I'm honestly not sure how you could make the case that they aren't maintaining and abusing monopoly power. I mean they literally blatantly copy the designs of other companies who sell on amazon, then put their own results for their own products higher in search results than what they copied off of. It's incredibly blatantly anti-competitive.
I ate a lot of popcorn during the Microsoft trials - plural - and the received wisdom from previous generations that was already being forgotten at the time is this bit of torch-passing, which I now impart to you.
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.
The trouble with this argument (which gets made a lot) is that this is basically every large retailer. Walmart has great value, Safeway has safeway select, Target has good and gather. In all of these cases large retailers take well-performing products (i.e. look at their sales data to see what is selling well) and creates mimics.
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.
> The trouble with this argument (which gets made a lot) is that this is basically every large retailer.
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.
Aren't most of these generics all white-label anyway? I'm less worried about store-brand generics that are often outsourced, and more worried about behavior that drives any of the original manufacturers out of the business entirely because of monopoly over the entire sales chain.
How is it clearly anti-competitive if they are providing a better value for the consumer?
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.
When considering "better value for the customer", remember that sellers are a customer of the marketplace too (arguably the primary customer!).
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.
I think those great value products are not in fact produced by Walmart. It's the same product from the same company, just lower priced to appeal to price conscious customers.
Thats exactly what those are. I worked for Reynolds Consumer a while back and the same aluminum foil goes into the brand box as well as the private label box.
The foil might be the same, but that doesn't mean everything is. I've had generic raisin bran cereal that was clearly Kellogg's in a different box, excpet that 1 out of 100 boxes had a slightly different flavor that wouldn't have passed Kellogg's quality controls but since still food safe (so I assume) the generic boxes got it. Of course when doing a private labor you can specify the higher quality controls, but that comes at a higher price. Most of the time Kellogg's is going to make the same cereal either way so nobody can tell the difference, but when something goes off in the process the cheaper generics get it.
My knowledge of foil suggests there isn't anything Reynolds could to that would reduce quality that would still be good enough to ship.
I dunno how it is these days, but the store brand cocoa pebbles used to not taste like chocolate at all, and would fail to turn the milk into chocolate milk like the real ones did. Other cereals had similar problems. A common issue was that the store brand was consistently, noticeably stale, while the name brand almost never was.
Clearly, it isn't illegal to do this kind of thing in general. What's illegal is doing it when you have enough market power to be deemed a monopoly. No physical retailer is anywhere near that. Businesses are allowed to be anticompetitive. That's more or less the entire reason they exist. They're not allowed to create monopolies by being anticompetitive.
There’s nothing wrong with genetics and nothing wrong with stores having their own brand.
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.
You do not need > 50% market share for the government to go after you for monopolistic practices. If Amazon made that case in court, they would be laughed out of the building.
It really depends on how you define it, but Amazon, Walmart and Shopify are all excellent mainstream choices. This gives you plenty of numbers for comparison:
Exactly. I prefer Amazon Basics to YAYWOWND brand every day.
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.
I think it's slightly better than <insert anonymous three day old Chinese company here> but just slightly. Amazon Basics within my company has earned a reputation for being extremely fragile crap that will break quickly and, occasionally, dramatically. I have had absolutely awful experiences with their surge protectors.
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.
Bonus points for YAYWOWND that didn't exist last week, yet all it's products have thousands of 5 star reviews that amazon somehow doesn't think is fraudulent.
Many reputable brands are not on Amazon because then they people who buy from them are not getting a counterfeit. You have to be a certain size to pull this off though, small companies have trouble getting a market outside of amazon or ebay.
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.
It might be, but Costco has a reputation for integrity, and it's not worth trading that for a few percent cost savings on generic items that aren't even a big portion of their bottom line.
And at what point is a company too powerful that doesn't meet the traditional, and frankly outdated, view of a monopoly? Amazon owns and controls entertainment, news, journalism, books, movies, products, furniture, space/satellite services, backend services, storefronts, medical care, pharmacies, food, etc. They literally control, own, and/or provide every aspect of life. Are they the only ones in each of those areas? No. But they are one of the few, if not the only one, in all of those areas at once.
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.
Monopoly is a subset of anticompetitive behavior, and not easy to prove. Whatever behavior you see as monopoly, they could have a "reasonable" explanation for. A company violates the law only if it tries to maintain or acquire a monpoly through unreasonable methods. As usual, the law has loopholes big enough to drive an entire logistics chain through.
