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I'm honestly not sure how you could make the case that they aren't maintaining and abusing monopoly power. I mean they literally blatantly copy the designs of o

• tehlike 3y ago
  At this point, they don't have to rank it higher and people would still buy it. They are like Kirkland of Costco most often.
  • hightrix 3y ago
    Exactly. I prefer Amazon Basics to YAYWOWND brand every day. It is one of the few brands on Amazon you can count on to not be Chinese crap. Even if it is made in China, the Amazon Basics products are generally good quality.
    • munk-a 3y ago
      I think it's slightly better than <insert anonymous three day old Chinese company here> but just slightly. Amazon Basics within my company has earned a reputation for being extremely fragile crap that will break quickly and, occasionally, dramatically. I have had absolutely awful experiences with their surge protectors. But yes - it's a step up from YAYWOWND which is a company that probably didn't exist last week and almost certainly won't exist in a month when their product spontaneously combusts and you try and chase down damages or at least a refund... Still, I'm actually finding myself buying more and more name brand crap because at least that way I know there's a company I can reach out to when it breaks down.
      • dartos 3y ago
        We’re coming full circle
      • chx 3y ago
        The /r/usbchardware subreddit used to recommend AmazonBasics cables because they are USB IF certified https://www.usb.org/single-product/728 https://www.usb.org/single-product/728 but lately... https://www.usb.org/products https://www.usb.org/products the entire company is gone. https://i.imgur.com/qFzHbvP.png https://i.imgur.com/qFzHbvP.png It also used to be you could use the ASIN to search for it... you can't now.
      • malfist 3y ago
        Bonus points for YAYWOWND that didn't exist last week, yet all it's products have thousands of 5 star reviews that amazon somehow doesn't think is fraudulent.
    • babypuncher 3y ago
      That is another problem with Amazon. It seems like my only options are Amazon Basics, or weird 3-day old Chinese brand. Where are all the actually reputable brands hiding?
      • bluGill 3y ago
        Many reputable brands are not on Amazon because then they people who buy from them are not getting a counterfeit. You have to be a certain size to pull this off though, small companies have trouble getting a market outside of amazon or ebay.
    • shitlord 3y ago
      Amazon Basics products were previously known for causing fires and destroying electronic devices. See: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/business/amazonbasics-electronics-fire-safety-invs/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/business/amazonbasics-electro... I don't know if they ever fixed this problem (they have changed suppliers before), but I try to avoid using products from Amazon or no-name Chinese companies that plug into the wall.
  • crooked-v 3y ago
    Kirkland has a big difference here, in that it's a much better consistent indicator of quality than the Amazon house brands.
    • tehlike 3y ago
      Probably true. But then feels like it's one or two tweaks away.
      • CuriouslyC 3y ago
        It might be, but Costco has a reputation for integrity, and it's not worth trading that for a few percent cost savings on generic items that aren't even a big portion of their bottom line.
        • tehlike 3y ago
          I meant for amazon.
• nixass 3y ago
  By what metric Amazon IS monopoly?
  • munk-a 3y ago
    By the metric of market control and by the metric of being able to leverage anti-competitive practices without feeling any market pushback.
    • taeric 3y ago
      Examples? Because, by most evidence that I am aware of, they aren't actually doing that well? Certainly not bad. But not clear to me that they have any real online advantage now that other stores have online payment that they can use between them. I've certainly been far more willing to buy direct from brands for the past few years.
      • cj 3y ago
        The examples are listed in the article. The last point is pretty damning if they can prove it. > Biasing Amazon’s search results to preference Amazon’s own products over ones that Amazon knows are of better quality. > Degrading the customer experience by replacing relevant, organic search results with paid advertisements > Charging costly fees on the hundreds of thousands of sellers that currently have no choice but to rely on Amazon to stay in business. [...] > Anti-discounting measures that punish sellers and deter other online retailers from offering prices lower than Amazon, keeping prices higher for products across the internet. For example, if Amazon discovers that a seller is offering lower-priced goods elsewhere, Amazon can bury discounting sellers so far down in Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible.
