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Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands

589 points by tysone 5y ago

altacc 5y ago
"we decided to only partner with the manufacturers of our reference product.” - so not only are they copying a product and ranking their replacement above the original, they also put themselves into a position to influence the manufacturer of the original.
curiousgal 5y ago
I don't know if I'm too cynical or if people are naive. Like of course these big actors (Amazon, Google, etc) are going to "abuse" their power and use their platforms to push their own stuff. People should not be surprised, regulators should have been on this years ago.
gwbas1c 5y ago
How different is this from what B&M stores have been doing for years with the store brand? Where I'm from, CVS has a store brand stocked next to most brand-name items, often at a cheaper price.
Ansil849 5y ago
I mean....yes this is despicable behavior, but did anyone really expect otherwise? Why would you sell your product on a website which can be your competitor, granting it access to all of your sales metrics and customers? I most definitely don't want to 'blame the victim' here, but any third-party sellers on Amazon should understand the fundamental irrationality and danger of their decision to do so
- outside1234 5y ago
  The market is too large to ignore it - that is the catch 22 here. They are damned if they do and damned if then don't.
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    I feel like there are plenty of other e-retailers which allow you to sell your product on their platform, which are not in the business of selling competing products that they manufacture themselves. Ebay obviously comes to mind, followed by outfits like Etsy, etc.
- lbriner 5y ago
  Isn't it more about whether it is illegal rather than whether it is done in bad-trust? If you worked for Amazon, I suspect you would push very close to the line of legality in order to maximise profits, which makes you look dirty but doesn't necessarily get you in court. The problem for me, perhaps like many, is that there are just too many things that I can easily find on Amazon that are much harder to find elsewhere. I don't believe they are particularly ethical but I also don't want to spend hours looking around different sites when everything is on Amazon.
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    > The problem for me, perhaps like many, is that there are just too many things that I can easily find on Amazon that are much harder to find elsewhere. Like what? Ebay, Alibaba, Etsy, Newegg, Abebooks...these seemingly cover most use-cases...
Imaiomus 5y ago
Monopolization Defined. The antitrust laws prohibit conduct by a single firm that unreasonably restrains competition by creating or maintaining monopoly power
- jjallen 5y ago
  What exactly is "monopolization defined"? This is the definition of a monopoly in India? Or where? I know in the US a majority market share is the primary determinant of whether a company has a monopoly or not. Does Amazon.in have a monopoly in India (we can use the definition of >50% market share for this question)? If they do, I am amazed at the progress in the last couple of years since I had read much about Amazon.in!
  - thedmstdmstdmst 5y ago
    What about Outerspace or Mars? Looks like an ultimate definition of 'monopolization' is sorely in need.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    > I know in the US a majority market share is the primary determinant of whether a company has a monopoly or not. I really feel this should be considered an outdated view. Software, technology, and automation has changed things, and companies can exert market and monopoly power much more easily with less market share than previously found in monopolistic practices. If we read the Justice Department’s own documents, we find: > The Supreme Court has defined market power as "the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market,"(8) and monopoly power as "the power to control prices or exclude competition."(9) The Supreme Court has held that "[m]onopoly power under § 2 requires, of course, something greater than market power under § 1."(10) Precisely where market power becomes so great as to constitute what the law deems to be monopoly power is largely a matter of degree rather than one of kind. Clearly, however, monopoly power requires, at a minimum, a substantial degree of market power.(11)… antitrust law does not regard as illegal the mere possession of monopoly power where it is the product of superior skill, foresight, or industry.(14) Where monopoly power is acquired or maintained through anticompetitive conduct, however, antitrust law properly objects. > Monopoly power is conventionally demonstrated by showing that both (1) the firm has (or in the case of attempted monopolization, has a dangerous probability of attaining) a high share of a relevant market and (2) there are entry barriers--perhaps ones created by the firm's conduct itself--that permit the firm to exercise substantial market power for an appreciable period.(16) Unless these conditions are met, defendant is unlikely to have either the incentive or ability to exclude competition.(17) If we follow these definitions and discussions, it’s clear firms like Amazon and Apple have incredibly substantial market and monopoly power. To me, the fact that they may not have even majority market share in certain markets is inconsequential. If one keeps reading the linked Justice Department document, there’s discussions about percentages of market shares that the courts have typically gone off of. These are seemingly arbitrary and obviously rooted in businesses of a different type. Through technology and scale, firms like Amazon and Apple are among the richest and most powerful corporations ever, despite not necessarily having high percentages of market share in the relevant market, but they absolutely meet the definitions above. So these percentage of market share ideas are outdated and need revamped, in my opinion. https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2 https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...
npalli 5y ago
How is this different than private label goods sold by all retailers?
- rocketbop 5y ago
  Retailers generally want to sell brand goods, and the cheaper own label stuff is there to provide a range of prices. An exception would be budget retailers like Lidl who only sell their own goods.
  - mattmcknight 5y ago
    Wrong on both facts. They often make equal profit on their own brands, and Lidl sells other brands.
  - meany 5y ago
    This is not accurate. They attempt to maximize their profits and private label brands is a major effort to do that across retail. “With its billion-dollar private labels, Target has become a master at spotting trends, copying them, and capitalizing on them” “Target, for its part, seemed to see the C9 contract’s expiration as a chance to do what it increasingly does best: develop and launch a stylish brand internally—and keep all the revenue for itself.” https://www.fastcompany.com/90661935/retail-thrives-on-copying-trends-heres-how-target-won-the-imitation-game https://www.fastcompany.com/90661935/retail-thrives-on-copyi...