To "make the case that they" are or aren't violating antitrust law, you need to know and talk about antitrust law.
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?
Grocery stores sell generic foods, but they put them on the same shelf as the name brand stuff.
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.
Can't speak for your experience, but in mine generics have often replaced name brand products in shelf-space-limited urban locations of stores like Target, etc. I should make it loud and clear that I'm completely fine with this.
I have never once seen a store that removed the major name brands from the shelves and only offered their own generic brand.
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.
Originally, the generics (which had plain black and white packages) had their own dedicated isles. Now the generics are put on the shelves next to the originals and all those "generic only" shelves got filled with regular products.
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.
I think grocery stores are culpable for a lot of shady behavior.
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.
the difference is that grocery stores are easy to search completely - don't like the cereal options on the end-cap? just walk down the cereal aisle and see it all immediately.
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.
It's going to come out that Amazon calls the manufacturers for their basics goods, sends them the leading competing item and has them make it with slightly less expensive components to undercut the cost of the competitor.
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.
My biggest issue with the way Wal-Mart (and most other retail) did it is that it was... scammy.
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.
> It's going to come out that Amazon calls the manufacturers for their basics goods, sends them the leading competing item and has them make it with slightly less expensive components to undercut the cost of the competitor.
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).
That seems far from a monopoly. Only 2 of those I have ever been to, and the common places I go: wegmans, costco, aldi, trader joes are all not on there.
That doesn't seem likely. According to this source, Frey Meyer (18.4%) + Safeway (17.3%) would be the clear market leader with over 35%, but there's still robust competition from Costco, Walmart, and others.
Note that Fred Meyer (18.4) and QFC (14.1) are already both owned by Kroger. So that would be 49.8% post-merger, per those figures.
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.
It's very location-dependent. In my midwest metro I believe they'd be less than 5% of the market. I'm sure Albertsons and Kroger each have local monopolies in different regions.
I think they have a good point, though. I would like the laws to prevent a single corporation from being 90% of all groceries for an entire state even if they aren't anything close to a monopoly from a national perspective.
Neither is Amazon in e-commerce, they hold ~39% of the US market and their eCommerce growth lags behind total eCommerce with 9% and 10% respectively. Wal-Mart is at about 6.5% but had nearly 25% growth this year while capturing 36% of all eGrocery sales in the US.
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.
> Neither is Amazon in e-commerce, they hold ~39% of the US market and (...)
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.
I obviously read the press release, but haven't read the 173 page complaint yet. But the piece about pricing is DEAD wrong.
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 don't know about that. I think the FTC has a bit more insight than a random guy online who admits didn't even read the complaint, and the FCT went through the trouble of putting together a court case to sue Amazon.
I clearly read the relevant pricing piece of the claim, and have direct related work experience. So I actually think I know a lot more about Amazon's pricing behavior than some ghouls deep in the FTC who are following Lina Kahn's marching orders to find a case against Amazon.
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.
Doesn't Amazon prevent you from selling on other stores for a lesser price? I always thought that was a galling scam and couldn't understand why it was even allowed at all.
I do not see the purpose of excluding Walmart from "grocery store" when it sells the most groceries in the nation. Costco and Target are also sell huge amounts of groceries.
The complaint [0] has 32 pages detailing Amazon's durable monopoly power in two relevant markets, so your claim that it lacks a monopoly might do with somewhat more of a counterargument than you've presented.
"Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service."
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.)
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Walmart has done that, for decades. They have tons of their own brand in their stores selling for cheaper next to the more brand name items. Equate, Mainstay, etc. In fact, everyone does it. Target, Costco, CVS, Walgreens, etc. It is basic price discrimination / segmentation strategy.
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?
Not really feeling like doing a bunch of research right now but walmart has 36% of the grocery market in this country and many local monopolies. I don't think Amazon is above 50% in any ecommerce sectors so seems pretty similar to me. Walmart also is known for the same stuff Amazon does where it bans the companies it buys from from charging less elsewhere.
I get the sentiment behind this reaction that most people have. I just have a hard time understanding how it is any different than brick and mortar companies using their sales data to determine which products they should have a store brand version of. Costco, Walmart, Target, etc. all do this, and have been doing it for decades.
