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Comment by fhrow4484 | Hacker News Reader

> Jeff Bezos, this one’s for you. This provision aims at Amazon’s practice of using data it collects from third-party merchants to enhance its own private label offerings. If it passes, the practice would be blatantly illegal.

Would it equally apply to physical stores like Safeway, Kroger, Costco's private labels like "Private Selection", "Simple Truth", "Kirkland", ...

What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is Amazon doing it differently? (Like go out on their own instead of partnering with the product company to produce "Amazon" branded version of theirs)

View on HN

It's the monopoly aspect.

Amazon is a quasi-monopoly for sellers in the sense that many sellers can only be profitable selling on Amazon, they have no choice.

If Amazon has data on their entire customer base, clones their product and puts them out of business, you can view that as monopoly abuse of power.

On the other hand, Ruffles sells their potato chips to hundreds if not thousands of national grocery store chains.

If some stores sell their own potato chips as well, those are just blips. Stores don't have insight into Ruffles' sales nationwide across all chains.

There are basically three large grocery chains in the US, plus Target and Walmart.

The e commerce market isn’t so different. Amazon has a 40% share. Walmart is a big player, then Shopify et al enable lots of DTC companies.

Amazon is only a monopoly if you redefine the relevant market to be “Amazon”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_i...

I believe Amazon is more like 50%+ now, and to compared to brick & mortar... Wal-Mart is considered huge and still only ~10% of the market.

There are more than 3 grocery chains in your link, I think you may have overlooked the regional chains listed below.

Nope, 40.4%: https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-dominates-us-ecomme...

maybe I was looking at bad data? this says 51.2% of retail ecommerce

https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2021/amazon-walmart-nearl...

Tbh I’m not sure. May be different market definitions? “Ecommerce vs retail ecommerce”

But as you can see from the gigantic list on that page, most grocery stores don't belong to those top 3.

I live in NYC, for example, and I don't know a single grocery store here that belongs to a national chain or even a regional one -- they're all local. (With the sole exception of Target, but that surely doesn't make up even 1% of grocery sales here.)

So the ecommerce market is entirely different. There's no grocery store equivalent of Amazon's 40% share. And people can easily visit different grocery stores, but Prime members tend to shop mostly exclusively on Amazon for the obvious reasons, so it's locked-in in a very unique way.

For statistical purposes NYC basically isn’t America. It’s basically the only true city in the US, and is not representative of anything. Most other US cities become suburbs rather quickly, whereas NYC has an extensive urban built environment.

Walmart is the top grocer in the US and has a 27% market share. The top five grocery chains are about 45%. Top five ecommerce are about 53%. It’s not massively different.

Outside of NYC Wallmart has significant marketshare over grocers. https://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Walmart_Grocery_...

They've butted heads with their vendors over the years, and drive pricing decisions nationwide.

> I live in NYC, for example, and I don't know a single grocery store here that belongs to a national chain or even a regional one -- they're all local.

1. Whole Foods

2. Trader Joe’s

3. Acme (subsidiary of Albertsons)

4. Wegmans (on GP’s linked list)

5. Fairway / Morton Williams (depends on how you define “regional chain”, but both are Shoprite affiliates and Shoprite is on GP’s linked list)

About the only truly “local” chain grocery stores I can think of in NYC are Gristedes and Westside Market, but I’m not an expert on the subject.

Ah, I wasn't thinking of more "upscale" stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, good point.

But in my part of Brooklyn everything's extremely local -- FoodTown, Western Beef, Associated, etc. And in Manhattan I indeed always shopped at Gristedes, Westside, Fairway (which looking up their ownership, is at most regional if not local -- and even Shoprite is regional, not one of GP's 3 national chains).

But the main point stands -- across all 5 boroughs, the vast majority of grocery stores are local chains. Grocery stores are in no way concentrated in any way analagous to Amazon.

NYC is not a typical US city.

> But the main point stands -- across all 5 boroughs, the vast majority of grocery stores are local chains.

