Anti-trust cases usually only succeed once the court of public opinion has turned against the monopolist. If the public is still in favor or ambivalent, then you will not find the political will to successfully prosecute your case.
But once the company has abused their power enough to turn the public against them (arrogance in addition to greed), then the charges tend to stick.
My read is that there is no amount of lobbying that can be successful once the pitchforks have come out. But it could also be how many whistleblowers you can hunt up. Once your brother is giving you shit for working for the Evil Empire, it's a lot easier to get up the courage to be a witness.
They put the generics right next to the original products, and then charge the original seller for better shelf placement (as well as for various other things -- getting a product in a retail store requires a fair amount of payola in some form or another).
All of this adds up to basically the same thing: amazon copies a product and ranks it highly unless you pay for better placement.
You can say that this is bad, which sure, but it seems hard to make the argument that this is specifically illegal for amazon when it's widely practiced in the industry.
We just need regulations to ensure that vertical companies are engaging in arms length transactions. If Walmart charges a company $10 per linear foot of shelf space on the third row, then they need to internally bill the generic brand division the same rate.
My knowledge of foil suggests there isn't anything Reynolds could to that would reduce quality that would still be good enough to ship.
Alternatively: there's no trouble at all, Walmart/Safeway/etc are all clearly engaging in this anti-competitive practice and must be reigned in. Marketplaces need to be regulated as neutral grounds for sellers, the marketplace cannot double-dip and compete against sellers or engage in practices that reduce competition between marketplace businesses.
Generics and knock-offs are fine, it just needs to be done by independent sellers.
Practices like down-ranking sellers for offering better prices elsewhere is just blatantly violating any sense of neutrality, reducing competition among marketplaces and increasing prices for customers.
When a name brand has market power and charges a premium for a basic product, then another company entering the market and undercutting them is great for the consumer. We can make regulations to ensure that a distributor, advertiser, retailer and the product owner engage in arms length transactions but there’s nothing inherently wrong with a store brand offering products comparable to name brand at significantly reduced prices.
imo the problem is specifically generics branded and marketed by the marketplace. That's where a conflict of interest between the marketplace and sellers arises, which ultimately harms end-customers.
Amazon Private Brands (APB) typically buys from the same companies that make the random generics like "XOFUNBO" no-name brands. The issue is Amazon can use it's insider data to buy, brand, and market generics in-house, without paying the fees charged to sellers - achieving costs that 3p sellers fundamentally cannot compete with. Amazon's own corporate training highlights that sharing sales data with 3p sellers is illegal and anti-competitive, I don't know why APB should be seen as any different.
This is not even considering how sellers need to earn end-customer trust while Amazon can muscle coasting on their trust as the marketplace.
Marketplaces must be neutral ground for sellers, full stop. No seller can be given privileged access. Otherwise the market distorts to favor a seller and that ultimately harms the end-customers in the long-term by suppressing competition.
Too many economic opinions are still predicated on the idea that the free market is still working correctly, and that there are effective controls in place. The reality is that - at least in the US - the controls are broken, and have been for a decade or more.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/274255/market-share-of-t...
The simplest pro-Amazon case is that they do not have monopoly power, because they are not a monopoly.
https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/amazon-walmart-s...
Then obviously you're also got direct-to-consumer via your own website, and lots of niche channels like Etsy, Wayfair, and so forth.
It's also odd that their retail business doesn't make any money if they're supposed to have market power.
They are like Kirkland of Costco most often.
It is one of the few brands on Amazon you can count on to not be Chinese crap. Even if it is made in China, the Amazon Basics products are generally good quality.
But yes - it's a step up from YAYWOWND which is a company that probably didn't exist last week and almost certainly won't exist in a month when their product spontaneously combusts and you try and chase down damages or at least a refund... Still, I'm actually finding myself buying more and more name brand crap because at least that way I know there's a company I can reach out to when it breaks down.
Where are all the actually reputable brands hiding?
I don't know if they ever fixed this problem (they have changed suppliers before), but I try to avoid using products from Amazon or no-name Chinese companies that plug into the wall.
Technology, and in particular software, has greatly outpaced the definition of monopolistic power. Amazon and all the other large tech companies wield so much power it is scary. And they can literally just buy into any market they please with hardly any push back.
To not be sure how someone can make either case, without being familiar with antitrust law and framing the discussion in terms of it, is only to be expected.
I came to HN hoping to see some legal analysis, but I guess that's not what HN is for. You can get good technical discussion of technology, but when it comes to legal technical stuff it's just ideology and people talking about how they think things should be. What's HN for lawyers?
It's so blatantly obvious if you've ever done a side by side in things like lamps, backpacks etc and other super simple designs.
Want an HDMI cable? Here's an overpriced Monster cable. Oh, don't want to pay absurdly high prices? Save money by buying one that is only 300% more than it should be instead of 400%!