- h2odragon 5y ago
  retailers don't work to hide the name brand option or promote their generic alternative over it, usually. Amazon might well have gone further than advertising tricks; if they just failed to make alternative listing available to some number of users... how could that be proved?
  - jjallen 5y ago
    They may not work to hide the name brand option. They just choose to not offer the brand's products in the store at all, right? We don't hear about Wal-mart deciding to place Procter & Gamble's laundry detergent on the fourth row down and their private label at eye level in the store, do we?
sschueller 5y ago
Watching this pre-launch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEhdlIor-do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEhdlIor-do) is just surreal. The self-handshaking and music engulfed promotional garbage is just disgusting. "This is the first step in mankind's space exploration", stfu. You are running space tourism for the rich. If you gave a shit about human kind you would pay your workers a living wage and do something about the environment. Edit: spelling Edit2: This is literally an ad for going on this trip. They are showing the hospitality suites for the "astronauts". With so many people barely making ends meet and many also starving I find this incredibly distasteful.
- jm547ster 5y ago
  Nice malaprop, discussing
- chmsky00 5y ago
  If engineers gave a shit about humanity they’d leverage their “wait we build all this stuff” power and stop building until humanity is paid better Wfh = simply don’t open laptops But let’s go on about how Jeff Bezos alone is responsible in a country “by of and for the people “. When horrible corporate oligarch or slightly LESS horrible corporate oligarch are your options for President, why does everyone keep waiting for them to be nice? Force austerity on the rich. Like “trickle down economics” is a joke about pissing in people, “what the market will bear” is a euphemism for push our society the breaking point. We’re the market of ideas they have to buy from. Let’s force them to buy a new one from us. “But noooo my personal hard won struggle would be for nothing if everyone was equal!” is how this conversation usually goes though. Frankly take your rant and cram it up your ass. Like Bezos is listening to your comments here and your effort meant something
- 71a54xd 5y ago
  I agree, however it's funny to watch bezos burn $1B every year on his laughably shabby "space company" in comparison to SpaceX. Slow clap Mr. Bezos - maybe in ten years you'll be able to dock with the ISS...
- gruez 5y ago
  What does this have to do with amazon? Is this just a generic "fuck bezos" comment?
fallingknife 5y ago
So this sounds like what every major retailer does with their store brand. Why is this different? Given the way that media coverage is biased against big tech, my default assumption is that this is just more jealousy driven selective outrage.
- sct202 5y ago
  I personally think it depends on if the sales data is from FBA or sold by Amazon. If it's sold by Amazon data that should be fair game for Amazon to do whatever it wants. I'm a little uncomfortable with them using FBA data (marketplace), since those FBA sellers are paying Amazon for all kinds of services (distribution, storage, ads, payments, returns). So it seems a little unfair that they'd be paying a company who goes back around and uses their data to launch competing products.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    Is this data different than the data that a major retailer would get from sales of a product on its shelves? I'm also not saying that this is certainly 100% fair. I just doubt the motives of the media on this point because they knew that major retailers were doing this, and they never said a word about it.
    - sct202 5y ago
      >Is this data different than the data that a major retailer would get from sales of a product on its shelves? This is what sold by Amazon items are like, and also why I don't care what Amazon does with that data. With FBA, to me it seems more like if like a cloud provider (who I pay for specific services) decided to launch products/services based my internal data that they could see and wasn't public.
      - joshuaissac 5y ago
        > With FBA, to me it seems more like if like a cloud provider (who I pay for specific services) decided to launch products/services based my internal data that they could see and wasn't public. Amazon has been accused of that as well.[1] They claimed to have a policy not to do it, but admitted they could not guarantee that they have never violated it.[2] They are also known to monitor client data to help them decide which companies to try to acquire.[3] 1. https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/aws-startups-conflict.htm https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/aws-startups-conflict.htm 2. https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/29/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-cant-guarantee-policy-seller-data-violated/ https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/29/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-can... 3. https://www.reuters.com/article/amazon-cloud-idUSN1E7A727Q20111109 https://www.reuters.com/article/amazon-cloud-idUSN1E7A727Q20...
dubcanada 5y ago
Is this shocking to anyone? I don't mean to sound cynical but I thought we already knew this. It is fairly obvious if you search anything and the first product is a Amazon Basic product that they are toying with the results. There is no way a Amazon Basic product is the #1 in every category there is one. Just search "batteries" in Amazon Canada, Duracell has 30k reviews and 5/5, the only reason it is "above" Amazon Basic is because they pay (sponsored). A regular search shows two Amazon Basic listings (AA and AAA) both have less rating (4.8/5 versus 5/5) and reviews then the Duracell equivalents. Quiet clearly rigged.
- jean_tta 5y ago
  This is what is new: > A trove of internal Amazon documents reveals how the e-commerce giant ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoff goods and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines in India - practices it has denied engaging in. And at least two top Amazon executives reviewed the strategy. As far as I understand, those documents were not known before.
  - ProAm 5y ago
    But everyone on earth knew this what was happening. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck...
    - minitoar 5y ago
      Yes, but we hadn’t yet seen the duckumentation. …I’ll see myself out.
    - aembleton 5y ago
      I guess some people are more convinced by evidence than just knowing things.
      - z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
        Yes... Because the Panama, Paradise, and Pandora papers proves that.. give me a break
toshk 5y ago