I’m not going to do like others and say your main point is irrelevant because NYC is unlike the rest of America (although arguably it is an outlier in almost every way), but the fact remains your main point is incorrect, the ‘vast majority’ of grocery stores in NYC are not local chains. I’m not invested in this debate enough to prove it by counting the number of grocery stores in NYC, but I’ve already shown that 5 (if not more) of the top ten grocery store brands in NYC are regional or national chains, so that disproves your “vast majority” claim without further effort in my opinion. YMMV!

Edit: even one of the ones you mentioned (Associated) is a regional chain... https://www.asghq.com/

Edit2: Foodtown is also a regional chain covering three states per their website. Further, Western Beef even has locations in Florida which stretches even the definition of regional to me!

Those 5 boroughs are pretty unusual compared to a majority of the USA. There are about 5,000 towns in the USA with more than 5,000 people and Wal-Mart has about 5,000 stores with $340 billion in grocery sales. Kroger and Costco both have over $100 billion in annual revenue with over 3,000 stores between them. Wal-Mart has over 40% of grocery stores in the country and these 3 stores together have over 70%.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/197621/annual-grocery-st...

https://www.foodindustry.com/articles/a-list-of-the-top-ten-...

Your statistics aren't adding up.

There are 38,000+ grocery stores in the US.

There are less than 5,000 Wal-Marts. So if Wal-Mart is the largest grocery store, it's still less than 15% market share. Kroger has 2,800, and Costco has a little over 500.

The overall picture is clear: the long tail of supermarkets is long, and even the largest grocery chains command only a small percentage of overall market share.

I did not downvote you, but I see why you were confused. I should have clarified, but one of the links said total grocery sales revenue is $750 billion, so that's how I was calculating what fraction of the market Wal-Mart and other stores have. All those tiny grocery stores in dense urban areas account for much smaller slices of the revenue pie.

There are 1,100+ grocery stores in NYC.

There are only ~16 Whole Foods and 9 Trader Joes. And only one Wegman's. And not even a single "Acme", so I don't know where you got that from.

So no, I stand by my claim that the vast majority aren't national chains at all. You haven't "disproven" anything at all -- to the contrary, your list is actually a perfect demonstration of just how tiny of a market share these chains have. And I don't really care about nitpicking between local and regional chains.

My whole original point was that there aren't 3 major national companies that control the majority of grocery stores, and therefore it's totally different from Amazon. And that point still stands entirely.

> So no, I stand by my claim that the vast majority aren't national chains at all.

Shifting goal posts (now it’s “not national chain” vs “everything is local”), dismissing factual information that doesn’t align with your views, yep, all classic signs of “I’m right no matter what” mentality. Have a nice day!

I don’t see how you could argue they’re a monopoly compared to retailers. They’re the #2 retailer, and smaller than #3 and #4 combined:

https://www.retail-insight-network.com/features/top-retail-c...

Also, most stores on that list have store brands to compete with many products, and specifically Ruffles.

#1 on the list is famous for pushing suppliers around because they know they can put suppliers out of business by cancelling contracts.

In fact, they established a 3% “fine” on any goods delivered late due to Covid:

https://progressivegrocer.com/walmart-pressures-suppliers-de...

It's not clear to me how Amazon is even a "quasi-monopoly" as you put it. What are they doing to suppress competition? They aren't forcing exclusivity.

A few rich guys put together Jet.com ~7 years ago. A totally independent operation from Amazon and they sold all sorts of crap before being acquired by Walmart. So what am I missing?

> What makes Amazon different in this regard?

Safeway/Kroger/Costco do not have direct third-party merchants, do they? They are just resellers. This is fundamentally different from what Amazon is doing.

They all have their own store brands.

Sure, but if they are the actual customers of their suppliers, it doesn't seem like what Amazon does. I don't walk into Kroger and buy Doritos from Frito-Lay with Kroger just doing the fulfillment and payment processing, do I? I'm actually buying product that Kroger owns.

At least this is how I understand it. I am 100% open to being schooled in how it actually plays out. I'm just a software guy, but I like to learn.

