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When you compare Amazon to say Walmart or Google, I think the real consideration is that the later two have narrow verticals of dominance and Amazon's dominance

When you compare Amazon to say Walmart or Google, I think the real consideration is that the later two have narrow verticals of dominance and Amazon's dominance spans e-retail, compute, storage, etc and is expanding. Having one entity control 60% of 50 verticals is much more dangerous for the economy anti-competitively than one company that controls 80% of say two verticals. The reason is simple they can use their multi-vertical footprint to apply pressures on a small competitor that a large competitor who was limited to a single vertical could not.

beeflaw 9y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the shareholders eventually got their way and have Amazon split its profitable businesses (like cloud infrastructure) from the unprofitable ones.
- ahtu123 9y ago
  Alphabet is already taken so I guess they'll be the Numeric Table or something.
  - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
    A pity 'Bigtable' is also taken.
moosekaka 9y ago
I don't understand why the author and many here consider splitting Amazon only AFTER they display behavior that is harmful to consumers (such as exorbitant prices and/or poor service). Reading his article, he seems to be saying Amazon does everything good for the American economy and consumers, and he's against false positives (wrongly calling out anti competitive behavior). But at the very last paragraph he suddenly waves his wand and concludes "Amazon is too dominant, we should split them into two, after all two Amazons would be better then one". It just seems like he forgot or got lazy to consider the pros and cons of having two smaller Amazons for the sake of it.
dpark 9y ago
Walmart has a narrow vertical? In many areas, Walmart is the main place people shop for everything, from groceries to clothes to electronics to tools to hobby equipment. I would also not really consider search and ads narrow verticals. Those are broad industries that drive and direct large scale consumer behavior.

beeflaw 9y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the shareholders eventually got their way and have Amazon split its profitable businesses (like cloud infrastructure) from the unprofitable ones.

ahtu123 9y ago
Alphabet is already taken so I guess they'll be the Numeric Table or something.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  A pity 'Bigtable' is also taken.

moosekaka 9y ago

I don't understand why the author and many here consider splitting Amazon only AFTER they display behavior that is harmful to consumers (such as exorbitant prices and/or poor service). Reading his article, he seems to be saying Amazon does everything good for the American economy and consumers, and he's against false positives (wrongly calling out anti competitive behavior). But at the very last paragraph he suddenly waves his wand and concludes "Amazon is too dominant, we should split them into two, after all two Amazons would be better then one". It just seems like he forgot or got lazy to consider the pros and cons of having two smaller Amazons for the sake of it.

dpark 9y ago

Walmart has a narrow vertical? In many areas, Walmart is the main place people shop for everything, from groceries to clothes to electronics to tools to hobby equipment. I would also not really consider search and ads narrow verticals. Those are broad industries that drive and direct large scale consumer behavior.