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Does this only go for internet companies? Or do you think it applies to Walmart selling its own Equate brand of everything or Costco selling its own Kirkland br

Does this only go for internet companies? Or do you think it applies to Walmart selling its own Equate brand of everything or Costco selling its own Kirkland brand of everything?

rcdwealth 5y ago
Difference is that neither Wallmart, Equate, Costco are marketplaces for third parties.
amelius 5y ago
Do you have an argument against that?
hnxs 5y ago
Can you explain how Costco is relevant here when they make most of their money off membership fees and not sales?
- klipt 5y ago
  Would you say the same about Amazon promoting its own brand, if Amazon made more money off Prime than sales?
  - cgriswald 5y ago
    I'd say in the case of Amazon, store brands are missing the point. They can let sellers take all the risk of determining what the market will support, while profiting whether the seller is successful or not. If successful, Amazon can reach its own deal with the manufacturer and compete with the very same branded product, possibly at a lower price, without having to pay into the marketplace, and with the capability of manipulating the search results.
riazrizvi 5y ago
If 92.47% of all stores in the USA were only Walmart then yes, there would be a national interest in determining how grocery store competition had been destroyed/denied and we would want to fix it. In such a situation you would see a degradation of store product quality vs price. It might not be so clear with internet search because Google’s ascendence was coincident with innovation that it has hoovered up. But once you see competition restored, with things like the return of a Search API, or of more transparent ranking metrics, or of customizable ranking algorithms then you will begin to see what you are missing.
- jefftk 5y ago
  Where are you getting 92.47%? Amazon's share of online shopping is well under that, no?
  - charrondev 5y ago
    I’m guessing that number is in reference to googles dominance of the search market? I’m assuming they are less than that with regards to the advertisement market (I’m not super familiar with the space, but as I understand Facebook is a huge player there as well).
    - bananabreakfast 5y ago
      What market though? There is no search market. It is a service given away for free. There is no such thing as a monopoly on something that does not cost anything.
      - effingwewt 5y ago
        You're kidding, right? the first damn near full page of google search is nothing but ads which they make a killing off of. If search wasn't profitable then ads in search and SEO wouldn't exist.
      - kaibee 5y ago
        > There is no such thing as a monopoly on something that does not cost anything. This is the wrong way to think about it. How much would _Google_ be willing to pay to maintain that position? Well, Mozilla's primary source of revenue, is afaik, from having Google as the default search engine, so at least that much, for whatever percent of the browser market-share.
      - freeflight 5y ago
        Companies like Google and Facebook have pretty much cornered the market of the attention economy. The vast majority of web users have their eyes and attention directly guided by one of these [0]. If they decide you do not exist, then you will effectively cease existing for billions of people on the web because they do not know a web outside of Google/YouTube or the Facebook ecosystem. [0] https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...
the_pwner224 5y ago
There are a few differences. The big tech companies have a much higher market share. For phone app makers, the App Store is the only point of access to the majority of affluent Americans; Google controls access to the rest of the 1st world population (sideloading is possible on Android but 99.9% of normies won't use your app if it's not on the store). Amazon does have competitors and you can also run your own e-shop, but they are the gatekeepers for a large portion of the online sales market - getting kicked off of Amazon is going to hurt bad for any online retailer. Of course getting kicked out of Walmart is also bad, but there are lots of competitors that lots of people use (grocery stores which have regional chains as well as smaller local chains, Target, Costco, Amazon, etc.). Which leads into the second point - Apple has a long history of integrating cool features/apps into their OS and then kicking out the original creator from the app store. This destroys the creator / original company and basically transfers the idea's profits to Apple. Retail stores and Amazon do make knockoffs, but generally the original product is still sold alongside it. In many cases the branded product is superior to the generic product and many people will pay extra for it; in many other cases the brand also supplies the generic label product so that's beneficial for both parties.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > The big tech companies have a much higher market share. For phone app makers, the App Store is the only point of access to the majority of affluent Americans; Google controls access to the rest of the 1st world population (sideloading is possible on Android but 99.9% of normies won't use your app if it's not on the store). To use real figures, Apple has 60% of the mobile operating system market in the US[1], and Google has 40%. Apple's App Store has 100% more revenue than Google's Play Store[2], and the two are responsible for over 99% of all mobile app sales in the US. Both Google and Apple dominate the mobile app payment market in the US, as well, since they both ban all other forms of app payments on their app stores. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-android-dominates-in-china-and-india https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-... [2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
  - 5y ago
kymaz 5y ago
