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>I don't think she realizes that splitting up amazon and amazon basics will do little to nothing. I think amazon : amazon basics is a great example of antitrus

>I don't think she realizes that splitting up amazon and amazon basics will do little to nothing. I think amazon : amazon basics is a great example of antitrust/unfair monopoly the same as google search : almost all consumer facing google products. Both amazon and google search are the dominate online market leaders in their respective categories. In amazons case they unfairly use their market position to begin offering amazon private label products on their platform. They know what users are looking for, spend the most on, and they can give their own products dominate positions in the UI. In the case of google they too unfairly use their position as a market leader against their own customers (advertisers), so say you are a hotel booking platform and spend $x with google, google knows the market (searches, clicks, etc...) so google launches their own hotel booking, gives their in-house service priority in search results over existing market incumbents and self bids on google search advertising for key industry terms to drive up costs of advertisers to keep in business. It’s kind of like standard oil buying up the railroads so they owned the supply chain and no other oil could be moved. It’s unfairly using your market position, not to compete, but to be anti competitive to the detriment of consumers. I’d like to see the tech giants prevented from unfairly using their market dominance to stifle competition. As we saw with the break up of standard oil...competition is good for consumers.

basch 8y ago
I agree. But if we are going to split up the store platform and the store brands, now youre going to have to split up Target, Walmart etc. Anyone besides Ikea who sells their own store brand and runs as a platform for others to sell their products. Any grocery store can do the same thing amazon is doing, use data about sales to push clones and store brands of popular products. What percent of products at Target are store brand now? Target is like an Ikea with 3rd party products sprinkled in it, which is what Amazon wants to become.
- apcragg 8y ago
  The difference is that none of those examples dominate their market. The problem isn't "Amazon uses their platform to promote their own products" it's "Amazon uses their market dominance to promote their own products which might not otherwise be competitive"
  - basch 8y ago
    I agree, I just think its Wal-marts playbook, and to single Amazon out is more political than do-goodery. In Wal-marts case its floorspace, in Amazon's its eshelf and datacenter storage.
  - notatoad 8y ago
    dominating the market and holding a monopoly are not the same thing. Amazon has a dominant position in many markets, but are not a monopoly on any market unless you re-define the market to be amazon's portion of it. Does amazon have a retail monopoly? absolutely not. An online retail monopoly? still no. An online book selling monopoly? okay, now we're getting closer but still not a monopoly. A kindle books monopoly? yeah, by definition.
    - basch 8y ago
      there is much more to anti-trust than just monopolies. theres a whole slew of anti competitive behavior.
JackFr 8y ago
> In amazons case they unfairly use their market position to begin offering amazon private label products on their platform. They know what users are looking for, spend the most on, and they can give their own products dominate positions in the UI. 1) How is that different than a department store? If you go into housewares at Macy's you'll see their own branded stuff along with other brands. So at issue is not the practice itself, but rather that the digital marketplace makes it easier and more efficient. 2) The consumer (along with Amazon) is a beneficiary here. The losers are brands trying to sell commodity items at a markup. The play is not to undercut all the power strip sellers (to take an example) and once they are out of business, jack up the price. The play is to take the margin due to marketing and brand equity from the sellers and split it between the consumer and Jeff Bezos, so rather than being harmed, the consumer benefits from this.
- jhall1468 8y ago
  > How is that different than a department store? If you go into housewares at Macy's you'll see their own branded stuff along with other brands. So at issue is not the practice itself, but rather that the digital marketplace makes it easier and more efficient. It's 100% the exact same thing. Go to Walmart and see thousands of "Great Value" products and you'll get the exact same thing. Warren is off her rocker on this one. We have real tech monopolies in the Cable/ISP industry but we're talking about Amazon and Facebook.
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    The issue comes with the monopoly status. If a company controls a certain % of marketshare, that behavior crosses into anti-competitive. If 90% of retail stores were Walmart because they owned a significant percentage of real-estate in key markets (thus, preventing other retailers from moving in), then their Great Value offerings would also be anti-competitive. Amazon's behavior is a textbook anti-competition. They literally build copies of products offered by other merchants on their site, then rank them higher in search results, often times, driving the merchants out of business.
    - 8y ago
notatoad 8y ago
>It’s kind of like standard oil buying up the railroads so they owned the supply chain and no other oil could be moved. kind of, but not really at all. Google and Amazon aren't preventing anybody else from using their services - getting other people to use their services is kind of their whole business model. If you want to compare Google or Amazon to transporting oil on railroads, it'd be like if the company that owned nearly all the railroads owned a couple of oil wells (but not all of them) and still transported everybody else's oil for a fair price.
morpheuskafka 8y ago
> I think amazon : amazon basics is a great example of antitrust/unfair monopoly Store brands have been around *forever." > They know what users are looking for, spend the most on, and they can give their own products dominate positions in the UI. If you own a grocery store, you have every right to place the store brand products wherever you think they will sell best. You could (gasp) not sell any name brands at all! And if your grocery store becomes successful, you're allowed to sell advertising inside it however you want. > It’s kind of like standard oil buying up the railroads so they owned the supply chain and no other oil could be moved. Railroads are to some extent natural monopolies, and they have a massive barrier to entry. E-commerce websites do not. Many businesses of all sizes still sell products directly from their website and do fine. Now if Amazon bought UPS and FedEx and refused to ship any other packages, that would be different. But all they're doing is running their "department store" the way they want to. If consumers want a competitor, they're free to start one with next to no initial cost.
delfinom 8y ago
> gives their in-house service priority in search results over existing market incumbents and self bids on google search advertising for key industry terms to drive up costs of advertisers to keep in business. It would help if the competition in hotel booking, Expedia, Orbitz, ETC weren't all literally owned by a single fucking company now. The sites are entirely rigged against the user.

