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I'm sure they're watching this closely. But for now, scams are still more profitable for them than cracking down on those scams. A moderate amount of impact t
by OneLeggedCat 6y ago
I'm sure they're watching this closely. But for now, scams are still more profitable for them than cracking down on those scams. A moderate amount of impact to brand value is always acceptable to near-monopolies.
- Grimm1 6y agoThey aren't a near monopoly though. They have about 49% of the eCommerce market. https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-commerce-market-is-now-49-or-5-of-all-retail-spend/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-... It's gone up since I last checked, but that's not a monopoly. They're just the most consolidated block. You can downvote but 5% of the entire retail market and 49% of ecomm is not anywhere close to a classical monopoly.
- Lammy 6y agoWhy focus so much on the word? People reach for one of the few common words we have for “badly-behaved corporation” to express their criticism of Amazon practices, not by hawkishly watching market share graphs until one line gets too high. Maybe there is a better word, but the problems people experience are still there and are still real.
- tedunangst 6y agoThe premise of the comment is that monopolies can ignore negative reputation because there's no alternative. But that's not true for badly behaved corporations in general.
- ByteJockey 6y ago> Why focus so much on the word? The word in particular has special connotations in US law. The people that like the service amazon provides probably don't want that designation applied to amazon, since there's a chance the company could be broken up at that point.
- Grimm1 6y agoI don't like it because calling a non monopoly a monopoly has potentially broader implications for other companies not just Amazon, I don't like the dominoes the shift to this thinking implies.
- ByteJockey 6y agoFair, I didn't cover it because dragging in the rest of the amazon scale companies seems like it would have cluttered the point I was trying to make. But your point is relevant, this has implications for many companies outside of just amazon.
- Grimm1 6y agoWords have power and you should try to be precise with them, monopoly doesn't mean badly behaved corporation and you'll find I disagree with the thought that Amazon is a badly behaving corporation in any case. Monopoly implies you being forced to use their services with no such alternative and having negative consequences from that as a consumer. I order from many alternatives on the regular. Monopolies have consequences under US law, not liking a companies practices is A. A matter of personal interpretation and B. Not nearly enough to trigger the consequences from the US's actual laws.
- woofie11 6y agoAmazon has always been forward-thinking, and they ran at a loss for decades to build up a trillion dollar business. I really don't think short-term thinking is what's causing them to tear it down right now. I have no insider information, but I rather suspect that either: 1) it either got out-of-control to where it would cost billions of dollars to address 2) that there's some organizational dysfunction to where they're not competent to address it. Or something similar. Those sorts of problems are tough. Cultures, incentive structures, and organizational design issues are slower and harder to resolve than just about anything else, and the theory for how to fix them is not well-developed. Sometimes you try something, and it crashes-and-burns.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 6y agoOP did not say it is a short term plan. Amazon could very well be accepting some amount of bad press around this if profits keep increasing.