If you're curious, The Secret Life of Groceries is a good (and interesting) read.

One tl; dr thing is that the supermarkets are a _supplier_ to both end customers and those with products to sell. They supply shelf space and customer reach, in the very literal sense that companies bid for things like endcap placement (the end of the aisle being better than being in the aisle, since everyone making an orbit through, say, the deli section will pass your goods).

Thanks! That is an interesting aspect. I had not considered that it could be a two-way relationship, rather than the store just buying what they want to sell and putting it on the shelf.

I guess it seems a little obvious in retrospect that there must be a bit of that going on, I've long noticed that some suppliers have a lot of responsibility in the store beyond delivering product. Like the beer guy pretty much runs the entire beer aisle. And it's one of the big names supplying all the beer, not just their own.

I've seen similar action in some stores by the soft drink vendors and even the bread vendor. Non-store employees on the floor putting stock directly on the shelf.

Grocery retail is much more complicated.

They may charge shelf space rent.

They take on the vast majority of the inventory risk, which is the fundamental detail everyone seems to miss. They own what they sell.

The complications come from trying to manage that risk - manufacturers who have better products or marketing can afford to pay for prime shelf space which also means it'll move faster.

I don't believe this is true in all cases. Maybe for some products, but at least other commenters here are confirming that some manufacturers refund the grocer for any unsold product. (So, Safeway only pays for the inventory that gets sold.) Seems risk-free for grocers on the products they have those sorts of deals with.

Yep they do that too but it's not risk free for physical stores because they take up shelf space. Anything that isn't moving off storefront shelves isn't making them any revenue - unlike Amazon they can't present every product through a paginated digital catalog while charging for warehouse storage.

You don't think page space matters? How many people go page 30 of results?

Page space doesn't matter, at all. Anyone can produce more Amazon searches in 5 minutes than there are shelves in a retail store. Amazon makes money no matter which page you buy it from AND they charge all the merchants on page 30 for storing their goods in the Amazon warehouses on top of any commission. That's the exact opposite of inventory risk, that's an inventory gold mine. Retail stores can only sell stuff that is physical within arms reach of a customer.

We're talking about retail vs Amazon, not retail vs Alibaba reseller #39146527.

Not only in grocery stores. Bookstores can return books that don't sell, and since the books are heavy, the front page is often stripped only that is returned. That is why some pulp paperbacks have warnings to buyers to not purchase stripped books. In the world of fashion, clothes are often only paid for when they sell, and there are similar arrangements to book stripping.

Really the modern world allows many optimizations and creative contracts.

And also at the end of the day they take on liability for the products they sell. If amazon was liable for its 3rd party garage it wouldn’t be a problem

This has been the model traditionally but retailers have been shifting to renting shelf/floor space to wholesalers and manufacturers. You may see certain fully-branded end caps in grocery stores, or kiosks in Best Buy, for example.

It's still not the same as signing up to creating your own store on Amazon though.

> They own what they sell.

No they don't. Standard terms are suppliers get paid 90 days after Walmart takes delivery of the product. You also pay rent from the time a pallet arrives until it is broken down for delivery to stores - so if you deliver too many snow shovels in the middle of summer you might end up owing them money.

There is a whole industry of "supplier financing" that helps smaller players with bridge loans until the product sells.

What is the difference between selling something on consignment and getting a rebate when the product fails to sell, or only getting paid for those units that do sell? Whatever distinction there is, I don't find it to be a meaningful one.

If you think that a supermarket buys products wholesale and then puts them on shelves for customers to buy, you don't understand how supermarkets work.

> you don't understand how supermarkets work.

Agreed ;-). That's why I hang out on HN, hoping to gain some insight and knowledge.

The customer->FBA->merchant relationship is much clearer than in any supermarket I've been in. Maybe I'm really buying from a third party and the supermarket is just acting as the fulfillment center and payment processor, but it is well hidden. I'd love to know more about how the business end works.

