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It's not just whatever marketplace, anti-monopoly legislation focuses on markets where the players own a significant share of the full market. In the case of Am

It's not just whatever marketplace, anti-monopoly legislation focuses on markets where the players own a significant share of the full market. In the case of Amazon, it seems like they have above 52% of the e-commerce market in the US in 2019 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-commerce-market-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c...) so probably it's even higher now. When one player now has over half the market, you need to carefully watch what they are doing in order for them not to start exploiting their position. This is why it's different between Amazon and Home Depot, they hold different amount of the market, so even if Home Depot wanted to exploit their position, they probably couldn't. Amazon with their marketshare, can do so much easier. Then there is the issue of specifically Amazon ranking their own products above others in their search results, even if others have better reviews, more purchases, more page views and so on. Then we start getting into "abusing their market position" territory, and this is what is getting investigated now.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
Yes, so the issue is not just selling your own products in your own marketplace. > This is why it's different between Amazon and Home Depot, they hold different amount of the market, so even if Home Depot wanted to exploit their position, they probably couldn't. I would say Home Depot has far more control of their markets than Amazon does. Pick any smaller metro, and the only consumer building materials store around is Home Depot or Lowes. The two basically split up all the markets, and if there’s not enough business to sustain both, then there will be just one. But no other store will be able to compete. If you’re a manufacturer and you can’t convince Home Depot or Lowes to stock your item in their store, then you’re not going to reach 90% of people via in store attention (for home improvement stuff). Almost all big box store brands have whittled down to two viable options, or even one in the case of Best Buy. Although, I think that might be the natural state of things given how low profit margins are for retail (low single digit percentages).
- capableweb 6y ago
  > Yes, so the issue is not just selling your own products in your own marketplace. Of course not, the final issue is companies becoming monopolies and companies abusing their market positions, that is what we want to prevent, in order to foster innovation and open markets. > I would say Home Depot has far more control of their markets than Amazon does Maybe you're right, I know nothing about what's going on on the ground of the US. So if Home Depot do have more control of their market than what Amazon has of the e-commerce market (more than 50%), then they should also be under watch to see what "strategies" they employ to get more profits. Just because the House is now investigating technology companies doesn't mean that hopefully whatever legislation comes out of this, cannot be applied to other industries.
- atdrummond 6y ago
  I’m from a rural county in Illinois and our largest city has Lowes, HD, Menards, Ace, Farm and Home Supply and a number of specialty stores. There’s considerably more competition in Home Depot’s field.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I forgot about Ace, but searching on Maps shows there’s still a few around! I wonder if they are franchised. I only recall seeing HD and Lowes on the coasts though.
    - sgerenser 6y ago
      Most Ace Hardware stores are franchises. There’s 5000 of them in the US.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    How is it more competition? You’ll visit at most what 2 of those stores looking for a product? I can use plugins in a web browser to effectively visit 100 stores to shop for the best price on an item. Amazon is just another vendor. -edit- To add to this. If you want to compare to Amazon then you have to look at the market share and revenue of those stores too. Not simply their existence. It doesn't matter if an ACE hardware is in the area if it is 3% of the market.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      > I can use plugins in a web browser to effectively visit 100 stores to shop for the best price on an item. Amazon is just another vendor. Sure you could, but is that how most users use the web? According to Statista (2019 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-commerce-market-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c...) [same link I put before], over 50% of the market is just Amazon, even though it's soooo easy to chose another one. Since they now have a grip of the majority of the market, they should be having lots of eyes on them, as they can easily abuse their position, which most of us don't want to them to do.
skystarman 6y ago
The standard for antitrust enforcement for decades has been when the action of a company harms consumers. How does Amazon harm consumers? I mean precisely, how? Amazon is one of the most highly rated companies in the US by its customers. Its NPS score is 69 and 70 is considered "world class". I can get almost anything online shipped to my house the SAME DAY. If Amazon sends you the wrong item they'll let you keep the wrong one and immediately ship you a new one! How is taking action against Amazon going to help consumers? Seems to me that just ends up being a giant win for Walmart and target who offer worse service and often worse prices! So how are consumers being hurt?
- ohazi 6y ago