basch 8y ago

I agree. But if we are going to split up the store platform and the store brands, now youre going to have to split up Target, Walmart etc. Anyone besides Ikea who sells their own store brand and runs as a platform for others to sell their products. Any grocery store can do the same thing amazon is doing, use data about sales to push clones and store brands of popular products. What percent of products at Target are store brand now? Target is like an Ikea with 3rd party products sprinkled in it, which is what Amazon wants to become.

apcragg 8y ago
The difference is that none of those examples dominate their market. The problem isn't "Amazon uses their platform to promote their own products" it's "Amazon uses their market dominance to promote their own products which might not otherwise be competitive"
- basch 8y ago
  I agree, I just think its Wal-marts playbook, and to single Amazon out is more political than do-goodery. In Wal-marts case its floorspace, in Amazon's its eshelf and datacenter storage.
- notatoad 8y ago
  dominating the market and holding a monopoly are not the same thing. Amazon has a dominant position in many markets, but are not a monopoly on any market unless you re-define the market to be amazon's portion of it. Does amazon have a retail monopoly? absolutely not. An online retail monopoly? still no. An online book selling monopoly? okay, now we're getting closer but still not a monopoly. A kindle books monopoly? yeah, by definition.
  - basch 8y ago
    there is much more to anti-trust than just monopolies. theres a whole slew of anti competitive behavior.

JackFr 8y ago

> In amazons case they unfairly use their market position to begin offering amazon private label products on their platform. They know what users are looking for, spend the most on, and they can give their own products dominate positions in the UI. 1) How is that different than a department store? If you go into housewares at Macy's you'll see their own branded stuff along with other brands. So at issue is not the practice itself, but rather that the digital marketplace makes it easier and more efficient. 2) The consumer (along with Amazon) is a beneficiary here. The losers are brands trying to sell commodity items at a markup. The play is not to undercut all the power strip sellers (to take an example) and once they are out of business, jack up the price. The play is to take the margin due to marketing and brand equity from the sellers and split it between the consumer and Jeff Bezos, so rather than being harmed, the consumer benefits from this.

jhall1468 8y ago
> How is that different than a department store? If you go into housewares at Macy's you'll see their own branded stuff along with other brands. So at issue is not the practice itself, but rather that the digital marketplace makes it easier and more efficient. It's 100% the exact same thing. Go to Walmart and see thousands of "Great Value" products and you'll get the exact same thing. Warren is off her rocker on this one. We have real tech monopolies in the Cable/ISP industry but we're talking about Amazon and Facebook.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  The issue comes with the monopoly status. If a company controls a certain % of marketshare, that behavior crosses into anti-competitive. If 90% of retail stores were Walmart because they owned a significant percentage of real-estate in key markets (thus, preventing other retailers from moving in), then their Great Value offerings would also be anti-competitive. Amazon's behavior is a textbook anti-competition. They literally build copies of products offered by other merchants on their site, then rank them higher in search results, often times, driving the merchants out of business.
  - 8y ago

notatoad 8y ago

>It’s kind of like standard oil buying up the railroads so they owned the supply chain and no other oil could be moved. kind of, but not really at all. Google and Amazon aren't preventing anybody else from using their services - getting other people to use their services is kind of their whole business model. If you want to compare Google or Amazon to transporting oil on railroads, it'd be like if the company that owned nearly all the railroads owned a couple of oil wells (but not all of them) and still transported everybody else's oil for a fair price.

morpheuskafka 8y ago

> I think amazon : amazon basics is a great example of antitrust/unfair monopoly Store brands have been around *forever." > They know what users are looking for, spend the most on, and they can give their own products dominate positions in the UI. If you own a grocery store, you have every right to place the store brand products wherever you think they will sell best. You could (gasp) not sell any name brands at all! And if your grocery store becomes successful, you're allowed to sell advertising inside it however you want. > It’s kind of like standard oil buying up the railroads so they owned the supply chain and no other oil could be moved. Railroads are to some extent natural monopolies, and they have a massive barrier to entry. E-commerce websites do not. Many businesses of all sizes still sell products directly from their website and do fine. Now if Amazon bought UPS and FedEx and refused to ship any other packages, that would be different. But all they're doing is running their "department store" the way they want to. If consumers want a competitor, they're free to start one with next to no initial cost.

delfinom 8y ago

> gives their in-house service priority in search results over existing market incumbents and self bids on google search advertising for key industry terms to drive up costs of advertisers to keep in business. It would help if the competition in hotel booking, Expedia, Orbitz, ETC weren't all literally owned by a single fucking company now. The sites are entirely rigged against the user.