Grocery stores are retailers in the traditional sense rather than a consignment shop or marketplace like Amazon. I think the person you’re replying to is alluding to “slotting fees” for new products and perhaps the more controversial “pay to stay” fees which are far more secretive and, from my understanding, are more of a grey area. Technically I believe the “fee” is considered a type of advertising expense: https://home.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2015/04/revenue-leafl...

Those fees might be an interesting factor but who bears the inventory carrying cost is what I suspect GP means. For FBA, it's not Amazon. It wouldn't surprise me if big vendors like coke/Pepsi who stock the shelves also own the inventory.

I'd love to read a good article talking about how inventory acquisition and management works at divergent super market chains... I suspect a lot of the interesting details are considered trade secrets though.

I worked for Frito Lay as a salesperson and yes perhaps only 20% - 40% of grocery store inventory is maintained by the store staff. The rest was space that we were allocated to sell our stuff.

Stores would pay for the inventory, but we would rebate them for what would not sell as an incentive to make sure we put out products that actually sold.

But I would literally come in every day to the larger stores and put product on the shelf and argue with the manager about inventory and clean up our area.

None of the stores I worked at explicitly sold shelf space (I think), but our corporate worked with their corporate to determine how much space in each store would maximize their revenue. I am sure newcomers would have to do extra to guarantee they would make enough money for the stores to take risks on them.

Needless to say, they had all of our sales data when it came to developing store brands.

Also, continuing on, grocery stores are a very apt comparison. Foot traffic and purchase behaviors are very heavily tracked.

Firstly in an analogue ways - managers are always watching were customers are going/ what they are looking at/etc. The security team at a one co-op bragged that their cameras could read the time on your watch.

Secondly, there are all sorts of new tools stores are trying out to automate this. Software that analyzes footage to generate heatmaps. Or using the in-store wifi access points to generate heatmaps (even if you don't connect, your phone will give away your position when looking for networks). This is especially important in mall settings where they need to calculate foot traffic estimates as a way of pricing storefronts.

One thing I've always wondered is whether there's any interest in using in-store cameras for tracking the information people show on their phones, such as location, health, financial data, or even passwords.

Esp. since COVID I imagine a lot of people inputting their passwords in front of a camera at the register.

If you want to learn more about some of the platforms out there:

https://www.getblix.com/retail-foot-traffic

https://www.aislelabs.com/products/flow/

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Monitoring_and_Reporting...

This is how Frys Electronics ran too, which is not that surprising as it grew out of the Fry's grocery stores.

Some of the stock is essentially fully managed by third parties. If you see a bunch of Coke products in a store, there is likely to be a "Merchandiser" that visits and restocks it. It's a strategy by brands to get their product into more stores.

Your point is valid and correct.

Most of you remember Twinkies, its parent company going bankrupt and them being gone... Those products were delivered to stores, fresh every day(ish) by manufacturer employees and put ON THE SHELF by them... This still remains true for tons of products.

For some products grocery stores function like a merchant on amazon.

Data tracking... well that really matters to a grocery store, because people have "brand loyalty" and tend not to return (ever again) if their "item" is out of stock. These anchor items are often loss leaders (detergent is the massive example).

Amazon isn't any different than anyone else, and isn't even the biggest one (Walmart still has that crown).

Oddly I could make an argument that amazon, being allowed to be dominant and pushing large retail out of business would be good for everyone... a return of small retailers might happen on the back of that.

Amazon claims it doesn't have liability if those Twinkie's cause harm like the grocery store would.

The sale of contaminated beef has happened many many times in my lifetime, leading to massive recalls, even lettuce has seen contamination and outbreaks. The liability has not been on the store, rather the supplier/manufacturer of those products.

The local ford dealer wast at fault for your pinto exploding of the tires blowing off your SUV.

You didn't get to sue the store that sold you cigarets or round up that gave you cancer...

Yeah but if the manufacturer went kaput or the store was negligent in sourcing beef you could sue. Both of these are a problem with amazon. If target sold Chinese cribs that killed kids for example you can bet folks would sue target and not the manufacturer

No, they wouldn't. Target had nothing to do with it.

