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.)
> They aren't punishing sellers by pushing them to page 2. They are increasing sales by getting more likely purchases onto page 1.
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.
That "they aren't punishing" is what they would have to show. And, I don't know it, obviously, but that doesn't seem to unlikely to me. For this case, they have to have a command of "we want you to push these sellers to page 2." For defense, they only need to show that "we were instead pulling to page 1." That is why this feels weak to me. The defense feels too easily likely.
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...
That the prima facie anticompetitive business practices (like punishing sellers who sell cheaper elsewhere) actually foster competition, rather than stifling it, is what Amazon will have to show.
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.
You are assuming they were punished by Amazon, and not just unable to compete in a busier environment. My gut will be that it is that it is harder to compete in the busier marketplace. As evidence, I gave "PS5 controller," a search that literally doesn't have what looks like a "from Sony" result on page 1. Heck, the number one sponsored result isn't even a controller!
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.
You are assuming they were unable to compete in a busier environment, and not punished by Amazon, as the complaint alleges. It sure would be a convenient-for-amazon coincidence if the ones "unable to compete" experienced any differences in their "ability to compete" as a result of Amazon's actions, after they sold cheaper on a competing marketplace. I doubt Amazon will be able to convince many people that it was a coincidence, versus what obviously appears to be anticompetitive business practices.
> 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.
I'm specifically not claiming that Amazon is incompetent. Plenty of smart people work there. I don't believe in the hyper competence that shutting down some sellers seems to imply. Happy to be shown I'm wrong; but there are other mechanisms that would easily lead to the same outcomes that just seem more likely to me.
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
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