The effects of costco and walmart's behavior is largely contained within their own retail space. Amazon.com has no such constraint. I think my answer is yesno. It isn't about the action of making and selling the competing products, but about how the internet and FAANG scale changes the customer-business dynamics. Consider that when you browse wares in a physical store like Costco or Walmart, the selection is constrained to what can fit within a building, thus the absolute worthless garbage junk and knockoffs will be culled to make space for less return-prone items ( At Costco, I don't see 5 pages or aisles of identical products listed under different brands that are mechanically indistinguishable from 'kirkland signature' products). Costco also seems to care about counterfeits and whether or not something they sold was found to be bad (this has happened to me, a food item at costco was found to be the source of a few food poisoning cases and was traced back to a single item at costco, and costo went around calling everyone who had that batch on their purchase history to let them know). I've wound up with counterfeit pieces of junk off Amazon that I'm not going to go through the effort of refunding/returning/complaining about, so it's all slippage that AMZN gets away with. Returns and replacements are so fast at brick and mortar stores 5 miles away from home!
notatoad 5y ago
yes, in a scenario where wal-mart or costco is acting as marketplace rather than seller (i.e. their online stores). when you see brand-name products on a shelf at wal-mart beside their own-brand, it's because wal-mart has purchased that product and is re-selling it. wal-mart has taken the risk of buying the stock in the first place. brands still have a chance to succeed. when a brand acts as a marketplace, they aren't taking on the risk. they're selling shelf space, not buying things to put on the shelves. when they participate in the marketplace as well as operating it, they are competing with their own customers. that's the behaviour that's essentially a recipe to destroy competition.
- toast0 5y ago
  > when you see brand-name products on a shelf at wal-mart beside their own-brand, it's because wal-mart has purchased that product and is re-selling it. Goods on the shelf at stores in general are a mix of items on consignment, the vendor provided the goods and the vendor will be paid only if or when the goods sell; goods that were purchased on net-30 or net-N terms where the goods are delivered but not paid for until 30 (or N) days later; and also some goods that were purchased and paid for before delivery to the store (or store warehouse). Of course, even when the goods aren't on consignment, larger stores often negotiate favorable terms for unsold goods; typically the vendor must refund the store as well as pay for return shipping or disposal. A large amount of risk still falls to the vendor. Anyway, store brands are fine, IMHO, but there's two things Amazon does that weird me out: a) in some categories they apparently have several store brands and it's not always clear it's an amazon brand, whereas Costco uses a single brand and most other stores use just a couple; b) there have been reports that Amazon will request supplier information from merchants of products that are selling well, and then Amazon goes to those suppliers and negotiates bulk purchases; it seems to me, that's making your merchants do all the work to discover items of interest and where to get them made and then Amazon swoops in and takes over.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
As others have pointed out there are differences between the big internet companies and the physical chain stores however I think for the purposes of drafting a law, unless it applies only to internet commerce, it might be reasonable to write it as applying to any store above a certain size as well (I guess we want Ma to be able to sell her homemade preserves at Ma and Pa's country store)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
laurent92 5y ago
There is urgence in banning Walmart from selling home brands next to competitors, because it has hampered the discussion on the GAFA monopolies every time it was asked! For its own sake, this is causing harm to the customer…
jimmont 5y ago
the difference is in the measure of fair competition; anyone can compete, it simply can't be unfair; these tech companies are competing unfairly and to the extent it's not only obvious to participants, it's obvious to government. One doesn't typically build a case without supporting evidence as would help generally in situations like this.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
In your analogy you name two large brick-and-mortar retailers. Allow me to posit my own analogy: If Amazon is the Walmart of the web then who is the Costco? Who is the Target? There isn't any. Retailers stick their neck out to put an item on the shelf because space is limited. The product is made. It's on the shelf. If it doesn't sell then someone loses money. If Equate brand sucks I can choose an alternative. If everything on the shelf sucks I can go to another store.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Costco, Target and Walmart all have their own online presence. Your entire argument makes no sense.
  - foerbert 5y ago
    They were obviously just using an analogy with real names to say Amazon does not have a similar-size competitor or three.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      Walmart is a similar sized competitor, though. Depending on how you break it down, eBay is as well. The analogy makes no sense. Walmart is a competitor, Aliexpress, Flipkart, etc.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
        What percentage of online revenue does Walmart make? How much does Amazon make?
        endisneigh 5y ago
        7% vs 40%. Definitely a huge difference, but the majority of commerce in the USA is non-Amazon. If you do worldwide it's way worse. in no way is it a "monopoly." If you look at growth rates Amazon is slowing and others are gaining not to mention the comparison is foolish to begin with as Amazon doesn't have physical locations. a better comparison is total amount of sales, in which Amazon isn't even the plurality.
sitkack 5y ago
Trader Joe's pulls the same thing with the house brand. House Brand, undercoat, whatevers. If you want Capitalism to work, then everything need to be a market. For markets to be efficient we need protocols and interfaces. For this to work we need to disambiguate to the root, the post office should probably deliver milk and potatoes.