It's odd to say that the only company you had a direct business relationship with had nothing to do with it. Product liability does apply to the seller of that product, in addition to the manufacturer and distributor. That doesn't mean retailers won't fight it, or that it is easy to prove. It's just how the laws are in the US.

If I drink a coca-cola and it turns out it had rat poison in it, I'd likely blame coke, and not the grocery store, even though I have no direct business relationship with coke.

The idea of negligent sourcing is interesting... you would have to prove that they knowingly bought and sold a bad product.

The idea of "blame the retailer" is, to a degree, protectionist. Your solving the problem of "can't sue the chinese manufacturer" by blaming the retailer. The reality of the world we live in has changed so drastically since those laws were made that we should probably revisit those.

Blaming retailers only serves to have fewer, larger retailers, not choice (and competition). This entire line of thinking presents a massive potential to lead to less choice, in retailers and products, leading to LESS competition.

You don’t want a lot of fly by night foreign vendors just dumping unsafe goods. It’s a good idea to just eliminate them by making it too expensive to deal with liability claims for anyone that resells that crap.

Welcome to the concept of "joint and several liability". Say you were in a phone booth and a car jumped the curb and ran you over but didn't manage to kill you.

Your attorney would sue the motorist but maybe they don't have insurance. Maybe they borrowed the car - the owner would get sued. The city would get sued because the curb was too low. The gas station would get sued because there weren't protective barriers around the phone booth. The phone company would get sued because the phone booth was too close to traffic. The maker of the phone booth would get sued because it wasn't made properly. And probably other things that I can't think of.

Fortunately for gas stations there basically aren't phone booths anymore. But be careful loaning your car or gun to somebody else.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/joint-and-several-liabi...

Reminds me of the Florida laws that explicitly carve out exceptions for businesses that run theme parks (cough cough Disney)

https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-censorship-law-looph...

In Arkansas, specific laws were in place to disallow gambling at any establishment besides Oaklawn (a horse racing track), and Southland (dog track).

A couple of years ago they allowed for four casino licenses in the state, so there's a couple more options.

It makes me wonder why Google or Facebook hasn't bought Great America yet.

It’s a recent law, there is still time for Faceland or Google America.

I just saw you and nickb’s posts from 2007 searching for something, good to see you again old timer. You still got your hair?

Yes, but it's a lot whiter now. :-)

The only difference is this:

> ‘covered platforms’ (companies that have a half-million monthly U.S. users and more than $600 billion in market cap)

There are only 8 companies in the world that match the market cap. Probably 6 if you add "users": Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and probably Tencent.

Sounds like this would be easily defeated by spinning amazon out into different companies? Maybe that is a good end result though.

I haven't looked at any formal studies of the net effects of the Bell breakup, but I'd be hard-pressed to say they were net negative.

Especially with a relatively light "break-up, then allow to recombine as market evolution renders their previous monopoly moot" long-term approach.

Especially as Amazon is already many companies, in many different jurisdictions, and covering different product and service categories: https://opencorporates.com/corporate_groupings/Amazon

Spinning off AWS, which is pretty independent, might be enough.

600B seems like a totally arbitrary made up number to target Amazon but leave out Walmart (which is close to 400B). Looks like Walmart lobbying dollars are bearing fruit.

Seems like they set a high market cap to carve out head room for Walmart.

There's a great episode by planet money on the difference between Amazon and physical stores, the transcript is here: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/697060225.

They mention two key differences. The first is just that Amazon is arguably more dominant than any physical distributor, and has more power over offerings.

The second is that if you make a new product for a retailer, the retailer usually has to invest in you to some extent, by giving you physical space and buying your product for resale. So, there's some shared risk and for developing new products. Amazon, on the other hand, doesn't need to give you anything to see how a new product will play out, so it might have too much of a position of power.

I buy the first, not the second. Retailers often charge consumer packaged goods companies (CPGs) for preferential placement in aisle and carry no risk on inventory. The bigger the retailer (eg. bestbuy, walmart), the more likely they can assume no risk on inventory with a full return policy to the CPG. Best Buy just rents out space on their store floor to individual brands.