  It's possible for a monopolist to have a great product that allows people to do amazing things that were never previously possible and still be harming the consumer. Microsoft had the leading desktop operating system in the 90s that allowed millions of ordinary people to start using computers for the first time, yet their browser bundling was considered problematic. Bell telephone allowed you to talk to people across town and across the country in real time. People love talking to their far away friends and relatives! But they were simultaneously providing this futuristic service and harming consumers with their anti-competitive practices and monopoly pricing. It's possible for Amazon to both be providing a great service to you and me and be harming consumers with priority placement of Basics products and even harming competitors by abusing their access to product metrics in deciding what Basics products to make.
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    Microsoft's dirty tricks with DOS, Windows, and other would-be commodity software are legend. They should have gotten parted out into OS, Desktop suite, and probably several other fragments a long time ago. That stuff was a nightmare for me as a consumer.
    - rincebrain 6y ago
      Should they have, though? I agree they should have been penalized (ideally more harshly than they were) for their legendary anticompetitive behavior, I'm just no longer as sure that partitioning the company out into distinct divisions would have been a net gain for the consumer as I used to be, especially against the specific behaviors they were accused of. How, for example, would breaking up Microsoft into distinct divisions prevent, say, the OS division from enforcing the same anticompetitive requirements on companies licensing the OS? I also think consumer perception of what's reasonable in an OS has shifted since then. I don't think any of us would argue now, for example, that shipping a desktop OS with no browser installed by default would be a reasonable choice. (Likewise probably a media player.) Should it be impossible to uninstall? Maybe not, but there's a not-unreasonable argument to be made for preventing someone from winding up in a situation where they have no browser installed at all and can't look up how to fix it. (Having no media player installed is obviously less catastrophic.)
bko 6y ago
> It's not just whatever marketplace, anti-monopoly legislation focuses on markets where the players own a significant share of the full market. It depends on what you call the marketplace. Look at the broader "retail" sector > The eCommerce giant [Amazon] accounted for 3.2 percent of total consumer spending in Q2 (spanning all categories, including retail) and 9 percent of total retail spending... When it comes to consumer spending, Walmart accounts for 3.4 percent overall and 10.2 percent for retail. That’s up from 9.6 percent in Q1 2020. Walmart has a considerable share. > so even if Home Depot wanted to exploit their position, they probably couldn't Do you really think Amazon has more pricing power than Walmart? I'm much more likely to switch online retailers than my brick and mortar store. It's a lot easier to compare prices and switch. https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2020/amazon-and-walmarts-battle-for-consumer-retail-spend/ https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2020/amazon-and-walmarts-...
- vlovich123 6y ago
  If you define the marketplace as the US economy, Amazon looks like a tiny blip. If you define it as in-person retail Amazon is non-existent. The analogy I would use is that e-commerce retail is smart phones in 2008 (maybe a bit later) and the broader retail market includes landlines and feature phones. Even today landlines exist and feature phones are sold. The growth trajectory for e-commerce won’t change and big box retail won’t encounter a meaningful resurgence. Amazon is the second biggest retailer alone as compared with Walmart which primarily makes money on big box store and has a retail presence in name only (if you take just their online sales it’s not meaningful competition). The concern is that the reason Amazon holds such dominance in e-commerce is because it’s really leveraging cross-market dominance. AWS subsidizes their marketplace to be extra competitive, their data on retail has them introducing first-party products that compete with suppliers selling through their platform by focusing on high-margin items. The better question is whether or not this kind of behavior needs regulation, or needs regulation yet. I’d argue yes having read the story from the diaper.com founder and Bezos’ laughable diversion. As for ease of switching, I think e-commerce can’t be directly compared as the driving user behaviors are different. I could argue it’s easier with a big box store because I could just drive to a different one, use my CC and move on whereas in e-commerce I have yet another account to manage, I have to make sure I’m not getting scammed, etc.
8note 6y ago
How much of the home tools and amateur construction market does the hone despot have? I'd image they have more than 50 as well
clairity 6y ago
the percentage share of a market is an indicator but not the defining characteristic of monopoly practices, rather it’s control. principally that manifests as pricing power and leverage over competitors. a monopolist can have a 20% share and still exert anti-competitive power over that market.
bagacrap 6y ago
Search result positioning is equivalent to physical placement in brick and mortars. Are you going to start legislating where exactly Whole Foods or Target can place its house-brand items? Should Starbucks be forced to reorder its menu items in descending order of popularity? There's basically nothing on Amazon that can't be purchased elsewhere online, so to say that the answers to the above questions can change because lots of people choose to buy from Amazon doesn't ring of "protecting the consumer". If anything, the fact that so many people choose to shop there makes me think the consumers have spoken and they like the deal they're getting.
indymike 6y ago
Nothing stops Wal-Mart from putting Sam's Choice product on the endcap to the soft drink asile. Amazon has scale problem, and the question shouldn't be about product x or product y, but why aren't there more Amazons and more Googles competing with each other.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

