14 ms·
Is Amazon getting too big?
- bognition 9y agoCan anyone point to a good review of what Kahn's note argues? I read most of the wapo article but it mainly talked about her and the attention she got without really getting into the details of what she wrote and why it matters.
- cbcoutinho 9y agoYou could also have a look at her note, the abstract is pretty succinct. http://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox http://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox
- bognition 9y agoActually it turns out that she wrote an op-ed for the ny times: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/opinion/amazon-whole-foods-jeff-bezos.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/opinion/amazon-whole-f...
- logfromblammo 9y agoI feel like Betteridge is failing me here, because I want to scream "yes!" Then I read the article, and Amazon is actually hiring notable antitrust lawyers. So it would appear that even Amazon thinks it's getting too big, even for the current regulatory atmosphere.
- curiousGambler 9y agoOr they're hiring them all so they all have conflicts of interest when the antitrust shit hits the fan and they end up in court.
- intopieces 9y ago> So it would appear that even Amazon thinks it's getting too big Only guilty people hire lawyers? The intention of hiring counsel is to help you navigate the law and the procedure. It doesn't say anything about what Amazon "thinks."
- orionblastar 9y agoIt is more like Amazon hires the antitrust lawyers as some sort of insurance in case an antitrust suit is filed against them. This is like getting a vacination shot to advoid the flu in the business world. Is Amazon too big? They are like a gentle giant offering services and products cheaper than competition with a good return policy in case of defective stuff. Amazon is sort of a better Walmart here but instead of going to a store front you shop online and things you order get shipped to you. If Amazon is too big, then so is Walmart and others.
- rileymat2 9y agoWell, it is a recognition of risk not of guilt.
- ulber 9y agoBeing a monopoly is not against the law.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago> "I feel like Betteridge is failing me here, because I want to scream "yes!"". That's exactly what I thought too, I never thought I'd see the day where Betteridge's law was broken!
- myth_drannon 9y agoIt's ironic that WP is owned by Bezos.
- elorant 9y agoI find it surreal that the article is written in a medium owned by Amazon.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- BinaryIdiot 9y ago> owned by Amazon It's not owned by Amazon, it's owned by Bezos. Granted that's not much of a distinction but I think it's still important.
- KaoruAoiShiho 9y agoRather than surreal, it's more like a good chance to burnish their reputation for independence.
- backtoyoujim 9y agoWhy ? Do you really think that Bezos doesn't know Betteridge's law of headlines ?
- Swenrekcah 9y agoThat law is only valid in the domain of slanderous, clickbaity or otherwise tabloid-style headlines.
- Hydraulix989 9y agoGreat, sounds applicable then.
- Swenrekcah 9y agoJust because you dislike the premise of the question does not mean it's not a legitimate question that can be discussed and debated. The headline "Is [company/individual/country] getting to [rich/big/powerful/indebted]?" is a valid question, and very different from a headline like "Is [White House staffer] capable of [an incredible acrobatic feat]?" Edit: OK, I think I get your point that the headline is a clickbait considering the article is supposedly lacking. But my point is that the question being posed is not a question that anyone would get into legal trouble for stating as a positive fact, so the "headline law" doesn't apply.
- MediumD 9y agoKind of interesting that this article is coming from the WP, given their acquisition by Bezos. Note: Didn't read due to Pay Wall
- marcosscriven 9y agoEasy to get around with a bookmarklet. javascript:window.location=%22https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=%22+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href); https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=%22+encodeURIComponent(window... E.g: https://m.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fbusiness%2Fis-amazon-getting-too-big%2F2017%2F07%2F28%2Fff38b9ca-722e-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html%3Futm_term%3D.747bae2f68e1&h=ATN8yYRiRkuJiV_hMf339wgPMgcr0fYJfo6oP_odrLCO3YBW6PHED4ZJlaSYYdRqPMEpoYAjl_L6vmNO4PvcSqLWBNwX&_rdr https://m.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washing...
- legohead 9y agoYour link didn't work for me, still paywalled.
- manigandham 9y ago> Note: Didn't read due to Pay Wall Do you use an adblocker?
