Amazon restricts how rival device makers buy ads on its site

I don't see a problem with them selling their own banded stuff, or even if it's cheaper, in most senses.

I do see a big problem with using what most people consider to be an open market that you can get anything on (even whole computers!) and specifically using that power to inhibit competition by having different advertising policies. It's not like those products were pulling an epic and refusing to give Amazon a cut of the sale, or doing something illegal -- just being banned from visibility is ridiculous abuse of monopoly power.

This is probably bad for the brand name products but very good for consumers.

Undercutting is good though. It lowers prices. Undercutting should be encouraged.

House brands of any product have to pass the same relevant regulations.

This is not true. I used to have a number of consumer products clients when I was at a firm. Store-brand products are all made for the stores by name brands as part of their white label programs (excepting clothing, since the transaction flows are different for that industry).

Usually the way it works is that the white label product is the same as the standard product, but with store-selected packaging. In most cases, the differences are purely cosmetic (as with cereals, which are made for most stores by General Mills and its competitors.) In a few instances, the store brand is usually a white label version of the brand name's discount brands, such as the store-brand products at the 99 Cents Only and Dollar Stores.

I wouldn't mind house brands as much if supply chain information and process information was transparent across all companies, but that supply chain information is a pseudo-trade secret (and for real-time supply chain information, definitely a trade secret) [1], and you can forget about obtaining process information.

This information is known within the industry. As 99.99999% of customers don't care about the supply chain of a store brand product, they don't include that information on the packaging. But then again, neither do the name brands. In some cases, you can the name of the manufacturer by asking the store's corporate office, and they'll usually tell you. Generally, they don't have access to "process information" for how the product is manufactured because they're just buying the product from the manufacturer. Whether the manufacturer will tell you depends on the product.

I wouldn't go as far as to say ban house brands by law. But I wouldn't want to keep them completely unregulated in all contexts like we are currently doing, either.

House brands are subject to the same regulations as name brands.

a) To reduce costs by controlling the entire means-of-production

b) To ensure quality control on the product and build faith in the brand, which in turn

c) Pulls people into the store, forcing them to buy a Costco membership if they want the product.

Intels high price chips, and low price chips are often the same chip except the low priced one failed quality control and had some of its circuits turned off.

The model isn't common for general consumer goods retail, but it's a fairly common practice once you get into more specialty and high-priced inventory.

[1] https://www.warehouseanywhere.com/resources/consignment-inve...

I don't know about Costco, but the big box stores don't carry any risk. If the product doesn't sell then they return it and deduct that off your next invoice. The same happens for a customer return.

Depending on the retailer/product category you might get charged slotting fees, pay-to-stay, plus a share of promotional costs[1]. There are also other fees for use of distribution centers, discounts for paying early (even if it's not early), fees (or extended terms) for slow-moving products, and so on.

"Owning the items" feel less correct than "borrowing items with a promise to pay".

[1] https://traxretail.com/blog/quick-guide-shelf-space-costs/

I'm not making this up. There is an entire cottage industry of "product rotators" who work on behalf of suppliers to go into stores and "rotate" the product that's closest to expiration to the front of the shelf, because the supplier has to pay the retailer for any product that expires before its sold.

I’ve been a dev lead for a non software company. I was trying to get training for my team on AWS. I had to go through all sorts of issues and approvals and POs and making sure that they are an approved vendor.

Then I just said forget it. AWS was already an approved vendor. I signed everyone up for an ACloudGuru account through the marketplace using the authority I already had.

I needed an intrusion detection and intrusion prevention system. Again, I just went to the marketplace and bought something through the marketplace.

You think it’s hard to get consumers to use third party app stores. You have never been through a corporate procurement process.

Besides the marketplaces basically let you search the AMIs that AWS offers alongside third party AMIs. No company is going to trust random third party marketplaces.

I assure that every company on the marketplace wants to be on the same bill as your AWS bill. Half the reason departments go to the cloud is to get away from the gate keepers. Once you get approval from the powers that be to use AWS, it’s much easier to buy off of the marketplace.

If you ban the incumbent from using a business practice that other still-big companies can use, those other companies will just use that same practice to scale up to the threshold size.

This is exactly the opposite of innovation.

Innovation would mean someone coming up with a new business of some kind that could actually displace the incumbent on its merits.

The game lost all of its players (something like 30 active daily users at one point), and Valve said they were rewriting it. They called it "the long haul", and that is where most of the dislikes came from. People paid for the game, paid for cards, and then were told they couldn't play anymore. The community was furious.

Sometime recently they did release a beta of the new version. I have a beta key but wasn't all that interested in trying it. I imagine most people feel the same way.

Honestly, I think the game was so bad that pushing it on everyone on Steam wouldn't have improved their numbers. It came at a very bad time -- card games were on the way out, auto battlers were on the way in. They gave up on Artifact and focused on Dota Underlords, and probably made the right decision. (I have not followed the auto battlers at all, so I don't know if people like Underlords or not. Maybe it's another Artifact, I'm not the right person to ask.)

Their tablets certainly aren’t as functional when it comes to the selection of apps available, unless you jump through weird, unsupported, highly fishy hoops to install Google Play on them.

The fire tablet is using the android os