4 ms·

It feels incredibly anticompetitive they were able to bundle Prime Video with Prime Delivery. Amazon have significant market power in online commerce, and for t

by orra 4y ago

It feels incredibly anticompetitive they were able to bundle Prime Video with Prime Delivery. Amazon have significant market power in online commerce, and for them to use that muscle into online video is ridiculous.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
It’s almost exactly like when Rockefeller managed to use strategic rail infrastructure to attack and intimidate oil competitors until the entire industry became monopolized and had to be dismantled. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- WalterBright 4y ago
  That's the conventional narrative. But if you read "Titan" by Chernow, it's substantially different. Rockefeller never had a monopoly. He was accused and convicted not of having a monopoly, but anti-competitive behavior. Also, during the long trial, his market share kept slipping, and he was unable to stop the slide. His competitors had never been vanquished, and had figured out how to compete with Standard Oil. https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303 https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/140... What's ironic about the book is Chernow reaches the standard conclusions that you wrote, but his actual text says the opposite. I suspect that Chernow's preconceived notions about Standard Oil were so strong he was not convinced by his own research and narrative of what actually happened.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
    That’s super interesting. I’m not familiar with the book - but the point about the monopoly doesn’t surprise me. Things are never that simple. From a legal standpoint no one actually reaches a full monopoly unless it is a government instituted/regulated monopoly, no? Like, I mean monopoly as a pursued ideal and total victory state for a business, but not as an achievable goal. My point mostly related to Amazon - they’re really not a monopoly, but they’re definitely strategically pursuing a direction which left unrestrained would give them that monopoly. In this specific example it is Amazon using their AWS cloud infrastructure to bundle video streaming into Prime to then create a mix that strangles competitors. In the case of Standard Oil what I remember were strategic investments into directly unprofitable rail infrastructure and then SO using that to exert pressure on smaller oil competitors to force them to sell at a loss. I’m no expert but I think this is what makes anti-trust so difficult to prove reliably.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      A few years ago Walmart was the unstoppable monopoly.
      - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
        Was Walmart not pursuing anti-competitive strategies though? And does it still not do so in certain local markets? The point the anti-trust people are repeating over and over is that anti-trust has been broken since the early 1980’s. So, this means huge chunks of the economy and many enormous conglomerates competing in it are themselves fortresses because lax anti-trust enforcement. In that worldview it doesn’t matter whether it’s Amazon or Walmart… or RadioShack or whatever. We literally can’t imagine another world because these conditions go as far as most of us can remember.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        > The point the anti-trust people are repeating over and over is that anti-trust has been broken since the early 1980’s. And yet an endless stream of unstoppable monopolies have collapsed or been humbled of their own accord since 1980. IBM, Cisco Systems, Intel, Kodak, GE, GM, Microsoft, KMart, Lotus, etc.
        Jochim 4y ago
        That the de facto monopolies tend to collapse doesn't preclude the damage they incur on society/competitors whilst they're at their peak/stagnating.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        The damage you refer to is simply free markets being a chaotic system. Creative destruction is part of it. A steady state of communism is worse for people. History amply shows that. But yeah, I noticed you moving the goal posts :-)
anonymous_sorry 4y ago
I assumed Prime Video is just a loss leader to get you subscribing. Isn't the real benefit to them that they've convinced you to pay for next day delivery in advance, so you are discouraged from shopping around and end up spending way more at Amazon?
- orra 4y ago
  I mean, yes, prepaying for delivery encourages people to buy more things from Amazon. But that's not anticompetitive. What's IMO anticompetitive is the vertical bundling of these unrelated services, especially because they're so big in commerce. You speculate that Prime Video is a loss leader, and that would make it an even bigger an anticompetitive threat to the rest of the streaming market.

by orra 4y ago

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago

It’s almost exactly like when Rockefeller managed to use strategic rail infrastructure to attack and intimidate oil competitors until the entire industry became monopolized and had to be dismantled. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

WalterBright 4y ago
That's the conventional narrative. But if you read "Titan" by Chernow, it's substantially different. Rockefeller never had a monopoly. He was accused and convicted not of having a monopoly, but anti-competitive behavior. Also, during the long trial, his market share kept slipping, and he was unable to stop the slide. His competitors had never been vanquished, and had figured out how to compete with Standard Oil. https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303 https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/140... What's ironic about the book is Chernow reaches the standard conclusions that you wrote, but his actual text says the opposite. I suspect that Chernow's preconceived notions about Standard Oil were so strong he was not convinced by his own research and narrative of what actually happened.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  That’s super interesting. I’m not familiar with the book - but the point about the monopoly doesn’t surprise me. Things are never that simple. From a legal standpoint no one actually reaches a full monopoly unless it is a government instituted/regulated monopoly, no? Like, I mean monopoly as a pursued ideal and total victory state for a business, but not as an achievable goal. My point mostly related to Amazon - they’re really not a monopoly, but they’re definitely strategically pursuing a direction which left unrestrained would give them that monopoly. In this specific example it is Amazon using their AWS cloud infrastructure to bundle video streaming into Prime to then create a mix that strangles competitors. In the case of Standard Oil what I remember were strategic investments into directly unprofitable rail infrastructure and then SO using that to exert pressure on smaller oil competitors to force them to sell at a loss. I’m no expert but I think this is what makes anti-trust so difficult to prove reliably.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    A few years ago Walmart was the unstoppable monopoly.
    - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
      Was Walmart not pursuing anti-competitive strategies though? And does it still not do so in certain local markets? The point the anti-trust people are repeating over and over is that anti-trust has been broken since the early 1980’s. So, this means huge chunks of the economy and many enormous conglomerates competing in it are themselves fortresses because lax anti-trust enforcement. In that worldview it doesn’t matter whether it’s Amazon or Walmart… or RadioShack or whatever. We literally can’t imagine another world because these conditions go as far as most of us can remember.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        > The point the anti-trust people are repeating over and over is that anti-trust has been broken since the early 1980’s. And yet an endless stream of unstoppable monopolies have collapsed or been humbled of their own accord since 1980. IBM, Cisco Systems, Intel, Kodak, GE, GM, Microsoft, KMart, Lotus, etc.
        Jochim 4y ago
        That the de facto monopolies tend to collapse doesn't preclude the damage they incur on society/competitors whilst they're at their peak/stagnating.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        The damage you refer to is simply free markets being a chaotic system. Creative destruction is part of it. A steady state of communism is worse for people. History amply shows that. But yeah, I noticed you moving the goal posts :-)

anonymous_sorry 4y ago

I assumed Prime Video is just a loss leader to get you subscribing. Isn't the real benefit to them that they've convinced you to pay for next day delivery in advance, so you are discouraged from shopping around and end up spending way more at Amazon?

orra 4y ago
I mean, yes, prepaying for delivery encourages people to buy more things from Amazon. But that's not anticompetitive. What's IMO anticompetitive is the vertical bundling of these unrelated services, especially because they're so big in commerce. You speculate that Prime Video is a loss leader, and that would make it an even bigger an anticompetitive threat to the rest of the streaming market.