The grocery stores I visit do the same in the Netherlands, maybe even worse, especially the biggest one here, Albert Hein (Ahold), is very skilled at it. They copy the most popular products, sell them slightly cheaper, similar designs as the most popular brand, then go on and display their products at eye height and move the big brands down. Yet every court case against them they've won. And the sentiment is far less negative about them than Amazon. They have a similar significant market share (35% of grocery market) as Amazon here. Maybe in the end, it's slightly more ethical since their strategy is mostly at the cost of the big corporates (Unilever) who can handle and fight them and not the smaller companies; and arguably, the consumer wins in the end.
- TonyTrapp 5y ago
  Many "white-label" groceries are in fact produced in the exact same factories as the branded ones (and the factories are owned by those brands), often just with slightly changed recipes or cheaper ingredients. It's not simply blatant unauthorized copies of more expensive groceries.
- dazc 5y ago
  Not defending amazon but the same happens in the UK and has done for at least the past ten years. There is a German chain, Aldi, who's entire business is built around selling knock-off brands and then boasting their products are so much cheaper than the actual branded products sold elsewhere. The closest comparison to the amazon issue would be Tesco who have a range of budget products that look very similar to the branded alternative.
  - Closi 5y ago
    Aldi absolutely doesn't do this IMO - they have own-brands that they have developed with 'knock off' branding, however almost all of their products are own-brand from the start, rather than working with the 'brand' first to work out it's sales and supplier and then cutting them out. Aldi's questionable ethics are on the branding-similarity side, rather than the Amazon approach of using marketplace data to cut-out middlemen distributors. I'm not saying if their approach is right and wrong, but it's a different and distinct issue.
dzonga 5y ago
I'm currently reading Titan: Rockefeller biography. and it suddenly dawned on me, you don't become a monopoly through excellent business practices. but though unethical means. legal, yes but also unethical. same thing as amazon, do they have excellent leaders, yes. is bezos unethical yes.
- ozim 5y ago
  Question is are you playing real game or some made up game. "Ethical" is made up game - I can be ethical to my close ones, because that is what I expect from them. I don't expect "Ethical" play from some random big company that is somewhere in the cloud. I think related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28608436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28608436
ThePhysicist 5y ago
In Germany Amazon pressured third-party sellers to use their fulfillment/warehousing service, which would reveal to them where those sellers source their goods from. They then just went to those sources and offered them a better deal, cutting out the third-party seller. So basically third-party sellers are doing free market research for Amazon: They take on the entrepreneurial risk and if they're successful Amazon will know exactly how many goods they sell to which customers and from who they get those goods. They can then use that information in their own product strategy and simply take over the business of their most profitable sellers. Really clever strategy IMHO, albeit not very fair.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Really clever strategy IMHO Really clever short term strategy. Once word gets out only sellers who don't care will list their products, and your product listings will be page after page of cheap, knock-off crap only an idiot would buy. looks at Amazon listings Yep.
  - toxik 5y ago
    Yes, Amazon is rotting from the inside by their own foul tactics. But by then, everybody involved will be heroes of their field and Bezos will literally be flying away on a rocket.
    - hayd 5y ago
      Bezos can't fly away since all of his rockets fall right back, he's never made it to orbit.
- Hokusai 5y ago
  But as an Amazon employee you need to sign a non compete agreement. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/11/aws-case-against-worker-who-joined-google-reignites-non-compete-debate.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/11/aws-case-against-worker-who-... Or we do stop Amazon, and others, or the future will be the corporate hell that 80s movies predicted.
onphonenow 5y ago
The examples are a mouse pad for 60% cheaper and knock off products 15% cheaper made by same mfg as brand name products- absolutely miserable business practices for other businesses but don’t they need to show some consumer harm? For all the antitrust claims?
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Other people in the thread have argued that "consumer harm" is difficult to prove and easy to disprove, and not strong enough of a criterion because the harms from monopolization can span decades, and don't just apply to direct consumers.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    And this is where anti-trust lost the plot (and popular support). Anti-trust ignores situations with CLEAR customer harm, and goes after folks like Apple (which many consumers like) for blocking scammers from doing the noncancellable subscriptions and other things in the store. This diminishes confidence in govt and unfortunately increases confidence in big business. Literally thousands of folks getting scammed daily online - govt does nothing. Some business hurt (and consumers SAVE money) -whammo.
netcan 5y ago
I got hammered making this point re: Apple and the Dutch case about their payment system, but I suppose I'll make it again. The whole premis here seems naive. Of course Amazon is anticompetitive within their own ecosystem. If course it's not a free market, its a market with a proprietor. The analogy I made was to ice cream parlours in Disneyland. Any competition that exists, exists there at Disney's pleasure. They could standardize prices, ban ice cream, convert everything to franchises, force them to buy Disney insurance, etc. They own that market. I think every Amazon seller knows that Amazon creams the market, uses them for free market research and validation, and such. I'm not saying this is good, but "red handed" seems like a very naive frame. If Amazon marketplace needs to be a competitive market, that's a question of structure, not policy. Nitpicking Amazon's policies and catching them on noncompliance may work for a lawyer making a case, but that road does not lead to a competitive market.
mattbrewsbytes 5y ago
Isn't this similar to Apple building an iOS feature and then displacing an app from their store? Smells like monopolistic practices. These things should be operated as separate entities.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  I don't think so. Apple does not sell individual features. It does have some similarity, but mixing them leads only to confusion, not to clarity.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I don't know... would we be better off if we reverted to the time where you didn't have a flashlight function in your settings, and instead you had to go buy a flashlight app from the app store? Or download a free one stuffed with ads? The goal of anti-monopoly legislation isn't to protect the incomes of small business.