- myth_drannon 9y agoopen it in Incognito Tab
- lostlogin 9y agoIf you are on iOS, hitting reader mode solves this for many sites (WoPo, NYT).
- jawns 9y agoThis is what HN readers and Paul Graham enthusiasts might call a reverse submarine or an insider submarine. A traditional submarine is when a PR firm supplies journalists with stories that are true, but just happens to favor their clients. It tries to give biased information a patina of unbiased objectivity (to the extent that the newspaper is considered to be less biased than a press release). This reverse submarine -- a critique of Amazon published by Jeff Bezos' paper -- tries to give what appears to be a biased news source a patina of unbiased objectivity by running what appears to be a piece that's critical of the thing it's thought to be biased toward. Bezos can now say, "Hey, look at this Post piece that's critical of Amazon. Clearly, I'm not pulling the strings or censoring articles that make my company look bad." But bear in mind that we don't know what's under the surface. We know what articles critical of Amazon he has let through, but we don't know what articles critical of Amazon he hasn't let through.
- isidoreSeville 9y agoYeah
- Piccollo 9y agoIt was a rhetorical question.
- josaka 9y agoRelevant sequence of tweets by an antitrust legal scholar on the consumer welfare vs. big-is-bad approaches to antitrust law: https://twitter.com/ProfWrightGMU/status/889603600804179972 https://twitter.com/ProfWrightGMU/status/889603600804179972
- blizkreeg 9y agoWhat's with his condescending hipsterantitrust hashtag?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- BinaryIdiot 9y agoThis article has a ton of filler in it. The first several pages have a tiny, tiny mention of a Yale journal posting titled "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" [1] with the rest of the first half being about the writer, various schools she's gone to, etc. Maybe I'm just too impatient but it doesn't get even close to discussing its premise until half way through the article at best. The rest of it is discussing that, according to current anti trust laws, Amazon isn't too big but when it makes acquisitions it hugely affects stock market among other things. So there may need to be new laws or thinking about dealing with large, online companies like Amazon. It's interesting but I feel like they could have gotten the same message across in just a few paragraphs and a link to the Yale journal but I digress. I've been wondering about this same topic though so it is interesting. [1] http://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox http://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox
- bognition 9y agoI'd highly recommend an op-ed the original author published in the ny times. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/opinion/amazon-whole-foods-jeff-bezos.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/opinion/amazon-whole-f... It's short and to the point.
- jshap70 9y agohere's the non-mobile link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/opinion/amazon-whole-foods-jeff-bezos.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/opinion/amazon-whole-food...
- polskibus 9y agoSome of the arguments from the op-ed also apply to other cloud providers hosting other companies SaaS products - like MS serving own BI and invoicing products when they also sell computing power to competing startups.
- josaka 9y agoIt's been a decade since my last class on antitrust law, but the statement in the article that "'consumer welfare,' defined as short-term price effects" seems like it was possibly setting up a straw man. I thought CW accounted for quality and variety as well as price. Am I being too generous to the CW approach?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mrisoli 9y agoIsn't the answer to this question if you swap Amazon for any of the big 5 a sound 'yes'? Amazon owns the commercial aspects of many people and continues to grow in that regard with the Whole Foods acquisition. Facebook owns all social data and knows what you are sharing with your friends. Google owns all search data and knows what you're looking for. Ironically, Microsoft and Apple feel a little bit smaller in this scenario, but Microsoft still owns enterprise infrastructure and knows what your company wants. Apple controls all your devices and knows what you're doing with them. Sometimes I think Uber could make this group a 'Big 6' and own all your commute data and infrastructure.
- notyourwork 9y ago> Apple controls all your devices and knows what you're doing with them. Except there are a massive amount of android devices and windows PCs in the world. Apple controls a small portion of devices in my opinion. I think they are the smallest whale in the ocean these days.
- spurcell93 9y agoA whale made of pure gold.
- leopoldo 9y agoSmallest but heaviest.
- notyourwork 9y agoIn what way if you don't mind me asking?