The nice thing about Amazon was that it broke this model. Suddenly you could buy Anker or (insert small third party here) at very reasonable prices.
Amazon destroying those competitors is doing some damage to this, though.
They won't need to even call. Most FBA product listing inventory can be received directly from the factory (so Amazon knows exactly where it's made) and they can just go to the factory and offer to do 10x the volume for the exact same item (at a much higher discount).
Then there is Target/Home Depot/Lowes/Staples/Costco/Best Buy/etc
The lawsuit that is the subject here details Amazon's durable monopoly power in two markets.
But, yes, if Amazon did not have a monopoly, it could not, obviously, be illegally maintaining a monopoly.
[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32...
Given that there are things such as Walmart.com, eBay, Shopify, and many hundreds of other online commerce stores, they are self-evidently not a monopoly. In fact, they don't even have a majority share of eCommerce in the US.
And they also don't have majority share in cloud services.
Nor do they have a monopoly in eBooks.
I did not say they don't have monopoly power, I said, they are not a monopoly.
(Other than obvious things such as "Amazon products"..., in which case every manufacturer or retailer is a monopoly in their own products.)
The way this argument is normally presented is somewhat intentionally obtuse. Obviously Nike has a monopoly on Nike shoes, but "Nike shoes" isn't any kind of sensible market definition because you go to a shoe store and there are a dozen brands of shoes that are all pretty fungible with each other.
But then you get into something like "GM-compatible brake pads" and that is a sensible market definition, because if you have a GM car and you need new brake pads, they need to be compatible with your car. But you'll also notice that this isn't the same thing as GM-brand brake pads. You could get GM-compatible brake pads from a variety of OEMs that are all compatible with your GM vehicle.
Or, it could be the case that only GM makes GM-compatible brake pads. In which case they would have a monopoly in that market. Not because it's a monopoly on their brand of brake pads, but because it's a monopoly on any brand of brake pads compatible with that brand of cars -- which is something else entirely.
Notice that they don't even have to be the same company. If you have a Studebaker, the Studebaker Corporation is no more, and you may have trouble finding parts. It may even be the case that some independent third party has a monopoly on some such parts, even though it's a monopoly on parts for one specific brand of car.
> Notice that they don’t even have to be the same company.
As a specific example (and note, that you also don’t have to be the literal sole supplier to have a legal monopoly under US antitrust law), the market Microsoft was found to have monopolized in their big antitrust case was the market for operating systems for IBM-compatible personal computers.
That is not the applicable definition for US antitrust law.
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
The only place where Amazon is even near 50% is in consumer electronics and office supplies.
The eCommerce market as such has a very long tail and a lot of competitive players just behind Wal-Mart.
From the link:
> The complaint alleges that Amazon violates the law not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging.
The complaint says:
> Amazon uses a set of anti-discounting tactics to prevent rivals from 24 growing by offering lower prices,
But Amazon's contracts with big sellers specifically state that it may only discount when competitors first lower prices, making it in effect a price follower.
It goes on to say:
> Amazon deploys a sophisticated surveillance network of web crawlers that constantly monitor the internet, searching for discounts that might threaten Amazon’s empire. When Amazon detects elsewhere online a product that is cheaper than a seller’s offer for the same product on Amazon, Amazon punishes that seller
Which belies the fact that when you sell on Amazon you agree not to offer lower prices in other places. This is simply Amazon enforce one end of the two way part of the contract. Amazon agrees not to unilaterally slash your prices and you agree not to discount behind their backs. But you aren't as an eCommerce seller obligated to do business with Amazon, they don't have sufficient market share for that.
Furthermore, this statement is specifically false:
> By taming price cutters into price followers, Amazon freezes price competition 11 and deprives American shoppers of lower prices
Amazon is the price follower. If Wal-Mart offers a discount, so will Amazon. If B&H Photo discounts a camera, so will Amazon. The FTC is using sleight of hand here.
I just don't find their arguments here to be very compelling. I'm not against monopoly enforcement, but I just don't see how Amazon actually has the pricing power they're claiming.
I think it's sufficient that I'm able to tear apart the section of the complaint that has bearing on something I have direct knowledge about.
Maybe other sections have merit, but the pricing part does not.
Albertsons owns: Acme Markets, Safeway, Haggen, Jewel-Osco, Kings, Pavilions, Plated, Randalls, Shaw's, Tom Thumb, United Supermarkets, and Vons
Kroger owns: Baker's, City Market, Dillons, Food 4 Less, Foods Co., Fred Meyer, Fry's, Gerbes, Harris Teeter, JayC, King Soopers, Kroger, Mariano's, Metro Market, Pay Less, Pick 'n Save, QFC, Ralphs, Ruler Foods, Smith's
And now Albertsons and Kroger are merging together into one gigantic holy-shit mega corp.