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.
> I just have a hard time understanding how it is any different than brick and mortar companies using their sales data to determine which products they should have a store brand version of. Costco, Walmart, Target, etc. all do this, and have been doing it for decades.
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.
> Amazon does not have a monopoly on online shopping that’s absurd.
“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.
> We need to move away from the term "monopoly" (which may not literally be a mono) and towards anti-competitive.
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.
At a Costco, they'll often stop selling the brand name product if they introduce a "Kirkland Signature" version.
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.
How do you know that you're not missing out on an even better deal?
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.
>I get good products for cheap delivered in two days or less.
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.
I cancelled Prime, and I always still get free shipping. Yes it's longer than 2 days, but a lot of the time it arrives early anyways. I really feel like it is better without Prime. I get more "early arrivals" now and I used to just get 2 day shipments in 3-5 days anyways.
The purpose is to serve the public, full stop (including consumers, employees, shareholders, other citizens). The mechanism is the free market, not capitalism, and the free market requires free competition.
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.
> I'm honestly not sure how you could make the case that they aren't maintaining and abusing monopoly power
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.
Grocery stores do this all the time and undercut brand names. They even put up signs with "compare to <brand name>" by the generic. I'm really not sure how you could make the case that it isn't legal given that it is a long standing and accepted practice, and is clearly beneficial to the consumer.
I've found that many people will spend a lot of time and energy defending large companies (and often their CEOs) against perceived bullying. Amazon, Tesla, Elon, Meta, etc etc. I don't really understand it.
Perhaps they have a different opinion than you do on the issue?
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
> 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.
I'm amazed at how much the idea of pissing into a bottle offended the sensibilities of journalists. Given a choice between pissing in bottles or having the time saved as a longer lunch break, I'd guess most would chose the lunch break. The never ending screw turning cost optimization is the problem, but using that example lands really flat.
> The never ending screw turning cost optimization is the problem, but using that example lands really flat.
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.
See my comment below. I'm talking about delivery drivers. You might be talking about fulfillment centers.
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.
Why do people have to make choices of how to spend their time? Because there is a finite amount of time in any given period, and most activities are mutually exclusive.
No, why are they forced to make this specific choice? Why would they need to deduct time from their lunch break in order to use the bathroom? Using the bathroom and eating lunch are not normally mutually exclusive activities, unless there is a third party enforcing such an exclusion.
Sorry, we might be talking past one another. When I hear about peeing in bottles, I think of the delivery drivers. This is the obvious place bottles would get used, and in my recollection this was most of the reporting on the pee bottles. I believe there was also reporting on workers in the brick and mortar fulfillment center using bottles to meet their quotas, which is perhaps what you are talking about.
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)
HN is run by a VC firm, and the explicit goal of the companies they fund is to grow very big very quickly. While HN's audience extends beyond that the VCs do leave behind a huge imprint.
and others spend a lot of time attacking large companies simply because they are large. In this case, AMZN. AMZN is like the cheapest place to buy things online. But it's not the only place. So, why is FTC going after them?
> others spend a lot of time attacking large companies simply because they are large
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.
Search for "How Starbucks treats their workers" and see why large companies get attacked too. If you search for your favorite local coffee shop, you won't see such complaints.
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.
Yes they are forced to work. If you don't have a job you starve, that's how our economy works. That's a very soft form of force (specifically, a sin of omission), but it is still force.
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".
I was alive before Uber, AMZN existed and nobody starved, people just worked elsewhere, so this assertion is just not true. People have to work, but they don't have to work for AMZN, they didn't before it existed. Sure, quitting is disruptive, but people are not actually forced to work for any company, come on.
You don't think the large companies that existed before Amazon abused those workers? Wal-Mart never did anything wrong to their workers? It's a repeating playbook.
The argument always boils down to "well it's allowed / that's just how you do things" and when the companies get told "No, that's actually not allowed and not how you should do things" the argument switches to "the FTC has been weaponized by The Other Side, even if they're doing pro-consumer things we shouldn't trust them because Big Govt."
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.)
I guess I do that to some degree. Amazon is doing some bad things, but I have a difficult time seeing that without also seeing the good impacts that they've had.
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.
> It is not if you cannot prove that the price that the customer pays is now higher.
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.”
