Advocating for a less equal ads marketplace seems like such a strange position for the FTC to take.
Are they simply throwing out every possible accusation and seeing what sticks?
But SEO is quite hidden and hard to define. Ads are there, see a banner. SEO? No obvious 100% criteria for it.
Can one tell that a text is produced by SEO? Usually no (especially, when it's good quality).
Now, the difference is:
- In ads case, a government comes and asks for a tax. Because there is a clear case for a transaction in an economy sense (ad for money).
- In SEO case, no transaction proof is there. Can't come and ask to pay tax, or regulate anything. It could be a happy customer who wrote a piece of text. Or clever SEO author. Or both mixed. Can't tell! In this sense SEO brings less or no tax.
How do you define that? Do you exact match on query text? How products that convert better? Have lower return rates? Is a 1 start product that matches the query exactly better than a 5 start that mostly matches? Etc, etc.
Edit: changed “monopoly” to “monopsony”
Yes, Amazon is a middleman and they take as big a cut as they can.
Is that abusing a monopoly or simply the nature of being the most successful marketplace? That’s for the courts to decide, I guess. (Or not since they’ll obviously settle before it goes to decision.)
Amazon is not only charging sellers for placement, but they deliberately threw a bunch of fake and shitty products up on their marketplace to force sellers to cough up more money.
They also require sellers not to sell their product cheaper anywhere else, which I’ve never understood how they can get away with.