Does this only go for internet companies? Or do you think it applies to Walmart selling its own Equate brand of everything or Costco selling its own Kirkland brand of everything?

rcdwealth 5y ago

Difference is that neither Wallmart, Equate, Costco are marketplaces for third parties.

amelius 5y ago

Do you have an argument against that?

hnxs 5y ago

Can you explain how Costco is relevant here when they make most of their money off membership fees and not sales?

klipt 5y ago
Would you say the same about Amazon promoting its own brand, if Amazon made more money off Prime than sales?
- cgriswald 5y ago
  I'd say in the case of Amazon, store brands are missing the point. They can let sellers take all the risk of determining what the market will support, while profiting whether the seller is successful or not. If successful, Amazon can reach its own deal with the manufacturer and compete with the very same branded product, possibly at a lower price, without having to pay into the marketplace, and with the capability of manipulating the search results.

riazrizvi 5y ago

If 92.47% of all stores in the USA were only Walmart then yes, there would be a national interest in determining how grocery store competition had been destroyed/denied and we would want to fix it. In such a situation you would see a degradation of store product quality vs price. It might not be so clear with internet search because Google’s ascendence was coincident with innovation that it has hoovered up. But once you see competition restored, with things like the return of a Search API, or of more transparent ranking metrics, or of customizable ranking algorithms then you will begin to see what you are missing.

jefftk 5y ago
Where are you getting 92.47%? Amazon's share of online shopping is well under that, no?
- charrondev 5y ago
  I’m guessing that number is in reference to googles dominance of the search market? I’m assuming they are less than that with regards to the advertisement market (I’m not super familiar with the space, but as I understand Facebook is a huge player there as well).
  - bananabreakfast 5y ago
    What market though? There is no search market. It is a service given away for free. There is no such thing as a monopoly on something that does not cost anything.
    - effingwewt 5y ago
      You're kidding, right? the first damn near full page of google search is nothing but ads which they make a killing off of. If search wasn't profitable then ads in search and SEO wouldn't exist.
    - kaibee 5y ago
      > There is no such thing as a monopoly on something that does not cost anything. This is the wrong way to think about it. How much would _Google_ be willing to pay to maintain that position? Well, Mozilla's primary source of revenue, is afaik, from having Google as the default search engine, so at least that much, for whatever percent of the browser market-share.
    - freeflight 5y ago
      Companies like Google and Facebook have pretty much cornered the market of the attention economy. The vast majority of web users have their eyes and attention directly guided by one of these [0]. If they decide you do not exist, then you will effectively cease existing for billions of people on the web because they do not know a web outside of Google/YouTube or the Facebook ecosystem. [0] https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...

the_pwner224 5y ago

There are a few differences. The big tech companies have a much higher market share. For phone app makers, the App Store is the only point of access to the majority of affluent Americans; Google controls access to the rest of the 1st world population (sideloading is possible on Android but 99.9% of normies won't use your app if it's not on the store). Amazon does have competitors and you can also run your own e-shop, but they are the gatekeepers for a large portion of the online sales market - getting kicked off of Amazon is going to hurt bad for any online retailer. Of course getting kicked out of Walmart is also bad, but there are lots of competitors that lots of people use (grocery stores which have regional chains as well as smaller local chains, Target, Costco, Amazon, etc.). Which leads into the second point - Apple has a long history of integrating cool features/apps into their OS and then kicking out the original creator from the app store. This destroys the creator / original company and basically transfers the idea's profits to Apple. Retail stores and Amazon do make knockoffs, but generally the original product is still sold alongside it. In many cases the branded product is superior to the generic product and many people will pay extra for it; in many other cases the brand also supplies the generic label product so that's beneficial for both parties.

heavyset_go 5y ago
> The big tech companies have a much higher market share. For phone app makers, the App Store is the only point of access to the majority of affluent Americans; Google controls access to the rest of the 1st world population (sideloading is possible on Android but 99.9% of normies won't use your app if it's not on the store). To use real figures, Apple has 60% of the mobile operating system market in the US[1], and Google has 40%. Apple's App Store has 100% more revenue than Google's Play Store[2], and the two are responsible for over 99% of all mobile app sales in the US. Both Google and Apple dominate the mobile app payment market in the US, as well, since they both ban all other forms of app payments on their app stores. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-android-dominates-in-china-and-india https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-... [2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
- 5y ago