Its also quite likely that the big grocery merger won't happen as planned for that reason.
https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2023/04/24/seattle-favor...
These figures seem to be for the Seattle metro rather than the city itself. Costco might be a competitor in some sense but it doesn't serve the area I live -- the nearest one is a 45 minute drive away. WinCos are even further away -- they serve some of the suburbs, but not the city of Seattle. Ditto Walmart. I've never heard of or seen Campeon. Whole Foods / PCC exist, but are expensive. Trader Joe's is fine but not really a full grocery store.
... Amazon
Well, they want to, but its quite likely that the FTC will prevent or force major changes to that.
The least of which is selling end cap space (most walking traffic) to the highest bidder, meaning a lot of junk food and impulsive-purchase products are put in the highest traffic places.
At least on Amazon it's marked as a sponsored result. Even if most people click the first result anyway.
Both Amazon and grocery stores can be in the wrong.
Amazon on the other hand, actively makes it difficult to search for other products, by not only promoting their own brands at the top, but filling up the rest of the results with sponsored items.
It's more akin to an endcap with highest bidder items, but then every few feet you walk down the cereal aisle, the shelves separate and move farther away so another endcap can slide into view, pushing the cheaper alternatives farther and farther down the aisle the further you walk.
Not to mention the scale of the problem as well, grocery stores are finite, and amazon nearly infinite, at least in terms of how much time it takes to search through everything.
What individual grocery firm has a monopoly of the degree that the FTC has identified for Amazon in the two relevant markets for this case over any market, what is that market, and where is the evidence for the claimed monopoly?
Staples (peanut butter, canned fruit, etc.) tend to have store brands, but grocery stores doesn't have a store brand version of the vast majority of popular products.
If Walmart, for instance, were to start creating Walmart-branded everything after in-store product trials by small companies, that'd be a concern.
But you don't see Walmart creating store-brand knock-offs of every popular product on their shelves.
And I can't even recall visiting a major chain grocery store where this was not the case (at least not in the last 5 years).
Yes they do. I can shop at safeway and buy nothing buy safeway branch shit easily.
They don't hide the original products in a darkened corner of the back room where no customer can see them. They don't shove their generic into your hand every time you reach for a name brand. Amazon can hide the real products from search, or push it to the bottom of results, while putting their own products at the top of search results even when you search for the brand by name.
You might argue that having generics on the shelves at all means that new small brands have to pay more for placement, but that's not the same thing as stealing product ideas and leaving no other option but the generic version of that thing on the shelves.
I've still never seen a brand new product show up in the store and become popular only to be pulled off the selves and replaced with only a generic version of that product. When I see examples of that happening, I'll accept that grocery stores are guilty of doing what amazon does.
At a Costco, they'll often stop selling the brand name product if they introduce a "Kirkland Signature" version. Amazon doesn't take down competing products when they launch Amazon Basics versions.
Not really intending to defend Amazon, because they are indefensible, but by big corporate standards, I don't see how they are anywhere near as bad as Walmart. And nobody is trying to break Walmart up.
The legal difference underlying the lawsuit between this behavior by Amazon and the behavior you raise by those stores is not the behavior, but its context.
Amazon, the complaint alleges, has durable monopolies in two relevant markets which the behavior leverages and reinforces, making it a means of illegally maintaining a monopoly.
The other stores do not have monopolies, so the behavior is not part of a system of illegally maintaining a monopoly.
This is very similar to the kind of discussion that happened at the time of the Microsoft antitrusts suit about bundling software: one of the ways Microsoft illegally leveraged their Windows monopoly – in this case to monopolize other markets rather than to maintain the Windows monopoly, but same kind of issue – was bundling IE with Windows. People made all kinds of “well, how is this different than maker A bundling software X with software Y”, and mostly it wasn’t, except that maker A didn’t have and thus wasn’t leveraging a monopoly in the market of software X, so them bundling software Y with it wasn’t an issue.
“That's absurd” is an inadequate rebuttal to pp. 39-71 of the complaint detailing the basis for the claim Amazon has durable market power in two relevant markers.
Anti-trust rules cover both, with a (often complex to apply, because of the kinds of facts that need to be analyzed, but relatively well-developed) concept of “monopoly” which ultimately boils down to whether or not substitution happens in practice rather than whether there is exactly one firm ina descriptive market. There's no need to “move away” from one to the other.
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
This is false. The Kirkland Signature versions are just the white-label version of one of the brands that are sold in Costco. For example, the Kirkland batteries are white-labeled Duracells; the Duracells are frequently sold right next to the Kirkland ones. The KS coconut water is just white-labeled Vita Coco and is sold right next to the VC coconut water. The point of the white-label product is to segment the market: the higher price of the branded version will make it seem like a more premium product while cost-conscious customers will purchase the white-label brand. Either way, the manufacturer gets paid.
