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I think this needs to be tested in court. Newegg and Walmart do this as well. It feels like this goes against the intent of customer protection laws. For most p

• temp-dude-87844 7y ago
  Recently the US Supreme Court ruled in Apple v. Pepper that app buyers of the iOS App Store do have standing to sue Apple in the antitrust suit, because they're buying the apps from Apple directly, and not from the apps' developers. Regardless of the eventual outcome of the suit, this ruling may have implications for other online storefronts. Here, the Court saw online storefronts as the sellers of goods sold, regardless of whatever business arrangements may be in place between the suppliers and the storefront. Under this interpretation, it's likely that fewer antitrust suits could get thrown out on questions of standing against storefronts. With these prospects, it's likely that more suits will be brought. My prediction is that to mitigate this, storefronts will try to introduce more visual separation between first-party store and the third-party sellers' stores, even if the items are still found from a unified search and catalogue. The purchasing of the third-party item will take place at the third-party storefront, but the payment will be processed by the captive aggregator and fulfilled and supported by them as well.