        • taeric 3y ago
          First, disclaimer that I do not mean my post as a reason not to pursue antitrust concerns. By all means, look for them. If they are found, make rules about them. That said, I have specific doubts. For one, search has always been crap on Amazon. I could believe they tried some of these tricks, but I confess I have my doubts they would execute on them well. For second, some of this is standard BS that retail has just accepted. That is, bringing on "experts" from in the retail industry would almost certainly bias you in some of these directions. The standard contracts that retail stores have pushed for a long time are such that they absolutely should be curtailed. They can be good tools for small companies, but it is clear that as companies get larger, they amplify power imbalances.
• zht 3y ago
  I've found that many people will spend a lot of time and energy defending large companies (and often their CEOs) against perceived bullying. Amazon, Tesla, Elon, Meta, etc etc. I don't really understand it.
  • vasilipupkin 3y ago
    and others spend a lot of time attacking large companies simply because they are large. In this case, AMZN. AMZN is like the cheapest place to buy things online. But it's not the only place. So, why is FTC going after them?
    • sitzkrieg 3y ago
      well, there is an entire article highlighting each of their reasons if you are so inclined
      • vasilipupkin 3y ago
        yeah, I am saying these reasons don't seem to make sense, since AMZN is not a monopoly because other online sellers exist and physical stores exist
    • lancesells 3y ago
      > others spend a lot of time attacking large companies simply because they are large This isn't the FTC's complaint but search "How Amazon treats their workers" and see why large companies get attacked. Typically the only way you're going to become this large is by abusing people in some sort of way. Amazon abuses their workers, their sellers, etc. Meta abuses their users. Google abuses their users. Uber abuses their drivers. I would love to see 20 Amazons where half have a decent quality of life for workers compared to 1 Amazon where it's just awful for everyone except maybe consumers (debatable), executives, and tech workers.
      • vasilipupkin 3y ago
        absurd. Nobody is forcing anyone to work for AMZN or Google or Uber. People would simply quit if these companies were actually abusing them
• HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Don't all grocery stores do this?
  • travoc 3y ago
    Grocery stores are not a monopoly.
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Neither is Amazon. Aliexpress, Walmart, Newegg are direct competitors selling cheap crap. Then there is Target/Home Depot/Lowes/Staples/Costco/Best Buy/etc
      • dragonwriter 3y ago
        > Neither is Amazon The lawsuit that is the subject here details Amazon's durable monopoly power in two markets. But, yes, if Amazon did not have a monopoly, it could not, obviously, be illegally maintaining a monopoly.
      • yomlica8 3y ago
        Doesn't Amazon prevent you from selling on other stores for a lesser price? I always thought that was a galling scam and couldn't understand why it was even allowed at all.
    • sib 3y ago
      Nor is Amazon
      • dragonwriter 3y ago
        The complaint [0] has 32 pages detailing Amazon's durable monopoly power in two relevant markets, so your claim that it lacks a monopoly might do with somewhat more of a counterargument than you've presented. [0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.326809/gov.uscourts.wawd.326809.1.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32...
• 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  Monopoly is a subset of anticompetitive behavior, and not easy to prove. Whatever behavior you see as monopoly, they could have a "reasonable" explanation for. A company violates the law only if it tries to maintain or acquire a monpoly through unreasonable methods. As usual, the law has loopholes big enough to drive an entire logistics chain through.
• robertlagrant 3y ago
  This is what supermarkets do as well - see what sells, then create own-brand alternatives.
• Waterluvian 3y ago
  But I like it when Costco does it…
• whatever1 3y ago
  It is not if you cannot prove that the price that the customer pays is now higher. Apple for example copies apps and makes them available as default in iOS. Companies go bankrupt because of it, but it is not monopolistic. Of course all these are because of the strict legal definitions we have. In spirit I agree with you.