Capitalism is one tool in the free market toolbox, and it works very well in many ways. One way this tool doesn't work well is that it leads to monopolies, which stifle competition, which hurts the people listed above.
If amazon had real competition maybe they would not have raised seller fees so much, and would not have prevented sellers from allowing lower prices in other places. So a cases can be made that they are using their market share to drive up prices, not lower them. Costing the consumer more.
There's other issues besides cost, for example counterfeits. If they had real competition then maybe they'd have to do something about all the counterfeit products they sell, which hurts both buyers and sellers.
Just a couple examples. There are other ways that monopolies can impact markets.
I've had similar thoughts about facebook. We could have had much better social/messaging systems, but facebook bought the competition. We likely missed out on more variety and perhaps much better options. Consumers were harmed by these lost opportunities.
You would be getting the same products for cheaper, that's the point. Their "two days or less" hasn't been true for several years. "Prime" to me basically has become "sometime in the next week" and there's a massive warehouse within 30 miles of my house.
Well, the obvious way would be "Amazon is not a monopoly." It's blatantly anti-competitive but hasn't produced a competitor yet. And heck, they didn't even have to buy off the competition from Jet.com, Wal-Mart somehow inexplicably did that for them.
Amazon simply hasn’t got monopoly market share or even e commerce monopoly market share.
And btw all retailers copy products. Surely you’ve bought store brand corn flakes at some point for instance.
This isn't the FTC's complaint but search "How Amazon treats their workers" and see why large companies get attacked. Typically the only way you're going to become this large is by abusing people in some sort of way. Amazon abuses their workers, their sellers, etc. Meta abuses their users. Google abuses their users. Uber abuses their drivers.
I would love to see 20 Amazons where half have a decent quality of life for workers compared to 1 Amazon where it's just awful for everyone except maybe consumers (debatable), executives, and tech workers.
Likewise, quitting your job is extremely disruptive and carries risk of bankruptcy if you can't get on to another employer in time. It's not simply a matter of "switch to the best offer available".
But go to /r/starbucks and you'll sometimes hear that a lot of small shops are worse, for various reasons.
Large companies attract certain classes of criticism not by being worse, but by being more visible. Unfortunately, this actively masks some of the wrongs that they actually do.
I feel like Hacker News types see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed monopolists."
I don't have a POV on this particular case but it seems reasonable to assume that there are other (reasonable) people that have different values and judgements than you do. Just because these companies and CEOs have a lot of resources should not automatically kick in the "David v Goliath" instinct that most people have
David vs. Goliath was a story about overcoming subjugation and oppression. A lot of people have been very much put-upon by the metaphorical Goliath here in a number of ways. There are piss bottles available as evidence.
For delivery routes, there's no simple solution for bathroom access (unless you want to talk about installing some step up from a "bottle" in all the vans). Meaning a driver will inevitably have to choose to spend time not delivering packages to leave the van and use an indoor bathroom.
If you are talking about the workers at the fulfillment centers, I do agree that is indefensible. That human need should be entirely owned by the business. If it takes workers too long to walk to the bathroom, or if Amazon insists on using time with security lines and whatnot, that's entirely on Amazon.
(Also to each their own, but using the bathroom and eating lunch are definitely mutually exclusive activities for me)
I worked in logistics (elsewhere) for a decade, and quit when conditions shifted to incentivize smoking meth and pissing in jugs. It's abusive and just fucking gross.
I assume you aren't pissing in jugs to save time for longer lunch breaks. Why not?
Nobody pisses in jugs unless they're forced to. The example only falls flat because Bezos escaped the gravity well in his dick-rocket and it's really fucking hard to hurl bottles of piss into space with a sling.
I disagree that nobody would voluntarily choose to pee in a bottle in the context of driving a delivery vehicle. But I do agree that the behavior in the context of being in a building that has a bathroom is a sign that something is horribly wrong.
You're not allowed to complain.
I think that's a very American thing right now... politically too.
But downstream, there are lots of issues that arise if one can't expect some kind of balance in check-n-balances.
Meanwhile, we have over 100 years over antitrust history and precedent pointing the other way. Sometimes Big Govt does need to step in and set the market right, because raw unfettered capitalism lacking regulation will always destroy itself. (For the record, and to preempt some strawmen, I don't think raw, unfettered socialism is The Way either.)
Tribal thinking is the worst. You added nothing of value to the conversation.
I remember online retail before Amazon dominance. Return policies and return shipping was a real mess. Amazon actually greatly improved the customer service experience. It also changed some markets in ways that were undoubtedly pro-consumer.
It also has had a lot of negative impacts, as their model (including the free shipping concept) has made it practically impossible for small independent stores to compete in online sales.
Put another way, very few things are all bad or all good. A lot of internet commentary wants to magically keep the good and vaporize the bad, but it just doesn't work that way.
Apple for example copies apps and makes them available as default in iOS. Companies go bankrupt because of it, but it is not monopolistic.