29athrowaway 5y ago
Microsoft introduced code in Internet Explorer that tracked Google result clicks and fed that data to Bing, copying the most relevant results. Then you could see the top results in Bing. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copi... This is very similar... Amazon tracks the purchase behavior of users and then copies the highest selling items.
- kesava 5y ago
  It's fascinating all the ways this is unethical, but not illegal.
  - 29athrowaway 5y ago
    Yup, saying "Fuck Microsoft" is not illegal either.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
EGreg 5y ago
Color me shocked. Our public forums, and markets take place on privately owned platforms like Facebook and Amazon. What’s next, Google prioritizing its own properties in search results? The answer isn’t more legislation, it’s an open source ecosystem that will gradually disrupt the closed gardens the same way the Web disrupted AOL and Compuserve and Prodigy and MSN. It wasn’t much different from Facebook and LinkedIn back in the day. Give people a way to run their own store AND make an app (such as a browser) that can search across all of them and compare, and Amazon go bye bye. More info: https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/ https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/
skizm 5y ago
Genuinely curious: if Amazon was very up front about this, and in no way pretended to be a neutral marketplace would this be allowed? Example: when a user signs up to sell something on Amazon they're hit with a warning like "Amazon will always prioritize its own products over that of third party products, including future products that may be very similar to ones currently allowed in our marketplace. Be prepared to be removed for any or no reason, including because Amazon does not want too many similar products in the same category." Same question about Apple's app store.
tomcooks 5y ago
Biggest player monopolizes the market, more news at 11
cletus 5y ago
This is nothing new. For example, supermarkets have been in the generic brands business for decades. They contract out making some generic version a name brand product and sell it a lower price, giving it preferential space (both size and position) on the shelves. Why? To capture a greater portion of the profit for themselves. Why is anyone surprised Amazon is any different? I've said it once and I'll say it again: the current focus on antitrust in Big Tech is, at best, completely misguided. If anyone is guilty of anticompetitive behaviour, it's not Google or Facebook, it's Amazon. Amazon literally controls online selling, logistics, distribution and delivery to such a degree that no one else can reasonably compete.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  I don't think anyone is surprised, but they're worried about the scale. Amazon encompasses more of the ecommerce market (approaching the majority of all ecommerce) than any individual retailer covers brick-and-mortar, by a large margin. IIRC even Walmart is only ~15% of physical retail, Amazon is >40% all ecommerce. Personally I think all store-brands should be stopped. These companies should have to choose between being the marketplace or being the product and should have to diverge if they're both.
literallyaduck 5y ago
Call your representatives to bust them up for antitrust, ask for their assets to be frozen and customers receive the payout before the government.
outside1234 5y ago
I can't believe this - who could have predicted?!?!? Anti-competition time in the EU
Flatcircle 5y ago
Shouldn't this be allowed?
51Cards 5y ago
I'm somewhat amazed at this being news now. This has been blatantly obvious for years if you use Amazon even occasionally.
johnyzee 5y ago
This story seems to be getting flagged (based on the posting time/upvote count, compared to other stories). Wonder why?
cptskippy 5y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, blatantly copying a manufacturer's custom design is kinda scummy. In the article they show some Williams & Sonoma furniture that was copied and looks similar but not identical. I've read similar stories about bike bags and other things. On the other hand, sourcing the same item from the same factory that two dozen other sellers are already selling isn't. TBH I wouldn't mind if those duplicative items just went away because they just pollute results. There's a similar problem on eBay where there are 1500 listings for the exact same item from 100 different sellers all using the same stock photos but with slightly different prices.
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
[dead]
pmarreck 5y ago
Does Amazon even have a viable competitor (even a small one) at this point? And were one to try to start one, how would that even look?
- closetohome 5y ago
  Walmart is Amazon's biggest competitor in online sales with ~7% market share to Amazon's ~40%.
  - pmarreck 5y ago
    Oh great, another terrible company.
radley 5y ago
Huh? This is biz 101 stuff. Every retail biz does it. The far more interesting part is the hundreds of private label brands Amazon has created to make it less obvious. https://pattern.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-amazons-private-label-brands/ https://pattern.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-amazons-...
adamqureshi 5y ago
Amazon is in the business of making money. If their AI notifies them that a product is selling like hot cakes and that product has no brand protection they'll knock it off. Tha is why it is important to build a brand instead of building a product, people buy the brand not the product and thats a different ball game. - 2 cents.
franczesko 5y ago
I'm wondering why companies still cooperate with Amazon, when it consistently is breaking their trust? I understand their position in some markets (e.g. USA), but not being on Amazon doesn't mean the end of business in the other parts of the world. As a matter of fact, being on Amazon means slow and inevitable death sentence for their brands.
haaserd 5y ago
I really wish reports like this were more surprising.
oort-cloud9 5y ago
Amazon is not a free market company. Like all the other monster retailers, it's a product of our neo-keynesian economy with the heavy involvement of the state... Amazon can't replicate all the products though. Just some.
bicepjai 5y ago
I notice Amazon follow the same cheating strategy in Whole Foods with their brand 345. I try to avoid them when grocery shopping
z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
"Don't mind this everyone, watch five people who paid a ridiculous amount of money blast off into low earth orbit for all of 5 seconds just to come right back down. Publicity stunt? Why never! Hey look here's William Shatner, something something space give me your money" - Bezos