- Sylos 9y agoAnnual revenue: http://fortune.com/global500/list/filtered?sector=Technology http://fortune.com/global500/list/filtered?sector=Technology
- pilom 9y agoRegulators will have trouble finding anti-trust cases against amazon for the same reason they'll have trouble finding against conglomerates like Berkshire Hathaway. Both get their price setting ability from being conglomerates rather than monopolies. Size benefits both because one business unit can support other business units for less than their competitors pay and cross selling becomes much easier, both of which allow them to price competitors out of the market. If regulators could wrap their heads around the dangers of a conglomerate like Berkshire Hathaway, they'd be able to see the dangers of Amazon.
- sunflowerfly 9y agoAmazon does have a monopoly in ebooks. I believe they are using that market power in anti-competitive ways. This is against the Sherman act today.
- stale2002 9y agoAmazon has been around for 20 years, and the only thing it has used it market power for is to crash prices, which is good for consumers. Amazon is directly responsible for ebooks being so cheap today. The publishers and Apple wanted prices for ebooks to be high. If Amazon's monopoly power results in low prices for me forever, then I say bring it on. The ONLY purpose of monopoly laws is as a consumer protection. And if prices are permanently low, like they are in the ebook space, that is GOOD for consumers, not bad. In another 20 years, those "inevitable" price increases aren't going to come either.
- byron_fast 9y agoNo.
- shanbhag 9y agoOh the irony.
- SirensOfTitan 9y agoThe big question is how you'd even split up a company like Amazon. The Economist published a quality piece a little while back on how antitrust rules need to change for the data economy: https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21721656-data-economy-demands-new-approach-antitrust-rules-worlds-most-valuable-resource https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21721656-data-economy... On another note: > They are implicated in complaints that Facebook has aided the rise of “fake news” while draining readers and revenue from legitimate news media. This feels tired as if Facebook and Google were using anticompetitive practices to drain "legitimate news media" from revenue. Traditional media outlets aren't victims: they still refuse to look at alternative models of distribution, and have no one to blame but themselves.
- janvdberg 9y agoThe latest Planet Money podcast talks a bit about an interesting 'flaw' in the system causing Amazon to grow and grow even more and eating every other company. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/26/539552579/episode-629-buy-low-sell-prime http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/26/539552579/episo...
- Piccollo 9y agoYes.
- mcappleton 9y agoI'm all for competition. If amazon is the best, then more power to them. However if they stifle competition, that's a problem. From what I have read and my experience, they are stifling competition. For example, I read a persons blog post who said amazon had a rule that you can't sell your product on amazon and sell it for less on your own site. That's just rotten. Also I have an ebook on amazon and in order to get exposure you have to exclusively sell on amazon. I get why he does these things, but that's just not right. Amazon isn't a horrible corporation, but I think some of the things they do are anticompetitive and should be changed. So are they too big? No being big is fine and helps them be more efficient. The real question in my mind is if they are using their size to compete unfairly.
- amelius 9y ago> I'm all for competition. If amazon is the best, then more power to them. I'm seriously wondering what about Amazon (the store) is so great. They are just a shop. They may have a little more inventory than anybody else. Their ordering system works fine. They have good user reviews. But all that does not justify the enormous negative effect they have on competition. And they also have problems, e.g. with counterfeit products. In other words, saying "more power to the best" does not make much sense if "the best" is only marginally better than everybody else.
- zzalpha 9y agoWhere Amazon absolutely kills it is in their logistics. As a store they're... frankly terrible. Search is complete garbage. Filtering is clunky. The product categories are an absolute disaster. And it's often impossible to tell genuine product from counterfeit (a fact that, by the way, has me terrified for folks inadvertently buying fake solar observation glasses for use during the 2017 solar eclipse) It's honestly a terrible shopping experience in almost every way imaginable. But through direct supply and their fulfillment program they can get products to consumers insanely fast for zero cost (edit: to the consumer). IMO, that is what puts Amazon above the rest. With Prime I'm honestly dismayed when I see an arrival date that's more than 2-3 days out... that's the level of expectation they've set in the market. Of course, competitors are starting to match them. Walmart, for example, is really advancing in this space. But IMO Amazon is still the king of logistics. For now, anyway.
