This is egregious imo. Amazon needs to be broken up
What's more, if you tell amazon "no more retail ads", surely they can just do what normal stores do, and charge a slotting fee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slotting_fee) instead.
If right now the first 10 results on amazon.com for "mattress" are all ads because those companies paid $1000 to be advertised first, how is that meaningfully different from amazon only carrying 10 mattresses at all, and instead of charging ad fees, charging a $1000 slotting fee to the mattress companies?
I am not particularly arguing for or against anything, just speculating that breaking it up would, in practice, be hard. Perhaps some other regulatory action would work better.
Also, many breakup scenarios for Amazon involve spinning out the fulfillment business. Who cares if Amazon.com stocks 10 mattresses if I can just build a competitor stocking 10,000 while using the same infrastructure.
Facebook in particular given that their erroneous metrics literally put several media companies out of business. Not only did they charge for nonexistent engagement, but the BS engagement numbers they were providing were so enticing that it created a huge push towards expensive-to-create video content.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17989712/facebook-inaccu...
I am not sure people are really prepared to take the implication of how unfair Amazon seems to its logical conclusion, because it means undermining a lot of what makes us comfortable in modern life under capitalism. Regulation targeted at increasing competition (breakups, rather than regulation Amazon as a monopoly of a kind and entrenching them) might result in a better outcome, or it just might make things more expensive and then you have to repeat the same breakup and regulation process again every 15 years.
I read Wealth of Nations, did I miss the part where it says:
"you should have a single global company control most of the market"?
Every economist writes about importance of competition.
If you want to keep around giant monopolies, you are not capitalist.
It also comes across as "two wrongs make a right"
> Is it? Newspapers aren’t exactly thriving and it’s not because of Amazon.
Would you have a problem if a random local newspaper company had significant influence over what 50% of the U.S. bought, watched, read, listened to, ate, and needed for medical purposes in addition to market power that made it stay that way?
Thats what conflict of onterest means
Amazon sells ads on its marketplace. It also sells ads that integrate within its marketplace listings in a fashion that can be difficult to discern. It offers a fulfillment service that is integrated with its marketplace. It offers an integrated third party marketplace. These, are of course, facts. Whereas my initial response to was just the hypothetical point that you misunderstand how anti-trust law is applied. I don't think this has been much of a conversation seeing as how you are just being purposefully obtuse. It's clear you are making no efforts to come at this with good faith and I'm not going to bother any further otherwise.
You can use outrage if you want, but the fact remains that Amazon has nothing even approaching a monopoly, not in the legal sense and not in any layperson sense.
You’re kind of proving my point for me, that there’s no actual argument here, just general negative sentiment.
I just happen to live in AR and know a number of people who work on the relevant teams that do each of these things at Walmart, and given Walmart.com's growth in the last year, Amazon is far from the only company able to provide these services profitably.
Is Amazon a competitor? Yes. Do they have a monopoly? Heck no.