589 points by tysone 5y ago

"we decided to only partner with the manufacturers of our reference product.” - so not only are they copying a product and ranking their replacement above the original, they also put themselves into a position to influence the manufacturer of the original.

curiousgal 5y ago

I don't know if I'm too cynical or if people are naive. Like of course these big actors (Amazon, Google, etc) are going to "abuse" their power and use their platforms to push their own stuff. People should not be surprised, regulators should have been on this years ago.

gwbas1c 5y ago

How different is this from what B&M stores have been doing for years with the store brand? Where I'm from, CVS has a store brand stocked next to most brand-name items, often at a cheaper price.

Ansil849 5y ago

I mean....yes this is despicable behavior, but did anyone really expect otherwise? Why would you sell your product on a website which can be your competitor, granting it access to all of your sales metrics and customers? I most definitely don't want to 'blame the victim' here, but any third-party sellers on Amazon should understand the fundamental irrationality and danger of their decision to do so

outside1234 5y ago
The market is too large to ignore it - that is the catch 22 here. They are damned if they do and damned if then don't.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  I feel like there are plenty of other e-retailers which allow you to sell your product on their platform, which are not in the business of selling competing products that they manufacture themselves. Ebay obviously comes to mind, followed by outfits like Etsy, etc.
lbriner 5y ago
Isn't it more about whether it is illegal rather than whether it is done in bad-trust? If you worked for Amazon, I suspect you would push very close to the line of legality in order to maximise profits, which makes you look dirty but doesn't necessarily get you in court. The problem for me, perhaps like many, is that there are just too many things that I can easily find on Amazon that are much harder to find elsewhere. I don't believe they are particularly ethical but I also don't want to spend hours looking around different sites when everything is on Amazon.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > The problem for me, perhaps like many, is that there are just too many things that I can easily find on Amazon that are much harder to find elsewhere. Like what? Ebay, Alibaba, Etsy, Newegg, Abebooks...these seemingly cover most use-cases...

Imaiomus 5y ago

Monopolization Defined. The antitrust laws prohibit conduct by a single firm that unreasonably restrains competition by creating or maintaining monopoly power

jjallen 5y ago
What exactly is "monopolization defined"? This is the definition of a monopoly in India? Or where? I know in the US a majority market share is the primary determinant of whether a company has a monopoly or not. Does Amazon.in have a monopoly in India (we can use the definition of >50% market share for this question)? If they do, I am amazed at the progress in the last couple of years since I had read much about Amazon.in!
- thedmstdmstdmst 5y ago
  What about Outerspace or Mars? Looks like an ultimate definition of 'monopolization' is sorely in need.
- bmitc 5y ago
  > I know in the US a majority market share is the primary determinant of whether a company has a monopoly or not. I really feel this should be considered an outdated view. Software, technology, and automation has changed things, and companies can exert market and monopoly power much more easily with less market share than previously found in monopolistic practices. If we read the Justice Department’s own documents, we find: > The Supreme Court has defined market power as "the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market,"(8) and monopoly power as "the power to control prices or exclude competition."(9) The Supreme Court has held that "[m]onopoly power under § 2 requires, of course, something greater than market power under § 1."(10) Precisely where market power becomes so great as to constitute what the law deems to be monopoly power is largely a matter of degree rather than one of kind. Clearly, however, monopoly power requires, at a minimum, a substantial degree of market power.(11)… antitrust law does not regard as illegal the mere possession of monopoly power where it is the product of superior skill, foresight, or industry.(14) Where monopoly power is acquired or maintained through anticompetitive conduct, however, antitrust law properly objects. > Monopoly power is conventionally demonstrated by showing that both (1) the firm has (or in the case of attempted monopolization, has a dangerous probability of attaining) a high share of a relevant market and (2) there are entry barriers--perhaps ones created by the firm's conduct itself--that permit the firm to exercise substantial market power for an appreciable period.(16) Unless these conditions are met, defendant is unlikely to have either the incentive or ability to exclude competition.(17) If we follow these definitions and discussions, it’s clear firms like Amazon and Apple have incredibly substantial market and monopoly power. To me, the fact that they may not have even majority market share in certain markets is inconsequential. If one keeps reading the linked Justice Department document, there’s discussions about percentages of market shares that the courts have typically gone off of. These are seemingly arbitrary and obviously rooted in businesses of a different type. Through technology and scale, firms like Amazon and Apple are among the richest and most powerful corporations ever, despite not necessarily having high percentages of market share in the relevant market, but they absolutely meet the definitions above. So these percentage of market share ideas are outdated and need revamped, in my opinion. https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2 https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...

npalli 5y ago

How is this different than private label goods sold by all retailers?

rocketbop 5y ago
Retailers generally want to sell brand goods, and the cheaper own label stuff is there to provide a range of prices. An exception would be budget retailers like Lidl who only sell their own goods.
- mattmcknight 5y ago
  Wrong on both facts. They often make equal profit on their own brands, and Lidl sells other brands.
- meany 5y ago
  This is not accurate. They attempt to maximize their profits and private label brands is a major effort to do that across retail. “With its billion-dollar private labels, Target has become a master at spotting trends, copying them, and capitalizing on them” “Target, for its part, seemed to see the C9 contract’s expiration as a chance to do what it increasingly does best: develop and launch a stylish brand internally—and keep all the revenue for itself.” https://www.fastcompany.com/90661935/retail-thrives-on-copying-trends-heres-how-target-won-the-imitation-game https://www.fastcompany.com/90661935/retail-thrives-on-copyi...
h2odragon 5y ago
retailers don't work to hide the name brand option or promote their generic alternative over it, usually. Amazon might well have gone further than advertising tricks; if they just failed to make alternative listing available to some number of users... how could that be proved?
- jjallen 5y ago
  They may not work to hide the name brand option. They just choose to not offer the brand's products in the store at all, right? We don't hear about Wal-mart deciding to place Procter & Gamble's laundry detergent on the fourth row down and their private label at eye level in the store, do we?