Yes, so the issue is not just selling your own products in your own marketplace. > This is why it's different between Amazon and Home Depot, they hold different amount of the market, so even if Home Depot wanted to exploit their position, they probably couldn't. I would say Home Depot has far more control of their markets than Amazon does. Pick any smaller metro, and the only consumer building materials store around is Home Depot or Lowes. The two basically split up all the markets, and if there’s not enough business to sustain both, then there will be just one. But no other store will be able to compete. If you’re a manufacturer and you can’t convince Home Depot or Lowes to stock your item in their store, then you’re not going to reach 90% of people via in store attention (for home improvement stuff). Almost all big box store brands have whittled down to two viable options, or even one in the case of Best Buy. Although, I think that might be the natural state of things given how low profit margins are for retail (low single digit percentages).

capableweb 6y ago
> Yes, so the issue is not just selling your own products in your own marketplace. Of course not, the final issue is companies becoming monopolies and companies abusing their market positions, that is what we want to prevent, in order to foster innovation and open markets. > I would say Home Depot has far more control of their markets than Amazon does Maybe you're right, I know nothing about what's going on on the ground of the US. So if Home Depot do have more control of their market than what Amazon has of the e-commerce market (more than 50%), then they should also be under watch to see what "strategies" they employ to get more profits. Just because the House is now investigating technology companies doesn't mean that hopefully whatever legislation comes out of this, cannot be applied to other industries.
atdrummond 6y ago
I’m from a rural county in Illinois and our largest city has Lowes, HD, Menards, Ace, Farm and Home Supply and a number of specialty stores. There’s considerably more competition in Home Depot’s field.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I forgot about Ace, but searching on Maps shows there’s still a few around! I wonder if they are franchised. I only recall seeing HD and Lowes on the coasts though.
  - sgerenser 6y ago
    Most Ace Hardware stores are franchises. There’s 5000 of them in the US.
- ericmay 6y ago
  How is it more competition? You’ll visit at most what 2 of those stores looking for a product? I can use plugins in a web browser to effectively visit 100 stores to shop for the best price on an item. Amazon is just another vendor. -edit- To add to this. If you want to compare to Amazon then you have to look at the market share and revenue of those stores too. Not simply their existence. It doesn't matter if an ACE hardware is in the area if it is 3% of the market.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    > I can use plugins in a web browser to effectively visit 100 stores to shop for the best price on an item. Amazon is just another vendor. Sure you could, but is that how most users use the web? According to Statista (2019 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-commerce-market-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c...) [same link I put before], over 50% of the market is just Amazon, even though it's soooo easy to chose another one. Since they now have a grip of the majority of the market, they should be having lots of eyes on them, as they can easily abuse their position, which most of us don't want to them to do.

skystarman 6y ago

The standard for antitrust enforcement for decades has been when the action of a company harms consumers. How does Amazon harm consumers? I mean precisely, how? Amazon is one of the most highly rated companies in the US by its customers. Its NPS score is 69 and 70 is considered "world class". I can get almost anything online shipped to my house the SAME DAY. If Amazon sends you the wrong item they'll let you keep the wrong one and immediately ship you a new one! How is taking action against Amazon going to help consumers? Seems to me that just ends up being a giant win for Walmart and target who offer worse service and often worse prices! So how are consumers being hurt?