Of course all these are because of the strict legal definitions we have. In spirit I agree with you.
That's according to a peculiar interpretation of anti-trust law.
“Due to a change in legal thinking and practice in the 1970s and 1980s, antitrust law now assesses competition largely with an eye to the short-term interests of consumers, not producers or the health of the market as a whole; antitrust doctrine views low consumer prices, alone, to be evidence of sound competition.”
Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
If dumping actually occurs then the government or competitors can sue and win under the current antitrust laws by showing that consumers are now paying more due to the dumping scheme. Lina Khan’s view militates for prospective suits - suits where no consumer harm has yet occurred.
> Additionally, the consumer harm test focuses on the consumer which is the ultimate class of people antitrust laws seek to protect. Antitrust laws don’t exist to protect markets, they exist to protect citizens.
Citizens stop being consumers when they exit the store. Then they go to work or run their business, whereupon Amazon harms them to the tune of thousands of dollars - all so they can save a penny when they put that "consumer" hat back on. This is ludicrous and self-defeating.
> Quantitative tests are seen as less able to be abused because some judge has a particular view/vibe
Of course, the choice of which quantitative test to use is totally objective too, right? /s
I'm using peculiar in the sense of “Particular; individual; special; appropriate.” Distinctive. This may be somewhat archaic. Not in the sense of odd or curious.
> Biasing Amazon’s search results to preference Amazon’s own products over ones that Amazon knows are of better quality.
> Degrading the customer experience by replacing relevant, organic search results with paid advertisements
> Charging costly fees on the hundreds of thousands of sellers that currently have no choice but to rely on Amazon to stay in business. [...]
> Anti-discounting measures that punish sellers and deter other online retailers from offering prices lower than Amazon, keeping prices higher for products across the internet. For example, if Amazon discovers that a seller is offering lower-priced goods elsewhere, Amazon can bury discounting sellers so far down in Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible.
That said, I have specific doubts. For one, search has always been crap on Amazon. I could believe they tried some of these tricks, but I confess I have my doubts they would execute on them well.
For second, some of this is standard BS that retail has just accepted. That is, bringing on "experts" from in the retail industry would almost certainly bias you in some of these directions. The standard contracts that retail stores have pushed for a long time are such that they absolutely should be curtailed. They can be good tools for small companies, but it is clear that as companies get larger, they amplify power imbalances.
Amazon has some shitty practices but I expect a lot of pushback in this lawsuit as a bunch of other companies see a target on their back for stuff they've been doing for longer than Amazon's been around.
"other companies" don't have the same market power here, or indeed engage in the same anticompetitive behavior, but again, that's all explained when you read the FTC complaint detailing the actual behaviors in question
That is, as well defined as some concerns are, this complaint actually throws out a ton of that and makes it even less clear.
if the FTC didn't know whether their rules applied, they wouldn't have been able to draft a complaint explaining how they do
penalizing suppliers for offering lower prices elsewhere, for example, is pretty clearly anticompetitive
If we are going to rebuild some of the surrounding rules such that these practices are illegal, I'm all for it. If it turns out that I'm wrong and they do manage to make the market healthier with a suit against Amazon, great.
This doesn't look strong in that direction, though. This reeks of populist appeal from folks that know it is a politically savvy move to bash Amazon.
the criticism of this latest case, however, reeks of corporate worship from folks that know that Amazon is in the wrong (as the complaint documents)
You can disagree there, but realize our disagreement here isn't that Amazon is a good company. It is on the strength of this case. It really feels like one that is being brought more for optics than otherwise.
I say this as someone that thought they should have had a strong case against Microsoft buying Activision. And yet, just look how that went. Maybe I'm wrong. Shouldn't take too long for us to find out, all told. I remember the stories of what Walmart did and still does in retail, though. It is obscene to see how that has played out in time.
You can disagree, and that's fine, I'm not saying your personal disagreement specifically is support for Amazon, it's just that's the optics of the individuals disagreeing with the case the FTC presented here, for a lot of us, seem to be corporate/capitalism worship and/or personal disagreement with the existing rules and laws against anticompetitive behavior that Amazon clearly violated here (as detailed in the complaint)
So, we'll see. Hopefully quickly.
I'd love to see a longer take, though, addressing the specific points in the complaint, and what makes you think each one is weak. It sucks that most of the opposition I've seen is along the lines of "if Amazon isn't allowed to engage in anticompetitive behavior, the FTC is coming for your mom and pop shop next"/"where's the line???" and similar FUD (with a fair measure of "they don't own 100% of the market so it's not a monopoly so it's not anticompetitive" thrown in, too)
Paragraph 1, almost literally: "the early days of the internet were great for competition..." I, uh, don't know what to tell you here. Isn't even really a point.
Paragraph 2: Amazon is big.
Paragraph 3: Amazon is a monopolist.