kymaz 5y ago

The effects of costco and walmart's behavior is largely contained within their own retail space. Amazon.com has no such constraint. I think my answer is yesno. It isn't about the action of making and selling the competing products, but about how the internet and FAANG scale changes the customer-business dynamics. Consider that when you browse wares in a physical store like Costco or Walmart, the selection is constrained to what can fit within a building, thus the absolute worthless garbage junk and knockoffs will be culled to make space for less return-prone items ( At Costco, I don't see 5 pages or aisles of identical products listed under different brands that are mechanically indistinguishable from 'kirkland signature' products). Costco also seems to care about counterfeits and whether or not something they sold was found to be bad (this has happened to me, a food item at costco was found to be the source of a few food poisoning cases and was traced back to a single item at costco, and costo went around calling everyone who had that batch on their purchase history to let them know). I've wound up with counterfeit pieces of junk off Amazon that I'm not going to go through the effort of refunding/returning/complaining about, so it's all slippage that AMZN gets away with. Returns and replacements are so fast at brick and mortar stores 5 miles away from home!

notatoad 5y ago

yes, in a scenario where wal-mart or costco is acting as marketplace rather than seller (i.e. their online stores). when you see brand-name products on a shelf at wal-mart beside their own-brand, it's because wal-mart has purchased that product and is re-selling it. wal-mart has taken the risk of buying the stock in the first place. brands still have a chance to succeed. when a brand acts as a marketplace, they aren't taking on the risk. they're selling shelf space, not buying things to put on the shelves. when they participate in the marketplace as well as operating it, they are competing with their own customers. that's the behaviour that's essentially a recipe to destroy competition.

toast0 5y ago
> when you see brand-name products on a shelf at wal-mart beside their own-brand, it's because wal-mart has purchased that product and is re-selling it. Goods on the shelf at stores in general are a mix of items on consignment, the vendor provided the goods and the vendor will be paid only if or when the goods sell; goods that were purchased on net-30 or net-N terms where the goods are delivered but not paid for until 30 (or N) days later; and also some goods that were purchased and paid for before delivery to the store (or store warehouse). Of course, even when the goods aren't on consignment, larger stores often negotiate favorable terms for unsold goods; typically the vendor must refund the store as well as pay for return shipping or disposal. A large amount of risk still falls to the vendor. Anyway, store brands are fine, IMHO, but there's two things Amazon does that weird me out: a) in some categories they apparently have several store brands and it's not always clear it's an amazon brand, whereas Costco uses a single brand and most other stores use just a couple; b) there have been reports that Amazon will request supplier information from merchants of products that are selling well, and then Amazon goes to those suppliers and negotiates bulk purchases; it seems to me, that's making your merchants do all the work to discover items of interest and where to get them made and then Amazon swoops in and takes over.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

As others have pointed out there are differences between the big internet companies and the physical chain stores however I think for the purposes of drafting a law, unless it applies only to internet commerce, it might be reasonable to write it as applying to any store above a certain size as well (I guess we want Ma to be able to sell her homemade preserves at Ma and Pa's country store)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

laurent92 5y ago

There is urgence in banning Walmart from selling home brands next to competitors, because it has hampered the discussion on the GAFA monopolies every time it was asked! For its own sake, this is causing harm to the customer…

jimmont 5y ago

the difference is in the measure of fair competition; anyone can compete, it simply can't be unfair; these tech companies are competing unfairly and to the extent it's not only obvious to participants, it's obvious to government. One doesn't typically build a case without supporting evidence as would help generally in situations like this.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

In your analogy you name two large brick-and-mortar retailers. Allow me to posit my own analogy: If Amazon is the Walmart of the web then who is the Costco? Who is the Target? There isn't any. Retailers stick their neck out to put an item on the shelf because space is limited. The product is made. It's on the shelf. If it doesn't sell then someone loses money. If Equate brand sucks I can choose an alternative. If everything on the shelf sucks I can go to another store.

endisneigh 5y ago
Costco, Target and Walmart all have their own online presence. Your entire argument makes no sense.
- foerbert 5y ago
  They were obviously just using an analogy with real names to say Amazon does not have a similar-size competitor or three.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    Walmart is a similar sized competitor, though. Depending on how you break it down, eBay is as well. The analogy makes no sense. Walmart is a competitor, Aliexpress, Flipkart, etc.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
      What percentage of online revenue does Walmart make? How much does Amazon make?
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        7% vs 40%. Definitely a huge difference, but the majority of commerce in the USA is non-Amazon. If you do worldwide it's way worse. in no way is it a "monopoly." If you look at growth rates Amazon is slowing and others are gaining not to mention the comparison is foolish to begin with as Amazon doesn't have physical locations. a better comparison is total amount of sales, in which Amazon isn't even the plurality.

sitkack 5y ago

Trader Joe's pulls the same thing with the house brand. House Brand, undercoat, whatevers. If you want Capitalism to work, then everything need to be a market. For markets to be efficient we need protocols and interfaces. For this to work we need to disambiguate to the root, the post office should probably deliver milk and potatoes.