ohazi 6y ago
It's possible for a monopolist to have a great product that allows people to do amazing things that were never previously possible and still be harming the consumer. Microsoft had the leading desktop operating system in the 90s that allowed millions of ordinary people to start using computers for the first time, yet their browser bundling was considered problematic. Bell telephone allowed you to talk to people across town and across the country in real time. People love talking to their far away friends and relatives! But they were simultaneously providing this futuristic service and harming consumers with their anti-competitive practices and monopoly pricing. It's possible for Amazon to both be providing a great service to you and me and be harming consumers with priority placement of Basics products and even harming competitors by abusing their access to product metrics in deciding what Basics products to make.
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  Microsoft's dirty tricks with DOS, Windows, and other would-be commodity software are legend. They should have gotten parted out into OS, Desktop suite, and probably several other fragments a long time ago. That stuff was a nightmare for me as a consumer.
  - rincebrain 6y ago
    Should they have, though? I agree they should have been penalized (ideally more harshly than they were) for their legendary anticompetitive behavior, I'm just no longer as sure that partitioning the company out into distinct divisions would have been a net gain for the consumer as I used to be, especially against the specific behaviors they were accused of. How, for example, would breaking up Microsoft into distinct divisions prevent, say, the OS division from enforcing the same anticompetitive requirements on companies licensing the OS? I also think consumer perception of what's reasonable in an OS has shifted since then. I don't think any of us would argue now, for example, that shipping a desktop OS with no browser installed by default would be a reasonable choice. (Likewise probably a media player.) Should it be impossible to uninstall? Maybe not, but there's a not-unreasonable argument to be made for preventing someone from winding up in a situation where they have no browser installed at all and can't look up how to fix it. (Having no media player installed is obviously less catastrophic.)

bko 6y ago

> It's not just whatever marketplace, anti-monopoly legislation focuses on markets where the players own a significant share of the full market. It depends on what you call the marketplace. Look at the broader "retail" sector > The eCommerce giant [Amazon] accounted for 3.2 percent of total consumer spending in Q2 (spanning all categories, including retail) and 9 percent of total retail spending... When it comes to consumer spending, Walmart accounts for 3.4 percent overall and 10.2 percent for retail. That’s up from 9.6 percent in Q1 2020. Walmart has a considerable share. > so even if Home Depot wanted to exploit their position, they probably couldn't Do you really think Amazon has more pricing power than Walmart? I'm much more likely to switch online retailers than my brick and mortar store. It's a lot easier to compare prices and switch. https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2020/amazon-and-walmarts-battle-for-consumer-retail-spend/ https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2020/amazon-and-walmarts-...

vlovich123 6y ago
If you define the marketplace as the US economy, Amazon looks like a tiny blip. If you define it as in-person retail Amazon is non-existent. The analogy I would use is that e-commerce retail is smart phones in 2008 (maybe a bit later) and the broader retail market includes landlines and feature phones. Even today landlines exist and feature phones are sold. The growth trajectory for e-commerce won’t change and big box retail won’t encounter a meaningful resurgence. Amazon is the second biggest retailer alone as compared with Walmart which primarily makes money on big box store and has a retail presence in name only (if you take just their online sales it’s not meaningful competition). The concern is that the reason Amazon holds such dominance in e-commerce is because it’s really leveraging cross-market dominance. AWS subsidizes their marketplace to be extra competitive, their data on retail has them introducing first-party products that compete with suppliers selling through their platform by focusing on high-margin items. The better question is whether or not this kind of behavior needs regulation, or needs regulation yet. I’d argue yes having read the story from the diaper.com founder and Bezos’ laughable diversion. As for ease of switching, I think e-commerce can’t be directly compared as the driving user behaviors are different. I could argue it’s easier with a big box store because I could just drive to a different one, use my CC and move on whereas in e-commerce I have yet another account to manage, I have to make sure I’m not getting scammed, etc.

8note 6y ago

How much of the home tools and amateur construction market does the hone despot have? I'd image they have more than 50 as well

clairity 6y ago

the percentage share of a market is an indicator but not the defining characteristic of monopoly practices, rather it’s control. principally that manifests as pricing power and leverage over competitors. a monopolist can have a 20% share and still exert anti-competitive power over that market.

bagacrap 6y ago

Search result positioning is equivalent to physical placement in brick and mortars. Are you going to start legislating where exactly Whole Foods or Target can place its house-brand items? Should Starbucks be forced to reorder its menu items in descending order of popularity? There's basically nothing on Amazon that can't be purchased elsewhere online, so to say that the answers to the above questions can change because lots of people choose to buy from Amazon doesn't ring of "protecting the consumer". If anything, the fact that so many people choose to shop there makes me think the consumers have spoken and they like the deal they're getting.

indymike 6y ago

Nothing stops Wal-Mart from putting Sam's Choice product on the endcap to the soft drink asile. Amazon has scale problem, and the question shouldn't be about product x or product y, but why aren't there more Amazons and more Googles competing with each other.