It’s strange to call the most prominent view (and the one applied by courts currently) a “peculiar” interpretation. Lina Khan is the one with the “peculiar” view right now. The consumer interest test is preferred because, among other reasons, it is quantitative. Quantitative tests are seen as less able to be abused because some judge has a particular view/vibe. 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.
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.
Isn't the issue here short term vs long term consumer interest? It's all fine and dandy for consumers to pay lower prices because company A is eating losses to drive company B out of business but what happens after that.
How do you quantify long term consumer interest? We are talking about drastic actions when we are talking antitrust including the complete dismantling of companies in the extreme from the government perspective and a tripling of damages from a private enforcement perspective. How do you justify such drastic measures with a “what if they’re dumping?” approach rather than a rigorous quantitative assessment of impacts on the consumer.
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.
It is peculiar because it was legislated from the bench. Congress made it very clear at the time the legislation was drafted, multiple times, that they considered concentrated markets to be, in effect, a parallel state. Every captain of industry today would become a tyrant tomorrow, if given the power. Textualists and originalists should have smacked down consumer welfare the moment it was proposed.
> 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 wish we could make this more well-defined because this is every company ever entering a new market supported by their existing business. If you actually outlawed all of it it would kill every medium or larger business (which isn't to say I'm not opposed to outlawing it) because that's just the game. The business that has to take on funding and pay interest will struggle against the conglomerate with a war chest larger than your TAM.
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.
it was well defined enough for the FTC to bring this suit with a pretty detailed complaint, I think we're good there
"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
Sadly, no it isn't. Them calling out that they are not going after Amazon because they are too big, but because they did thing X is very problematic for the clear definitions.
That is, as well defined as some concerns are, this complaint actually throws out a ton of that and makes it even less clear.
Don't confuse criticism of the FTC with praise for Amazon here. The FTC seems to be continuing weak cases, and at least some of us view that as very problematic.
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.
This is not a strong case, is what a lot of us are asserting.
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.
I understand you are asserting that, and what a lot of us are asserting after reading all the allegations is that it is a strong case
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)
I'd love to see a longer take regarding what makes you think these claims are strong. Especially with the backdrop of losses the FTC has been having, though, these feel weak. It sucks that the only real commentary out right now is the expected appeals online.
Seems to me, the case is so strong, the complaint speaks for itself. It's convinced me.
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)
You feel in bad faith here. But sure, lets start looking at the points:
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.
for someone who accused me of bad faith in their first breath, you sure don't seem to be trying hard to accurately represent the specific practices Amazon engaged in as described in the complaint, and lazily misrepresenting them isn't the same as proving that they foster competition rather than stifle it.
Then give me the points you feel are strong! :D Seriously, what are the strong points? I don't expect a full paragraph breakdown, as it is an expectedly boring document. Apologies if my misguided attempt is turning you off. I was honestly amused at how much of the document is naked assertions with no real evidence. (Edit: Specifically, I was amused with how much of the document is essentially "Amazon has gotten worse.")
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.
Honestly, I'd like a meaningful rebuttal of the actual behaviors and why they foster competition vs. stifling it. I've already listed one (Amazon penalizing suppliers for listing lower prices elsewhere). Again, pretty clearly anticompetitive.
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.
My main rebuttal is largely that Amazon has been going to shit, oddly.
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 agree [search] is getting worse. I disagree that it was ever good
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).
We'll see. I don't know how to agree with search ever being good. I remember back in 1999 (literally) getting the wrong book on searches. And back then, it was only searching on books. Today, there is more that you are searching through, such that it is almost expected that results will be worse. And it will only get worse.
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'm sorry, I couldn't find anything in your post convincingly explaining how each of the behaviors I listed fostered competition, vs stifling it, or that the behaviors described in the suit were entirely fabricated by the FTC, and so I haven't seen any evidence that this is, in fact, a weak case.
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.
None of the things are shown to be purposely done to hurt sellers.
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.)
Examples? Because, by most evidence that I am aware of, they aren't actually doing that well? Certainly not bad. But not clear to me that they have any real online advantage now that other stores have online payment that they can use between them. I've certainly been far more willing to buy direct from brands for the past few years.
The examples are listed in the article. The last point is pretty damning if they can prove it.
> 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.
First, disclaimer that I do not mean my post as a reason not to pursue antitrust concerns. By all means, look for them. If they are found, make rules about them.
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.
> 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.