Trader Joe's is the closest to Amazon in this regard. They introduce new products as the name brand, the best sellers are cloned and then replaced with the store brands.

Aldi is similar, which is kind of interesting because Trader Joes is one of the Aldis. I always wonder how they get away with blatant trademark infringement. They come up with similar product design for the purpose of confusing consumers. I assume they have deals with most of the name brand products, or their parent companies.

I don't know about Trader Joe's specifically, but a lot of "Store Brands" are made in the same place as the name brand. It's just a giant game of price discrimination.

This is very true. I worked at Traders many years ago and at least back then the store brands were often made by the same name brand company.

Agreed. I never worked there but have shopped there for many years, along with the other usual places like Whole Foods and Safeway. A game I used to play was "spot the TJ's store brand item under its own name at another store."

One example is TJ's French Village plain nonfat yogurt, which is very obviously Nancy's yogurt from Springfield Creamery in Oregon. Same exact taste and texture in the same packaging. (Nancy's used to come in clear plastic tubs like TJ's. A few years ago they switched to opaque white for their name brand, but it's still the same product.)

Another is some of the frozen Indian foods, which Whole Foods carries under the manufacturer's brand name.

From what I've read, TJ's doesn't infringe. They simply pay the original manufacturer to make a run of the product with TJ's label on it.

Part of the agreement seems to be that the manufacturer goes out of their way to make a worse version for TJ's. Honestly they should be taken to task for flooding the market with fake competition, but that applies to the majority of brands in these days of megaconsolidation.

I don't think that is the case. As I noted in a sibling comment, many of TJ's store brands are identical to the name brand.

Buy a tub of the French Village yogurt I mentioned, and also buy the same Nancy's yogurt at Whole Foods, and you won't find any difference between the two.

Costco does too - Kirkland is their own brand.

Same with Kroger's - Private Reserve

I think Kirkland is just Costco making a bulk deal with one of the manufacturers and slapping Kirkland brand on it.

It’s the same with the other retailers. They do not own their own factories.

But Amazon Basics doesn't own the factories too - at least not yet.

Same with Trader Joe's

This does happen. Many regional chains do own there own factories however. Many of them produce both store brands and 'premiums brands under license. It's a complicated business.

Same with Trader Joe's store brands, or at least that was the case in the past as I recall reading in The Fearless Flyer.

I think Trader Joes does that too?

But Trader Joe's doesn't sell anything that is name brand? The whole store is store brand.

They stock plenty of third party Wine in my area, although the beer is all Trader Joe labeled. There are a handful of other things that aren't Trader Joe store brand or completely generic (yet?).

Not that it would matter here, the law in question sets the market cap miles above where Trader Joe's is.

I had forgotten about the beer/wine, as the one I've been going to doesn't have that section. With the alcohol oligopoly it makes sense they can't make house brands so easily.

There are a handful of non TJs brand items. Not many, but some.

They absolutely sell other brands, my local TJs has a huge stack of White Claw in the beer aisle.

Another difference between Amazon and physical stores is that Amazon has pagination. If a product ends up on the second or third page, it will likely not be seen by the vast majority of customers.

With physical stores, your options are always all right in front of you.

for physical stores sellers fight over having products placed on eye-level shelves vs. not

Or at the front of the store, vs a back corner

Stores are constrained by the limits of physical space, it's exactly the same thing as an Amazon "first page" except at least with Amazon you have the option to visit the second page. In a physical store anything that would have been relegated to the second page is simply unavailable.

there is an analogous experience at physical stores, though. the proximity of items to entryways, cashiers, etc matters for sales. also, which height shelf a product is put on also matters. some at eye level, for example, and others at children's eye level, make certain products more prominent. if you are trying to place a product at a store, how much it would cost you depends greatly on where in the store it is placed.

Sure, but I would argue that that is more of an analogy to the first page of products only. Things that are beyond the third or fourth page may as well be in the back of the store, and not on the shelves.

Things that are on the third or fourth page would not be in the store period as it would be too costly to carry all that inventory in a retail environment.