4: Amazon's fees can be upwards of half the costs of sellers.
This point, finally, could be something. The examples that have been made public, though, are for sellers that are basically drop ship sellers. I'd love to see better evidence here.
5: Amazon also sucks.
I mean, this is kinda the core of my main counter point. Amazon is losing on its own terms. And if it doesn't get its shit together, it will lose soon.
That said, I do think this point muddies my view by discussing the old "relevant, organic searches." All of search has gotten bad. And Amazon's was never good.
6: Amazon sucks, but is getting away with it.
Ok...
7: Amazon doesn't enter agreements where people can undercut them directly in costs... Or something?
Sadly, I've run out of steam rather quickly on this. The claim here seems to be that Amazon enters all of the same agreements that other retailers do. With similarly bad results happening. I'd be delighted to find that general ruleset changed. I fail to see how this is even pretending to move in that direction.
8: We want to be clear it isn't just that Amazon is big. It is the practices they use.
This is the real kicker in all of this. The main practices they keep calling out are not unique to anyone in retail. Please make them illegal, but don't pretend going after Big Tech isn't an optics thing.
Skimming the rest: I'm now officially out of steam. What paragraph do you feel is actually strong? There is some neat analysis of the buy box... but it isn't that neat, all told. Amazon was silly proud of their 1-click nonsense for a long time. And it is probably a safe wager that, sure, most people don't make it to page 2 of searches; but also most searches don't result in a sale.
I'd almost be willing to take the price harm to consumers as a strong point, but Amazon has NEVER been price competitive for basically anything. It has always been cheaper to buy something somewhere else. This hasn't been a secret for anyone for a long time. It just wasn't egregiously more expensive for Amazon, and their pro consumer return policies made for a loyal customer base.
Again, don't take my criticism of FTC here as praise for Amazon. I don't vilify them as much as many do, but I do think they have been doing some hilariously non-forced screwups lately. This is still a pretty shit case.
I would have just gone on the allegations, but they are only done as assertions by design, and you would have to reference back to the paragraphs heavily. (I suppose the 17 allegations from the states could stand on the basis of the other allegations, but that is somewhat circular.)
The points regarding the search getting worse could be promising, maybe. However, I remember all the way back in 2014 that search at Amazon was already laughably bad. And search has been getting worse for everyone, not just Amazon.
The points regarding the buy box show a lack of any consideration to how retail generally works. There is a reason "top shelf" is a thing, and why the top shelf items are both more expensive, and likely sell more.
Preferred seller agreements and best pricing clauses are the norm in retail. By all means, lets get rid of them.
Claims that Amazon has declined in service while raising prices are interesting, but also kind of against the points in question. The services do seem to be declining. And competition outside of Amazon's own site have gotten better. The evidence that they are preventing newcomers feels weak when I consider that I do buy more from non-Amazon today than I bought at all online back in the early days of the internet.
Ironically, there would be a strong case here if only talking about books. But this seems to be specifically excluding books and digital.
So, again, what are the strong points?
Your excuses of "so and so did it too" are meaningless, as are any slippery slope fallacies, as are your personal anecdotes and observations (the latter of which, no fault to you, simply can't be trusted anyways, as my own observations are the opposite). The only relevant questions are whether Amazon did it (they did) and whether it fosters competition vs. stifling it (seems like the latter).
So, again, go ahead and try to honestly list the behaviors like the one above, and explain how either Amazon didn't engage in that behavior, or how the behaviors fostered competition vs. stifling it. Otherwise, it seems like more of the "where's the line???" FUD I mentioned earlier.
They claim that search is getting worse on Amazon. And that the old "organic search results" are worse now. I agree it is getting worse. I disagree that it was ever good. Largely the problem is one of volume there.
They have claims that some algorithms push sellers down. I actually am interested in seeing that explored more. My gut is that it is just poor execution from Amazon. Not from incompetence or malice, mind; but it is a stupid hard problem that nobody is executing on well.
My "excuse" of the favored vendor clauses existing is, I confess, largely sour grapes that that is allowed at all. It really screwed over a lot of small companies that tried to partner with Walmart back in the day. If that goes away, I'll be delighted.
But the entire study of the buy box is questionable. Amazon has long done everything they can to get it to "1-click" so that you buy. They famously had a patent on that nonsense. Yes, it makes a big difference on purchases and such. No, it probably is not being "weaponized" against some sellers. The entire dream of Amazon there is to get a sale from a web view. They have almost certainly tried all they can to take whatever step they can to increase that. As such, it is a very volatile place to be located and it will take effort to keep a vendor there. Pretty much period.
Can they show that losing a preferred location will lead to reduced sales for a vendor? I'd be shocked if they couldn't. The question there is why did Amazon do it? If they did it as retaliation to a vendor, that is BS and they deserve to get fined. If it was just them doing what they can to convert more sales? I'm less clear what to do there. If we want better rules around that sort of thing, I'm all for that.