sschueller 5y ago

Watching this pre-launch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEhdlIor-do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEhdlIor-do) is just surreal. The self-handshaking and music engulfed promotional garbage is just disgusting. "This is the first step in mankind's space exploration", stfu. You are running space tourism for the rich. If you gave a shit about human kind you would pay your workers a living wage and do something about the environment. Edit: spelling Edit2: This is literally an ad for going on this trip. They are showing the hospitality suites for the "astronauts". With so many people barely making ends meet and many also starving I find this incredibly distasteful.

jm547ster 5y ago
Nice malaprop, discussing
chmsky00 5y ago
If engineers gave a shit about humanity they’d leverage their “wait we build all this stuff” power and stop building until humanity is paid better Wfh = simply don’t open laptops But let’s go on about how Jeff Bezos alone is responsible in a country “by of and for the people “. When horrible corporate oligarch or slightly LESS horrible corporate oligarch are your options for President, why does everyone keep waiting for them to be nice? Force austerity on the rich. Like “trickle down economics” is a joke about pissing in people, “what the market will bear” is a euphemism for push our society the breaking point. We’re the market of ideas they have to buy from. Let’s force them to buy a new one from us. “But noooo my personal hard won struggle would be for nothing if everyone was equal!” is how this conversation usually goes though. Frankly take your rant and cram it up your ass. Like Bezos is listening to your comments here and your effort meant something
71a54xd 5y ago
I agree, however it's funny to watch bezos burn $1B every year on his laughably shabby "space company" in comparison to SpaceX. Slow clap Mr. Bezos - maybe in ten years you'll be able to dock with the ISS...
gruez 5y ago
What does this have to do with amazon? Is this just a generic "fuck bezos" comment?

fallingknife 5y ago

So this sounds like what every major retailer does with their store brand. Why is this different? Given the way that media coverage is biased against big tech, my default assumption is that this is just more jealousy driven selective outrage.

sct202 5y ago
I personally think it depends on if the sales data is from FBA or sold by Amazon. If it's sold by Amazon data that should be fair game for Amazon to do whatever it wants. I'm a little uncomfortable with them using FBA data (marketplace), since those FBA sellers are paying Amazon for all kinds of services (distribution, storage, ads, payments, returns). So it seems a little unfair that they'd be paying a company who goes back around and uses their data to launch competing products.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  Is this data different than the data that a major retailer would get from sales of a product on its shelves? I'm also not saying that this is certainly 100% fair. I just doubt the motives of the media on this point because they knew that major retailers were doing this, and they never said a word about it.
  - sct202 5y ago
    >Is this data different than the data that a major retailer would get from sales of a product on its shelves? This is what sold by Amazon items are like, and also why I don't care what Amazon does with that data. With FBA, to me it seems more like if like a cloud provider (who I pay for specific services) decided to launch products/services based my internal data that they could see and wasn't public.
    - joshuaissac 5y ago
      > With FBA, to me it seems more like if like a cloud provider (who I pay for specific services) decided to launch products/services based my internal data that they could see and wasn't public. Amazon has been accused of that as well.[1] They claimed to have a policy not to do it, but admitted they could not guarantee that they have never violated it.[2] They are also known to monitor client data to help them decide which companies to try to acquire.[3] 1. https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/aws-startups-conflict.htm https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/aws-startups-conflict.htm 2. https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/29/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-cant-guarantee-policy-seller-data-violated/ https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/29/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-can... 3. https://www.reuters.com/article/amazon-cloud-idUSN1E7A727Q20111109 https://www.reuters.com/article/amazon-cloud-idUSN1E7A727Q20...

dubcanada 5y ago

Is this shocking to anyone? I don't mean to sound cynical but I thought we already knew this. It is fairly obvious if you search anything and the first product is a Amazon Basic product that they are toying with the results. There is no way a Amazon Basic product is the #1 in every category there is one. Just search "batteries" in Amazon Canada, Duracell has 30k reviews and 5/5, the only reason it is "above" Amazon Basic is because they pay (sponsored). A regular search shows two Amazon Basic listings (AA and AAA) both have less rating (4.8/5 versus 5/5) and reviews then the Duracell equivalents. Quiet clearly rigged.

jean_tta 5y ago
This is what is new: > A trove of internal Amazon documents reveals how the e-commerce giant ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoff goods and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines in India - practices it has denied engaging in. And at least two top Amazon executives reviewed the strategy. As far as I understand, those documents were not known before.
- ProAm 5y ago
  But everyone on earth knew this what was happening. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck...
  - minitoar 5y ago
    Yes, but we hadn’t yet seen the duckumentation. …I’ll see myself out.
  - aembleton 5y ago
    I guess some people are more convinced by evidence than just knowing things.
    - z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
      Yes... Because the Panama, Paradise, and Pandora papers proves that.. give me a break

toshk 5y ago

The grocery stores I visit do the same in the Netherlands, maybe even worse, especially the biggest one here, Albert Hein (Ahold), is very skilled at it. They copy the most popular products, sell them slightly cheaper, similar designs as the most popular brand, then go on and display their products at eye height and move the big brands down. Yet every court case against them they've won. And the sentiment is far less negative about them than Amazon. They have a similar significant market share (35% of grocery market) as Amazon here. Maybe in the end, it's slightly more ethical since their strategy is mostly at the cost of the big corporates (Unilever) who can handle and fight them and not the smaller companies; and arguably, the consumer wins in the end.

