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Amazon restricts how rival device makers buy ads on its site
- tyingq 6y agoIf I'm reading it right, the restriction is that 3rd parties can't buy branded Amazon keywords like "Alexa". I imagine that might come back to bite them if that policy doesn't apply to other brands. They also have some brands that are problematic, because the brands have really generic names like "Ring". And this just sounds really unwise: "Roku Inc., which makes devices that stream content to TVs, can’t even buy such Amazon ads tied to its own products"
- giancarlostoro 6y ago> And this just sounds really unwise: "Roku Inc., which makes devices that stream content to TVs, can’t even buy such Amazon ads tied to its own products" To everyone wondering how it's an antitrust issue, I think this quote right here hit the nail on the head. Edit: On the other hand, I just looked up Roku and it's all Roku devices, I guess as long as I don't see an Amazon product on that first page that's fine. It's still weird you can't buy ads for your own product's very name though. I can't read the full article due to paywall unfortunately, but if they didn't do a more thorough investigation I think someone might just have to, to make sure Amazon's not putting their own ads where they don't allow competitors to buy ads for products they don't actually own themselves like Roku, if they aren't then maybe they're just trying to protect the results given back.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Closi 6y agoInterestingly, if you search "Smart Speaker" though it's wholly dominated by Alexa and Alexa-compatible devices. "Smart Speaker Google" also lists just Amazon Echo devices. "Google Speaker" just comes back with accessories, and then has a 'recommended product' which is the Echo Dot. "Google Home" comes up with the echo dot as a recommended product... Typing in "Google Home Hub" actually brings up the google home hub! Immediately followed by 5 alexa devices...
- pcdoodle 6y agoGoogle is getting a taste of their own medicine in search. I wish shopify would do something to compete with integrated payments, returns, etc (Opt-in for sellers of course).
- giancarlostoro 6y agoIt's funny cause I've looked up Android Tablets in the past and gotten Amazon's which I think is a little misleading since technically you're not getting Android proper. Not that their tablets aren't just as functional, but it might trip up someone who doesn't know any better.
- oefrha 6y ago> Not that their tablets aren't just as functional Their tablets certainly aren’t as functional when it comes to the selection of apps available, unless you jump through weird, unsupported, highly fishy hoops to install Google Play on them.
- baskire 6y agoThere is no android proper. There’s google play services and the android os. The fire tablet is using the android os
- jdmichal 6y agoDo you mean you're not getting pure AOSP Android or Google Play Android? Because you're certainly getting a device running the Android operating system...
- giancarlostoro 6y agoThe former is what most people want and expect when looking for Android.
- jdmichal 6y ago
- unishark 6y agoCan't read it either, but my first guess from the parent comment's quotes was that the story was saying competitors can't: 1. buy ads for amazon product-name keywords to compete with amazon by also selling amazon products. 2. buy ads for amazon product-name keywords to compete with amazon by selling one's own non-amazon products.
- nautilus12 6y agoHow is this not antitrust? When are we going to stand up to this, only once its too late and USA stands for United States of Amazon?
- harikb 6y agoRight! of all the atrocities in 2020, amazon blocking ads is the most important one.
- ethanwillis 6y agoIt's a good thing not only one person is working on all issues at once or we'd have to wait for them to be scheduled to work on this far too long from now. How many Bureaucrats exist? More than enough to handle a single issue at a time.
- pc86 6y agoYou've obviously never met a bureaucrat. One issue is pushing it.
- ethanwillis 6y agoThey take as input infinitely many issues and output infinitely many issues. The problem you point out is one inherent to all turing machine automatons, precisely: "When will they, if ever, be done executing?" :^)
- legohead 6y agoIt is antitrust, I don't know why you're getting downvoted. Antitrust isn't just about monopolies, people. You can boil it down to a company having too much power and abusing this power to harm competitors which ultimately harms consumers; which is exactly what Amazon is doing in this case.
- int_19h 6y agoYou should thank Robert Bork for gutting the proper understanding of antitrust in US.
- yyy888sss 6y agoSeems like 'Company gives preference to its own products on its own store' which is hardly surprising.