The analogy is useless. Consumers are lucky that the internet even gives them a 3rd or 4th page.

Physical placement within a store makes a difference* and it's something that stores will manipulate to negotiate deals with sellers.

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741065/

The closest example I've seen used before is the notion that you get to the shelves and go to grab a case of Coca-Cola, but as you reach to grab it a voice beams at you from your side saying "Wouldn't you prefer <our brand> instead? Its $1 cheaper!"

Now, which kind of works as an analog to these companies prioritizing their products on the search algorithm, but I don't really think applies to the practice of gathering such data.

It's the scale!

A lot of things that Big Tech is doing is usually fine if you're a company with a small market share.

Good thing there's an exception for mom and pop stores like Walmart.

"What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is Amazon doing it differently?"

Nothing, and they aren't. Except they're maybe the biggest.

The intellectual foundation of this new movement isn't specifically anti big tech. It's anti all kinds of anticompetitive business practices, many of which have had huge negative effects outside of tech. Grocery stores are one of them, but one can point to any area of the economy and find businesses engaging in what is currently standard practice that the new movement is seeking to outlaw, or in many cases just restore the teeth to laws that have been ignored for years, or just so narrowly interpreted that they're meaningless.

These aren't anti-competitive, they increase competition. The help the consumer get better prices.

Until they push the competition out, and then there is no more downward pressure on prices.

Until they become the monopoly and are free to hike prices

Unless the monopoly is granted/enforced by the government this has literally never happened.

>> Until they become the monopoly and are free to hike prices

> Unless the monopoly is granted/enforced by the government this has literally never happened.

It happens often enough. So often, you can find stories about it all over...if you looked.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/business/amazon-dc-lawsui...

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/11/21431962/public-citizen-a...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-secret-project-bernanke...

etc. It's a matter of them getting caught and when, because nothing lasts forever, even for the tech robber barons.

I see it the other way; What's the point of designing something that is affordable and usable by everyone if Amazon is just going to rip off the design and market theirs over me?

Whats the point in making a budget ketchup brand if Safeway has their own? I can't compete with their margins there especially with that level of competition.

I give a bit of a pass here to kirkland stuff cuz it never feels like a race to the bottom nor do I feel like costco just advertises the hell out of it over other goods.

Patents and trademarks exist to give designers the ability to reap profits from their creations. If you are not able to patent your design, then either the patent system is not working or whatever was designed or trademarked is not very valuable.

The patent system is probably fine, it's the COST of going after Amazon. They'll bury you. If you're a small studio that makes maybe 200-300k of revenue a year, how are you supposed to go after Amazon?

Then you disagree with the folks advancing these policies! :) Their perspective is that Amazon, Kroger, Wal-Mart, and a whole host of other businesses (including things as seemingly boring as cheerleading supply companies) are engaging in anticompetitive practices that cause a variety of harms.

Depending on which case you look at, they allege different harms. In some cases they allege harm to suppliers or to employees, but in others they make the case for anti-consumer harm.

Hopefully folks won't continue to downvote me. Whether you agree with these folks or not (and I'm not trying to make their case for them here), that is what their position is. It is wise to understand them, even if we don't agree with them.

Safeway, Kroger, and Costco's market caps are all under the 600b limit. Even Walmart is under this.

What makes Amazon different is Amazon controls 38% of all online retail sales in the United States[1]. No company comes close to their dominance in the market.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-13/emarketer...

And because they trade at a frothy multiple.

How much big box retail sales does Walmart control?

I mean, those are still awful. This would be a two birds with one stone kind of situation.

They don't operate a marketplace for third party merchants.

Walmart and Target do.

I've had the same thought about Google promoting its own products over competitor's in search results. Isn't that the same as Whole Foods putting a stack of their 365 brand cereals at the front of the store?

i don't see what the big deal is about google promoting its own products on the results page. All that means is one less slot for wikipedia/pinterest/amazon/ebay/nytimes or some other big site.

This tired take is in every single thread.

Not for bezos anymore

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