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... Your dismissive comment shows you know nothing about these matters and while my comment was a quick one as I presumed everyone is aware of these facts, let
by chx 6y ago
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Your dismissive comment shows you know nothing about these matters and while my comment was a quick one as I presumed everyone is aware of these facts, let me show you a few more qualified bodies/persons who believe Amazon might have violated antitrust laws.
1. The EU Competition Commissioner is already investigating. https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-union-probing-amazon-s-treatment-of-merchants-using-its-platform-1537367673?mod=article_inline https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-union-probing-amazon-s...
2. Predatory pricing has long been a concern with Amazon. This is prohibited under the Robinson‑Patman and Sherman Acts. Since Matsushita v. Zenith such cases have been few and far between but https://doi.org/10.1093/jaenfo/jnz006 https://doi.org/10.1093/jaenfo/jnz006 provides a roadmap on how this could be proven for Amazon.
3. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee antitrust subcommittee issued a report last year. https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig... has this "The companies
investigated by the Subcommittee—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—have captured control
over key channels of distribution and have come to function as gatekeepers. Just a decade into the
future, 30% of the world’s gross economic output may lie with these firms, and just a handful of
others.
In interviews with Subcommittee staff, numerous businesses described how dominant
platforms exploit their gatekeeper power to dictate terms and extract concessions that no one would
reasonably consent to in a competitive market."
- nl 6y agoNone of these are about the practice of copying designs of other vendors. I agree Amazon may have anti-trust issues, but it's not obvious how this is one.
- chx 6y agoIf they have an online seller monopoly position which they might have AND they are using the marketplace data to copy what sells well that's exactly the abuse of a monopoly position which antitrust protects against.