TonyTrapp 5y ago
Many "white-label" groceries are in fact produced in the exact same factories as the branded ones (and the factories are owned by those brands), often just with slightly changed recipes or cheaper ingredients. It's not simply blatant unauthorized copies of more expensive groceries.
dazc 5y ago
Not defending amazon but the same happens in the UK and has done for at least the past ten years. There is a German chain, Aldi, who's entire business is built around selling knock-off brands and then boasting their products are so much cheaper than the actual branded products sold elsewhere. The closest comparison to the amazon issue would be Tesco who have a range of budget products that look very similar to the branded alternative.
- Closi 5y ago
  Aldi absolutely doesn't do this IMO - they have own-brands that they have developed with 'knock off' branding, however almost all of their products are own-brand from the start, rather than working with the 'brand' first to work out it's sales and supplier and then cutting them out. Aldi's questionable ethics are on the branding-similarity side, rather than the Amazon approach of using marketplace data to cut-out middlemen distributors. I'm not saying if their approach is right and wrong, but it's a different and distinct issue.

dzonga 5y ago

I'm currently reading Titan: Rockefeller biography. and it suddenly dawned on me, you don't become a monopoly through excellent business practices. but though unethical means. legal, yes but also unethical. same thing as amazon, do they have excellent leaders, yes. is bezos unethical yes.

ozim 5y ago
Question is are you playing real game or some made up game. "Ethical" is made up game - I can be ethical to my close ones, because that is what I expect from them. I don't expect "Ethical" play from some random big company that is somewhere in the cloud. I think related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28608436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28608436

ThePhysicist 5y ago

In Germany Amazon pressured third-party sellers to use their fulfillment/warehousing service, which would reveal to them where those sellers source their goods from. They then just went to those sources and offered them a better deal, cutting out the third-party seller. So basically third-party sellers are doing free market research for Amazon: They take on the entrepreneurial risk and if they're successful Amazon will know exactly how many goods they sell to which customers and from who they get those goods. They can then use that information in their own product strategy and simply take over the business of their most profitable sellers. Really clever strategy IMHO, albeit not very fair.

onion2k 5y ago
Really clever strategy IMHO Really clever short term strategy. Once word gets out only sellers who don't care will list their products, and your product listings will be page after page of cheap, knock-off crap only an idiot would buy. looks at Amazon listings Yep.
- toxik 5y ago
  Yes, Amazon is rotting from the inside by their own foul tactics. But by then, everybody involved will be heroes of their field and Bezos will literally be flying away on a rocket.
  - hayd 5y ago
    Bezos can't fly away since all of his rockets fall right back, he's never made it to orbit.
Hokusai 5y ago
But as an Amazon employee you need to sign a non compete agreement. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/11/aws-case-against-worker-who-joined-google-reignites-non-compete-debate.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/11/aws-case-against-worker-who-... Or we do stop Amazon, and others, or the future will be the corporate hell that 80s movies predicted.

onphonenow 5y ago

The examples are a mouse pad for 60% cheaper and knock off products 15% cheaper made by same mfg as brand name products- absolutely miserable business practices for other businesses but don’t they need to show some consumer harm? For all the antitrust claims?

nerdponx 5y ago
Other people in the thread have argued that "consumer harm" is difficult to prove and easy to disprove, and not strong enough of a criterion because the harms from monopolization can span decades, and don't just apply to direct consumers.
- slownews45 5y ago
  And this is where anti-trust lost the plot (and popular support). Anti-trust ignores situations with CLEAR customer harm, and goes after folks like Apple (which many consumers like) for blocking scammers from doing the noncancellable subscriptions and other things in the store. This diminishes confidence in govt and unfortunately increases confidence in big business. Literally thousands of folks getting scammed daily online - govt does nothing. Some business hurt (and consumers SAVE money) -whammo.

netcan 5y ago

I got hammered making this point re: Apple and the Dutch case about their payment system, but I suppose I'll make it again. The whole premis here seems naive. Of course Amazon is anticompetitive within their own ecosystem. If course it's not a free market, its a market with a proprietor. The analogy I made was to ice cream parlours in Disneyland. Any competition that exists, exists there at Disney's pleasure. They could standardize prices, ban ice cream, convert everything to franchises, force them to buy Disney insurance, etc. They own that market. I think every Amazon seller knows that Amazon creams the market, uses them for free market research and validation, and such. I'm not saying this is good, but "red handed" seems like a very naive frame. If Amazon marketplace needs to be a competitive market, that's a question of structure, not policy. Nitpicking Amazon's policies and catching them on noncompliance may work for a lawyer making a case, but that road does not lead to a competitive market.

mattbrewsbytes 5y ago

Isn't this similar to Apple building an iOS feature and then displacing an app from their store? Smells like monopolistic practices. These things should be operated as separate entities.

marcosdumay 5y ago
I don't think so. Apple does not sell individual features. It does have some similarity, but mixing them leads only to confusion, not to clarity.
missedthecue 5y ago
I don't know... would we be better off if we reverted to the time where you didn't have a flashlight function in your settings, and instead you had to go buy a flashlight app from the app store? Or download a free one stuffed with ads? The goal of anti-monopoly legislation isn't to protect the incomes of small business.