- MereInterest 6y agoCorrect, and this is why trustbusting is so important. Because "Company uses market advantage in one market to force competitors out of an unrelated market." is not a healthy long-term behavior to allow.
- tshaddox 6y agoI think “unrelated market” is a tough sell for this case. The two markets are “selling things” and...”selling things.” They’re pretty closely related.
- MereInterest 6y agoI think you are expanding the categories so much as to be useless. Selling books (Amazon's original market) is entirely unrelated from selling home security systems (Amazon Ring). Transportation/logistics (Amazon marketplace) is entirely unrelated from server space as a service (AWS).
- tshaddox 6y agoRight, but "selling basically any physical shippable goods" has long the primary business of Amazon.com.
- paxys 6y agoNo, the two markets are selling things and making things. If Amazon is the sole gatekeeper of getting something from a factory to a customer, it will naturally do everything in its power to boost its own factories and drive all others out of business.
- 6y ago
- sokoloff 6y agoSurely Target/Walmart would be allowed to display their own in-house brands on end-caps and not allow competitors to buy end-cap space if they want, right? (Walmart's retail sales are higher than Amazon's retail sales, though that's likely to cross-over sometime in the next couple years.)
- rrobukef 6y agoSure, but then no product should be able to buy end-cap space. Not just disallowing competitors. And in fact, Target/Walmart clearly enforce limits on what is sold. They don't advertise 'Become an Amazon seller' or open advertising to anybody but a specific few. OTOH, just because I haven't heard any complaints about this, doesn't mean anything.
- sokoloff 6y agoWalmart's marketplace seems quite open to me: https://marketplace.walmart.com/ https://marketplace.walmart.com/ Target is indeed gated by a person: https://corporate.target.com/about/products-services/suppliers https://corporate.target.com/about/products-services/supplie...
- comboy 6y agoSupermarkets are a shitshow and from my point of view it's way worse than anything that's happening in the digital world. There are only a few players and that's where all people buy their groceries. If you're not there, you don't exist. And to be there, you need a really good deal. Product placement (whether you need to reach high low or if it's front of your eyes) make a bigger difference than a packaging which of course dominates over the content. Fancy packaging is also something that big brands can allow and probably protected by patents. Most of stuff you buy is likely from a company which was bought by Nestle. Nestle can negotiate, they can't be removed. Smaller producers must provide the same product that they make under the supermarket brand so that market can get customers accustomed to good value and then they start looking if somebody can make something similar enough but cheaper. It's much worse than as if Amazon ordered products by how much money they were paid from a given company and banned products from competitors of those who paid enough. Free market is long gone in the groceries world. I did not do enough research, I don't have behind the scenes information, I just think about it sometimes when I'm shopping. I'd love to be proven wrong or read a good book or some article on the topic.
- jedberg 6y agoThis is why Warren’s plan included a provision that doesn’t allow a company that runs a marketplace to also participate in said marketplace. Edit: Since a lot of people aren’t familiar with the details, the plan only kicks in once the company reaches 25 billion in revenue.
- latortuga 6y agoHow does this work for B&M companies? Think Walgreens or Target. They have plenty of in-house brands and also major 3rd party brands. Are they allowed to continue having in-house brands?
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoI don't think anything good would be lost if store brands went away as an anti-monopoly measure. They're usually just rebranded from some other company anyways. No need for the retail store to be double-dipping.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoYou'd lose Costco's Kirkland brand, which is one of those rare instances of the store brand often being better than the name-brand.
- codegladiator 6y agoWhy can't they still sell it at stores which they don't owe?
- Miraste 6y agoBetter to cancel the line than supply competitors with better cheaper products than your own store.
- codegladiator 6y ago
- p49k 6y agoAmazon outright banned the sale of Apple TV and Chromecast on Amazon’s marketplace for years, until Google/Apple agreed to include Prime Video. Amazon faced zero consequences. This isn’t new behavior.
- scarface74 6y agoApple never banned “Amazon Prime”. Apple wanted Amazon Prime from day one. Why wouldn’t Apple want Amazon Prime on Apple TV’s when it already existed on iOS devices ?