I don't actually know that I can stay on this discussion much more. You haven't really offered anything other than "I disagree." And, that is perfectly fine. I am hoping to see some points that strengthen the case, though.
I disagree with this disagreement, and can see it getting worse, and given it seems the search was intentionally punishing sellers for anticompetitive reasons, I'd be interested in seeing if Amazon can present a convincing explanation otherwise.
> They have claims that some algorithms push sellers down. I actually am interested in seeing that explored more.
That does indeed seem like anticompetitive behavior, I'll wait to see if Amazon has a convincing explanation for it that fosters competition vs. stifling it.
> My "excuse" of the favored vendor clauses existing is, I confess, largely sour grapes that that is allowed at all.
Turns out, it isn't in this case (hence the suit). Makes sense, this also seems anticompetitive. I'd be interested in seeing if Amazon has a convincing explanation for how this fosters competition, vs stifling it.
> Can they show that losing a preferred location will lead to reduced sales for a vendor? I'd be shocked if they couldn't. The question there is why did Amazon do it?... If we want better rules around that sort of thing, I'm all for that.
The answer is explained in the complaint. I'd be interested to see if Amazon has a convincing explanation for how this fosters competition vs. stifling it. And as for the rules, turns out we don't need "better" ones, as the existing ones seem to be enough (hence the suit).
And note that I am making no real defense of Amazon here. It is frustrating to me that searching "PS5 controller" is largely results that I would not at all feel comfortable buying, at this point. What searches do you remember, "back in the early days" that were good?
And, really any search will reveal the actual "difficulty" here is that there is just too many hits. But can you really call out any of those as bad as long as you allow outside vendors? I'm not convinced. I don't want to buy from UPPERCASE vendor anymore than many folks do, but I see my purchase history has a ton of them.
So, again, this is a criticism of the case. They do pick apart many things that seem to have gotten worse. They rest a lot of their case on observations that Amazon themselves were chasing. Largely that the buybox is a huge driver of purchases. What they leave off is all of the behind the scenes that goes into that buybox. Most of it, unsurprisingly, is going to be based on costs to Amazon. This case is looking for twirling mustache villains looking to rob small vendors. But it is against a backdrop of an unusually large number of vendors that are all continuing to make money. In a field where Amazon is trying to optimize shipping and warehousing costs. Is it getting harder for people to do so there? Almost certainly. Is Amazon specifically retaliating against sellers? Maybe, but my gut is not likely.
I do appreciate the counter view that this is, in fact, a strong case. I have not seen evidence that convinces me of that. You keep saying it is "in the case," but that is our disagreement. The case is largely discussing the difficulties of being an FBA seller. One that many successful FBA sellers would be more than happy to tell you about. They have basically no evidence of Amazon intentionally mistreating any particular seller.
They have a lot of redacted comments about Amazon's analysis of their platform. But no hints that Amazon intentionally pushes sellers down. They have tons of details that having enticing offers at the top and in the buybox would be good for Amazon. Nothing hinting that they are trying to make it harder for any particular seller.
Even the anecdotes you will find online is that managing FBA is a full time job. Try managing a booth at your local farmers market. Just managing the booth is itself a job that you should probably look into getting specialized help for. This is no different.
I guess we will see if Amazon manages to put forth any convincing defense of their actions, like penalizing sellers for selling cheaper elsewhere. That just doesn't seem to me like it fosters competition. And the idea that this conveniently happens totally by accident to the sellers who do so, seems ridiculously unconvincing. If your "bad search" conveniently happens to have the same effects as an anticompetitive business practice, I don't see that pretext standing up in court.
Specifically, most of the quotes from Amazon seemed to be analysis they were doing about the same points. X% of purchases happen in the buybox. Y% of purchasers don't make it to page 2. In both of these, it is easy to imagine that Amazon was doing what they can to increase those numbers. They would not be doing things to reduce purchases, which is largely implied by the malicious implications. (Indeed, most of that is the internet learning about "below the fold" which has been well known in retail for a long time.)
Stated differently, to counter your point, Amazon only needs to show that it is selling more from more sellers to claim that they are driving more competition and fostering competition. That is almost certainly going to be an easy thing for them to prove. They aren't punishing sellers by pushing them to page 2. They are increasing sales by getting more likely purchases onto page 1.
Do I think this is healthy? Not really. That more low quality things make page 1 is frustrating to me and feels unhealthy. Is it frustrating that Amazon can probably increase sales of a low quality thing by putting the Amazon Basics label on it? Yeah, it is. Question is if that is stealing more sales from sellers than the other low quality items are already stealing. (It also begs the question that the Basics label is low quality.)
are they, though?
I'm not convinced that it's a total coincidence that sellers who sell for cheaper elsewhere are being penalized in search results, especially if the excuse is that a multi billion dollar company which relies upon search can't do search.