- mdns33 9y agoIsn't Jeff bezos the owner of Washington post?
- dsschnau 9y agoI thought the same thing, haha. How can WaPo possibly ever be objective on this topic lol
- pg314 9y agoThe editorial board of the Washington Post is independent. Bezos doesn't exert any editorial control. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested to see it.
- pg314 9y agoYes. That is mentioned in the article.
- brettproctor 9y agoCan someone ask the author to google 'myspace' and 'yahoo'? Maybe 'sun' as well? """ Customers naturally gravitate to the platform with the largest network of customers (think Facebook). Or their success depends on having the most customer data (think Google). ... What this “post-Chicago” economics shows is that in such industries, firms that jump into an early lead can gain such an overwhelming advantage that new rivals find it nearly impossible to enter the market, while even experienced ones find it difficult to stay in the game. """
- sergiotapia 9y agoasked the newspaper owned by Amazon owner.
- UweSchmidt 9y agoAs good as Amazon is, and for all the work they've put in, maybe in 10 years it's all commodity? There's products that have data attached to it, price, availability, product information. Big deal? Then there's logistics, also a commodity. Travelling salesman and Knapsack problems are solved and thus the product will arrive at your door the next day. Big deal? In the end, maybe Amazon is just a middle man, an inefficiency?
- bamboozled 9y agoThere is something to be said for this, because: * Technology is making it easier for direct sellers to be found (Google shopping etc) * Its constantly getting cheaper to have an online web store for direct sales. * There are already online stores which I prefer over Amazon due to free shipping and faster delivery (outside U.S.)
- rb808 9y agoAmazon definitely has to stay on its game to stay #1. When Wallmart opens up in town the local shops to under and you have no choice. When Amazon forces other businesses to close - you still have a lot of online retailers to choose from. It isn't difficult to buy from Target or BuyNLarge etc. Which is why they try hard to hook you with Prime, Kindle, Fire etc. If Prime was outlawed, Amazon would be in trouble in a few years I expect.
- odc 9y agoFor you :-)
- EwanG 9y agoIn my opinion, yes. Back in the mid-90's I used to get a mug or something similar from Amazon at the end of the year as a thank you for my business. But then we fast forward to last week when I placed an order that was being shipped by THEIR shipping arm, was somehow lost, and their customer service still tried to tell me they couldn't help if the shipping company lost something - even though THEY were the shipping company. Had to escalate to get a refund, and this is the 4th order just this year that hasn't made it. Granted the other three were other shipping companies - but FedEx claimed they never actually got the package, which given this experience I'm inclined to now give them the benefit of the doubt.
- azakai 9y ago> Why do Walmart, Google, Oracle and UPS all consider Amazon their biggest threat? Is this true? For some of them (Walmart) I guess I wouldn't be surprised, but I'm still curious where this information comes from. Is it guesswork on the part of the author, or is it based on off the record discussions with the leadership of those companies, or something else?
- arbuge 9y agoAnecdotally, when I proposed to some Google product managers that Amazon was their biggest competitor (if not threat) in my opinion, they looked at me as though I was out of my mind. They really could not see much of a connection at all. Perhaps because they worked in groups like Android etc. not the advertising group, but it was still a suprising attitude to me.
- nocoder 9y agoI think the parts of the business are a threat not the whole. I would think Amazon can be a pretty big threat to Google in advertising and cloud and to UPS in logistics and of course Walmart in retail.
- arbuge 9y agoIn cloud it's the other way round. Amazon is the incumbent by far and Google is (one of) the threat(s).
- samnwa 9y agoI think the question to ask is: does Amazon make things better for consumers? The answer is an emphatic yes. Their practices squeeze every dollar out of the price of goods and then put that money right back into something else you want. Magical overnight shipping, digital books and videos, fresh and local food delivery -- what more do you want?
