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Comment by cheeselip420 | Hacker News Reader

So the companies that sell on Amazon pay money to Amazon (from the revenues they get from Amazon's customers) to have their products listed more favorably than competitors (one of which is actually Amazon).

I can see how this seems advantageous and monopolistic for Amazon...

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https://smallbusiness.chron.com/requirements-getting-product...

"You may be required to pay a slotting fee to, in effect, purchase shelf space if there is a great deal of competition fighting for the same space."

no difference than paying for shelf space.

The difference is that there are many stores to negotiate with for shelf space - in the online world there is only one serious player (although this does seem to be changing over time)

Except there is more competition in brick-and-mortar stores.

Like how they can see what products are hot sellers and then create that product under their brand and sell it at a cheaper rate?

Or the same thing every company in retail has done forever

Remember when Amazon listed private label brands, like every retailer has done for decades if not longer, and there was a collective freak out?

I think the freak-out was that Amazon was leveraging its data to create copycat products.

I assume all businesses do this, before Amazon ever existed.

How many options are there for retail?

In the US, each area usually has Costco/Walmart/Target, Best Buy/Apple, Home Depot/Lowes, Staples/OfficeDepot, Kroger/Albertsons/regional grocer, Nordstrom/Macys/Kohls/Old Navy/Gap.

The main difference is the retail companies still vet the suppliers before letting them duke it out for shelf space.

Monster may have paid Best Buy to be on the shelf, but at least I have some guarantee that Best Buy actually bothered to check that the HDMI cable is actually an HDMI cable (and if it wasn't, would notice and pull it eventually).

Amazon lets anyone sell anything, and then takes a cut in multiple ways.

But the article is about ads not about the position on a page on Amazon or in Amazon search results.

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