- p49k 6y agoI didn’t say Apple banned anything? What I’m referring to happened in 2015. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/amazon-will-ban-sale-of-apple-google-video-streaming-devices https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/amazon-wi...
- scarface74 6y agoYou still made it sound as if Apple and Google didn’t “allow” Amazon Prime on their devices. Amazon wouldn’t ship Prime Video on their devices.
- wmeredith 6y ago> until Google/Apple agreed to include Prime Video Your phrasing definitely implies that had disagreed to include Prime at some point.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoOff on a tangent but does anyone else feel depressed at the state of TV streaming? We have 3 companies with their own proprietary streaming devices and protocols which all work great inside their own ecosystem but suck outside of it. Apparently open standard protocols exist but implementations are broken or incompatible on tvs and OSs are dropping support. I have a few chromecasts sitting around but now I have an iphone they are all useless and I have to buy an Apple TV which is 4x-5x the cost of a chromecast and only works on my apple devices.
- altdatathrow 6y agoIt’d be nice if they restricted sponsored ads from all the fraudulent third-party sellers.
- darksaints 6y agoFor that to happen, they'd have to identify the third party sellers that are fraudulent, and for that to happen, they'd have to care.
- AznHisoka 6y agoWhat's even more concerning is that Amazon is promoting their own brands for searches. For example, when searching for "Smart TV", placements of their own Fire TV is on top: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=smart+TV&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=smart+TV&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 This is deliberate and not the result of the search algorithm. They even label the results: "Featured by own brands"
- amelius 6y agoIf I type "Chrome" into Google search, I also get an ad for Google Chrome at the top (I was looking for Chrome, the English singer).
- dspillett 6y agoThat is understandable due to the over-loaded word though. Without other context how does it know which of the two you are looking for? I know which of the two I'd be looking for information about, given I wasn't aware of the other until now.
- mFixman 6y agoI was about to comment against you but you are right. Searching "Browser" on Google shows Firefox first, Brave second, and then a bunch of web articles about browsers in general.
- ealhad 6y agoJust tried typing "browser" in the same Google search (using Firefox), it yields interesting results: I have Brave, Firefox, Firefox on Google Play, the Wikipedia article for browser, and not even one Chrome link.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- johncena33 6y agoIs it absolutely necessary to bring Google into every single conversation and then start bashing it?
- baby 6y agoAntitrust?
- julianozen 6y agoWorth mentioning that Amazon does not allow brands to restrict keywords. I.e. Birkenstock knockoffs can buy keywords on the term "Birkenstocks" even though Birkenstocks are not on Amazon officially. This strategy is used to essentially force companies to bid against their competitors on their own branding. By Amazon restricting "Alexa" and similar, it is protecting itself against such abuse but it implicitly forces its sellers into this race disclosure: I am a former amazon employee who did not work on marketplace at all
- dubcanada 6y agoNot to take away from your point, as it's a very good one. But "Birkenstocks" from Germany are on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Birkenstock-Unisex-Arizona-Sandal-Birkibuc/dp/B005G1E0D6/ https://www.amazon.com/Birkenstock-Unisex-Arizona-Sandal-Bir... For example
- Ensorceled 6y agoWell, to add to his point, the reviews say these are cheap knockoffs and, if you search for just birkenstock, the first item is a competitor, LAVAU ...
- dubcanada 6y agoOh... I double checked and through it said they were legit and came from Germany. I stand corrected lol How is that even allowed? 18,000 reviews? They honestly look completely legit.
- Ensorceled 6y agoYeah, it's all down the rabbit hole. If your handle is an indicator, checkout amazon.ca, it is worse.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago> How is that even allowed? That's a question best directed at Jeff Bezos and consumer protection regulators.
- fataliss 6y agoFunny how corporations are ok to regulate the heck out of their "open platforms" but people see the government enforcing fair(er) trade as anti capitalistic and freedom slashing. Is it just me or that's cognitive dissonance? That said, it's a dicey subject, what's fair and what's not.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/Sf7I5 https://archive.is/Sf7I5
- scoot_718 6y agoAmazon sell devices?