multiple times that Amazon reacted this way after Google blocked YouTube access to Amazon's Echo Show and Fire TV.

Seems like it's a back and forth kind of a thing between the two companies, with users being the ones facing consequences.

Which was blocked (the app) because Amazon distributed it outside of the play store, which is against the TOS iirc.

I believe it's still possible to access YouTube through a browser, but can't test anymore because I flashed lineage os on my Kindle tablet.

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