- stephengillie 9y ago/s/Amazon/Walmart/ /s/2019/2003/
- verelo 9y agoNope. But i also own around $100k in Amazon stock, so perhaps I'm just super bias? I live in Canada, i tried to buy a iRobot 960 [$849 + 13% HST = $959.37 CA on Amazon] and ship it to my sister, she is building a house, and getting married...i love my Roomba and thought it'd be a fun present. Sadly I cannot do this, and since Amazon is just a book store in Australia there is really no option for using Amazon here. The 'competition', Harvey Norman, lists the same item at $1399 AU. For fun, the exchange rate is $1.01 AUD for $1 CAD, pretty damn close. Import taxes I assumed, but then I found a cheaper and lesser known electronics website in Australia sells it for $1049 [taxes included]. Pretty close! The moral to this story: Amazon will continue to be successful and grow as long as traditional retail insists on ripping off it's customers. I look forward to them prioritizing growth over profits for years to come, the entire world remains!
- pm 9y agoEverything in Australia is more expensive than it should be, unfortunately. That's what we get for being the geographical arse end of the world.
- Symbiote 9y agoIt's also (AIUI) that Australian workers are paid a reasonably fair wage, even if they're moving packages in a warehouse, delivering parcels or floor staff in a shop. Minimum wage in Australia is double that in the USA. Here in Denmark, the minimum wage is even higher (2.5 times USA plus pension) and the vacuum more expensive than in Australia.
- verelo 9y agoI don't think that would even come close to explaining this difference. But as an Australian, yeah it's a thing.
- ikeboy 9y agoI'm told Amazon Australia is opening up soon, first for merchant fulfilled and eventually FBA.
- pje 9y agoYes
- throwaway032104 9y agoI'm an alumni of one of the big accelerators. We have had long internal email threads about Amazon strongarming smaller ecommerce startups with mandatory stock warrants as a precondition to sell anywhere on amazon. For example, amazon will force a startup to give amazon a warrant to buy 10% of the company at a discount. They have frequently tried to figure out what customers ultimately want and SHUT OFF accounts of sellers on amazon ... and gone and listed those products themselves. Amazon is extremely famous for arm twisting anti-competitive and anti-startup policies.
- tracker1 9y agoI wish that Amazon would start labeling packages with a code that indicates the "seller" so that they can better track, isolate and ban sellers of counterfeit goods. It wouldn't add that much to their overhead (what, < $.20 per item?), and would do a lot to improving the risk of class action, and trademark suits ahead.
- quadrangle 9y ago> even former antitrust officials acknowledge that their approval of Google’s purchase of YouTube and ITA Software and Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp look naive in hindsight Just imagine what it would be like if YouTube were independent all this time (or those others). Either we really could maintain more independent presence on these different platforms better than we do now or Google and Facebook would have figured out how to out-compete and squash them and we'd see the same result as today (except "Google Video" instead of "YouTube" as a name etc). This is about POWER. That should be the test. Does a merge give excessive POWER. The answer is YES far more often than the Chicago-school jerks want to believe.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoYes, I think the problem here is that in antitrust decisions citizens are being abstracted into consumers but there are lots of ways we are affected by these decisions which may not, or which may only indirectly relate to our consumption.
- gandutraveler 9y agoBezos owns Washington Post :(
- pg314 9y agoThat is mentioned in the article.
- djhworld 9y agoOne thing I have noticed is my prime membership has subtly shifted my shopping habits further and further towards Amazon. I've become impatient with other sites delivery fees and schedules, and don't really bother doing much price comparison either. Last night I ordered something off Amazon at 22:45 and it arrived this morning, that's a 10-11 hour turnaround time, and most of that time I was asleep It makes me a bit uncomfortable that the situation has come to this, I'm inclined to cancel my auto renewal on Prime, just to try and level the playing field a bit when it comes to comparing retailers.
- kossae 9y agoThis is the very interesting part. By offering such great shipping terms on nearly everything (or close variants of), they're essentially setting the bar higher for any e-commerce store which carries similar items. This means businesses will need to both get with the times as well as find new moats and defining features to set them apart.
- Applejinx 9y agoDo you think your isolated decision that harms you relative to other people, is able to do structural damage to what Amazon is?