6 ms·

Amazon should split into two companies to avoid antitrust fed scrutiny: Citi

11 points by ilamont 8y ago

anoncoward111 8y ago
And yet no comment about Comcast or Time Warner or Verizon? Spare me!!! What a politically charged statement. Should we also demand that United Health Care be broken up?
- whoisjuan 8y ago
  This. They keep acquiring competitors and doing massive mergers and nobody bats an eye. Also, they have real monopolies in some cities where you can only get their services with no other options. With Amazon, you can always go to Walmart or Target or whatever. I have lived in places where my only option as a customer was Comcast or Spectrum. How is that fair for customers?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jmpman 8y ago
Why does splitting AWS from the Retail sector address any anti-trust aspect? AWS has viable competitors. Amazon proper dominates online retail, and its expansion is fueled by AWS profits.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  My guess is because the bundling long was a profit source which helped them keep the margins low by selling their spare horsepower they needed for peak load. Although the retail portion has risen in profits I believe so that is less relevant now.
  - QuinnyPig 8y ago
    “AWS started as spare Amazon.com capacity” has been debunked by senior AWS leadership.
    - acct1771 8y ago
      Source/tl;dr?
      - 18pfsmt 8y ago
        Asking for sources is fair, but when they are readily available can be a bit tiresome: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/cloud-computing/the-myth-about-how-amazon-s-web-service-started-just-won-t-die.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/cloud-computing...
- chillacy 8y ago
  > In March, former Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon also said Congress should look into splitting up Amazon. You can only win so hard before the other players want to start a new game.
noetic_techy 8y ago
People don't realize that social media, smartphones, and the even the online retail space are akin to the invention of the railroad. Nobody has seen these technologies before now, yet they dominate our lives in US. It's time to start trust busting up these companies and increase competition. That's how the capitalist system is supposed to work! You should never hear about a Trillion Dollar company in the news unless it has 2-3 Trillion Dollar competitors on its heals. Market share needs to be taken into account here. Don't tell me Facebook should remain just because there is a Mastodon out there. Apple vs Google is not enough either. Take a look at this visualization and ask yourself whether these behemoths should exists: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/02/technology/apple-trillion-market-cap.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/02/technology/ap...
- chillacy 8y ago
  How is capitalism "supposed to" work at all? That concept exists entirely in our heads, in fact in Laissez-Faire capitalism, this seems like a good outcome. And it's hard to say that Amazon has no competitors. MS and Google have very similar cloud offerings, and there's always baremetal and running my own DCs as an option too. On the retail front I can shop on any number of e-commerce stores, and there's still physical retail as well.
pasbesoin 8y ago
The irony of such a pronouncement coming from Citi, does not escape me. Yes, that reads like a quip. But, stop to think about it. The scales involved, at this level of "dialog", are... well, intimidating, especially in light of how the 2008 financial crisis shook out. And regulation is apparently becoming a mere landscape feature, around which to sculpt some sort of maximized shareholder (and executive) value.

11 points by ilamont 8y ago

And yet no comment about Comcast or Time Warner or Verizon? Spare me!!! What a politically charged statement. Should we also demand that United Health Care be broken up?

whoisjuan 8y ago
This. They keep acquiring competitors and doing massive mergers and nobody bats an eye. Also, they have real monopolies in some cities where you can only get their services with no other options. With Amazon, you can always go to Walmart or Target or whatever. I have lived in places where my only option as a customer was Comcast or Spectrum. How is that fair for customers?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jmpman 8y ago

Why does splitting AWS from the Retail sector address any anti-trust aspect? AWS has viable competitors. Amazon proper dominates online retail, and its expansion is fueled by AWS profits.

Nasrudith 8y ago
My guess is because the bundling long was a profit source which helped them keep the margins low by selling their spare horsepower they needed for peak load. Although the retail portion has risen in profits I believe so that is less relevant now.
- QuinnyPig 8y ago
  “AWS started as spare Amazon.com capacity” has been debunked by senior AWS leadership.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Source/tl;dr?
    - 18pfsmt 8y ago
      Asking for sources is fair, but when they are readily available can be a bit tiresome: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/cloud-computing/the-myth-about-how-amazon-s-web-service-started-just-won-t-die.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/cloud-computing...
chillacy 8y ago
> In March, former Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon also said Congress should look into splitting up Amazon. You can only win so hard before the other players want to start a new game.

noetic_techy 8y ago

People don't realize that social media, smartphones, and the even the online retail space are akin to the invention of the railroad. Nobody has seen these technologies before now, yet they dominate our lives in US. It's time to start trust busting up these companies and increase competition. That's how the capitalist system is supposed to work! You should never hear about a Trillion Dollar company in the news unless it has 2-3 Trillion Dollar competitors on its heals. Market share needs to be taken into account here. Don't tell me Facebook should remain just because there is a Mastodon out there. Apple vs Google is not enough either. Take a look at this visualization and ask yourself whether these behemoths should exists: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/02/technology/apple-trillion-market-cap.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/02/technology/ap...

chillacy 8y ago
How is capitalism "supposed to" work at all? That concept exists entirely in our heads, in fact in Laissez-Faire capitalism, this seems like a good outcome. And it's hard to say that Amazon has no competitors. MS and Google have very similar cloud offerings, and there's always baremetal and running my own DCs as an option too. On the retail front I can shop on any number of e-commerce stores, and there's still physical retail as well.

pasbesoin 8y ago

The irony of such a pronouncement coming from Citi, does not escape me. Yes, that reads like a quip. But, stop to think about it. The scales involved, at this level of "dialog", are... well, intimidating, especially in light of how the 2008 financial crisis shook out. And regulation is apparently becoming a mere landscape feature, around which to sculpt some sort of maximized shareholder (and executive) value.