And honestly, that seems anticompetitive to me, thus wrong and illegal, thus the suit.
> They would not be doing things to reduce purchases
I haven't seen any evidence the anticompetitive behavior in question would reduce total income in the long term. They would be doing things to punish sellers for selling cheaper elsewhere though, and seems like they are. That doesn't necessarily mean reducing purchases though, especially if Amazon has already copied the product and started selling their copy themselves. And whether it reduced some purchases (but not others) for Amazon is irrelevant, as they could easily be willing to threaten taking a tiny hit to punish competitors.
You keep coming up with pretexts for the anticompetitive behavior, but they simply aren't a more convincing explanation than anticompetitive behavior. It's like saying you didn't stab a guy, he just ran into your knife 100 times. Maybe technically possible, but not convincing, and definitely not more likely than maliciousness. If it walks like a duck, etc.
If they aren't reducing sales/income in the long term, then that is also a defense to "not fostering competition." If they are literally selling more, this is easy to frame in a way that shows more competition. And again makes the case a bit weaker to prove that they were hurting what has been growing on their platform.
If you think they will be able to prove this, great. The plausible defenses here are just overwhelmingly against it. The criticism of Amazon going to crap is that Amazon is turning into a Dollar store, as far as quality goes. And, yeah, it is. Is why you don't have people making a killing as suppliers to Dollar stores...
It seems unlikely to me that they will be able to do so, especially with weak pretexts like "we aren't effectively punishing sellers who sell cheaper elsewhere, we're just rewarding those who don't", given how damning the anticompetitive behaviors in question are.
If you think they will be able to, great. The plausible interpretations of what we see are just going overwhelmingly against it.
> if they aren't reducing sales/income in the long term, then that is also a defense to "not fostering competition."
Definitely not. I don't see at all how that fosters competition to Amazon's marketplace. Especially since it seems Amazon is punishing sellers for selling cheaper in Amazon's competitors' marketplaces, which is, again, an anticompetitive business practice. Indeed, Amazon's sales here are irrelevant, because both a successful and a failing company can engage in anticompetitive business practices.
What evidence have we been given that they punished folks? There is evidence that it is punishing to be lower in the search results. But this is the same for any leaderboard mentality. Am I punished by having more people ahead of me when I join a peloton race that is live with 2k+ people? Or am I just more likely to be on a class with competitive people when I join it live?
So, reframe your complaint. They don't have to show it isn't punishing to be lower in the ranks. They have to show that they didn't purposely drop someone in the ranks for punishment. Competition is, by definition, fierce. You expect most competitors to lose when the contest is "be top 5 of N", the more so as N increases.
Oddly, bike racing is a good one here. I bet early adopters of Peloton and the like found earlier races much easier than they do later ones. They can blame cheating, of course. And we should do what we can to eliminate cheating. But, at large, more competitors leads to fiercer contests and more losses. Pretty much period.
> What evidence have we been given that they punished folks?
What evidence do we have that the ones who listed cheaper elsewhere happened to suddenly be "unable to compete" in the same environment without any action by Amazon? Seems like a convenient coincidence. An unconvincingly convenient one.
We'll see what more comes out as far as communication goes, but more importantly, as far as disparate impact goes: given the data we'll receive as a result of this suit, we'll be able to tell statistically if there was any difference in treatment for sellers who sold cheaper elsewhere vs. not, regardless of pretext (suddenly becoming "unable to compete")
>at large, more competitors leads to fiercer contests and more losses. Pretty much period.
Perhaps. Amazon is fighting competition by engaging in anticompetitive business practices, and they're still around. Maybe there's something to that. If we want more competition to Amazon, then, that means we need Amazon to stop engaging in anticompetitive business practices.
Competition is fierce, worse when your marketplace is engaging in anticompetitive business practices.
As for evidence that those that listed cheaper elsewhere would see lower ranking here, I only need to point at what is largely merchants arbitrage for so many items on Amazon today. By and large, if you see an ALL CAPS seller, know that you can get that exact item cheaper on another site. (Honestly, by and large, know that Amazon is never the cheapest option. Never really claimed to be.)
For maximum amusement, I've personally seen Walmart boxes from some sellers that were evidently taking advantage of a local sale to make some money online. (Not just 1-2 dollars, mind. Beginning of covid had people stocking up on trampolines and whatnot to resell online. You could easily flip some of those for 100% markup in that market.)
Hopefully this whole suit doesn't take years. Would love to see a prediction market on it. :D
37.8% of online retail.
Walmart is #2 at 6.3%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
> The verb monopolise or monopolize refers to the process by which a company gains the ability to raise prices or exclude competitors. In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with a decrease in social surplus.
> Product substitutability: Product substitution is the phenomenon where customers can choose one over another. This is the main way to distinguish a monopolistic competition market from a perfect competition market.