29athrowaway 5y ago

Microsoft introduced code in Internet Explorer that tracked Google result clicks and fed that data to Bing, copying the most relevant results. Then you could see the top results in Bing. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copi... This is very similar... Amazon tracks the purchase behavior of users and then copies the highest selling items.

kesava 5y ago
It's fascinating all the ways this is unethical, but not illegal.
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  Yup, saying "Fuck Microsoft" is not illegal either.

deleted 5y ago

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EGreg 5y ago

Color me shocked. Our public forums, and markets take place on privately owned platforms like Facebook and Amazon. What’s next, Google prioritizing its own properties in search results? The answer isn’t more legislation, it’s an open source ecosystem that will gradually disrupt the closed gardens the same way the Web disrupted AOL and Compuserve and Prodigy and MSN. It wasn’t much different from Facebook and LinkedIn back in the day. Give people a way to run their own store AND make an app (such as a browser) that can search across all of them and compare, and Amazon go bye bye. More info: https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/ https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/

skizm 5y ago

Genuinely curious: if Amazon was very up front about this, and in no way pretended to be a neutral marketplace would this be allowed? Example: when a user signs up to sell something on Amazon they're hit with a warning like "Amazon will always prioritize its own products over that of third party products, including future products that may be very similar to ones currently allowed in our marketplace. Be prepared to be removed for any or no reason, including because Amazon does not want too many similar products in the same category." Same question about Apple's app store.

tomcooks 5y ago

Biggest player monopolizes the market, more news at 11

cletus 5y ago

This is nothing new. For example, supermarkets have been in the generic brands business for decades. They contract out making some generic version a name brand product and sell it a lower price, giving it preferential space (both size and position) on the shelves. Why? To capture a greater portion of the profit for themselves. Why is anyone surprised Amazon is any different? I've said it once and I'll say it again: the current focus on antitrust in Big Tech is, at best, completely misguided. If anyone is guilty of anticompetitive behaviour, it's not Google or Facebook, it's Amazon. Amazon literally controls online selling, logistics, distribution and delivery to such a degree that no one else can reasonably compete.

micromacrofoot 5y ago
I don't think anyone is surprised, but they're worried about the scale. Amazon encompasses more of the ecommerce market (approaching the majority of all ecommerce) than any individual retailer covers brick-and-mortar, by a large margin. IIRC even Walmart is only ~15% of physical retail, Amazon is >40% all ecommerce. Personally I think all store-brands should be stopped. These companies should have to choose between being the marketplace or being the product and should have to diverge if they're both.

literallyaduck 5y ago

Call your representatives to bust them up for antitrust, ask for their assets to be frozen and customers receive the payout before the government.

outside1234 5y ago

I can't believe this - who could have predicted?!?!? Anti-competition time in the EU

Flatcircle 5y ago

Shouldn't this be allowed?

51Cards 5y ago

I'm somewhat amazed at this being news now. This has been blatantly obvious for years if you use Amazon even occasionally.

johnyzee 5y ago

This story seems to be getting flagged (based on the posting time/upvote count, compared to other stories). Wonder why?

cptskippy 5y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, blatantly copying a manufacturer's custom design is kinda scummy. In the article they show some Williams & Sonoma furniture that was copied and looks similar but not identical. I've read similar stories about bike bags and other things. On the other hand, sourcing the same item from the same factory that two dozen other sellers are already selling isn't. TBH I wouldn't mind if those duplicative items just went away because they just pollute results. There's a similar problem on eBay where there are 1500 listings for the exact same item from 100 different sellers all using the same stock photos but with slightly different prices.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

[dead]

pmarreck 5y ago

Does Amazon even have a viable competitor (even a small one) at this point? And were one to try to start one, how would that even look?

closetohome 5y ago
Walmart is Amazon's biggest competitor in online sales with ~7% market share to Amazon's ~40%.
- pmarreck 5y ago
  Oh great, another terrible company.

radley 5y ago

Huh? This is biz 101 stuff. Every retail biz does it. The far more interesting part is the hundreds of private label brands Amazon has created to make it less obvious. https://pattern.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-amazons-private-label-brands/ https://pattern.com/blog/all-you-need-to-know-about-amazons-...

adamqureshi 5y ago

Amazon is in the business of making money. If their AI notifies them that a product is selling like hot cakes and that product has no brand protection they'll knock it off. Tha is why it is important to build a brand instead of building a product, people buy the brand not the product and thats a different ball game. - 2 cents.

franczesko 5y ago

I'm wondering why companies still cooperate with Amazon, when it consistently is breaking their trust? I understand their position in some markets (e.g. USA), but not being on Amazon doesn't mean the end of business in the other parts of the world. As a matter of fact, being on Amazon means slow and inevitable death sentence for their brands.

haaserd 5y ago

I really wish reports like this were more surprising.

oort-cloud9 5y ago

Amazon is not a free market company. Like all the other monster retailers, it's a product of our neo-keynesian economy with the heavy involvement of the state... Amazon can't replicate all the products though. Just some.

bicepjai 5y ago

I notice Amazon follow the same cheating strategy in Whole Foods with their brand 345. I try to avoid them when grocery shopping

z3ncyberpunk 5y ago

"Don't mind this everyone, watch five people who paid a ridiculous amount of money blast off into low earth orbit for all of 5 seconds just to come right back down. Publicity stunt? Why never! Hey look here's William Shatner, something something space give me your money" - Bezos