  • cratermoon 3y ago
    > It is not if you cannot prove that the price that the customer pays is now higher. That's according to a peculiar interpretation of anti-trust law. “Due to a change in legal thinking and practice in the 1970s and 1980s, antitrust law now assesses competition largely with an eye to the short-term interests of consumers, not producers or the health of the market as a whole; antitrust doctrine views low consumer prices, alone, to be evidence of sound competition.” Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
    • abduhl 3y ago
      It’s strange to call the most prominent view (and the one applied by courts currently) a “peculiar” interpretation. Lina Khan is the one with the “peculiar” view right now. The consumer interest test is preferred because, among other reasons, it is quantitative. Quantitative tests are seen as less able to be abused because some judge has a particular view/vibe. Additionally, the consumer harm test focuses on the consumer which is the ultimate class of people antitrust laws seek to protect. Antitrust laws don’t exist to protect markets, they exist to protect citizens.
      • kozd 3y ago
        Isn't the issue here short term vs long term consumer interest? It's all fine and dandy for consumers to pay lower prices because company A is eating losses to drive company B out of business but what happens after that.
        • 3y ago
• likpok 3y ago
  The trouble with this argument (which gets made a lot) is that this is basically every large retailer. Walmart has great value, Safeway has safeway select, Target has good and gather. In all of these cases large retailers take well-performing products (i.e. look at their sales data to see what is selling well) and creates mimics. They put the generics right next to the original products, and then charge the original seller for better shelf placement (as well as for various other things -- getting a product in a retail store requires a fair amount of payola in some form or another). All of this adds up to basically the same thing: amazon copies a product and ranks it highly unless you pay for better placement. You can say that this is bad, which sure, but it seems hard to make the argument that this is specifically illegal for amazon when it's widely practiced in the industry.
  • fragmede 3y ago
    I don't know that it is. Walmarts been repeatedly sued for the same practice, so it's not just Amazon being sued for that behavior.
  • enriquec 3y ago
    Very true. I find it hard to argue against something like generics - since they increase access and lower price.
    • kiklion 3y ago
      There’s nothing wrong with genetics and nothing wrong with stores having their own brand. We just need regulations to ensure that vertical companies are engaging in arms length transactions. If Walmart charges a company $10 per linear foot of shelf space on the third row, then they need to internally bill the generic brand division the same rate.
      • ctvo 3y ago
        So the goal is … create paperwork? Walmart internally bills itself the same price … and they pay themselves the money does what exactly?
  • 3y ago
• bmitc 3y ago
  And at what point is a company too powerful that doesn't meet the traditional, and frankly outdated, view of a monopoly? Amazon owns and controls entertainment, news, journalism, books, movies, products, furniture, space/satellite services, backend services, storefronts, medical care, pharmacies, food, etc. They literally control, own, and/or provide every aspect of life. Are they the only ones in each of those areas? No. But they are one of the few, if not the only one, in all of those areas at once. Technology, and in particular software, has greatly outpaced the definition of monopolistic power. Amazon and all the other large tech companies wield so much power it is scary. And they can literally just buy into any market they please with hardly any push back.
• lacker 3y ago
  According to the best statistics I can find, in the US, Amazon has 37.8 percent of the retail e-commerce market. https://www.statista.com/statistics/274255/market-share-of-the-leading-retailers-in-us-e-commerce/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/274255/market-share-of-t... The simplest pro-Amazon case is that they do not have monopoly power, because they are not a monopoly.
  • rat9988 3y ago
    As a seller who wants to sell retail, what is the marketshare of available platforms?
    • crazygringo 3y ago
      It really depends on how you define it, but Amazon, Walmart and Shopify are all excellent mainstream choices. This gives you plenty of numbers for comparison: https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/amazon-walmart-shopify-compete-battle-of-marketplaces https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/amazon-walmart-s... Then obviously you're also got direct-to-consumer via your own website, and lots of niche channels like Etsy, Wayfair, and so forth.
  • AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > The simplest pro-Amazon case is that they do not have monopoly power, because they are not a monopoly. It's also odd that their retail business doesn't make any money if they're supposed to have market power.
  • tristan957 3y ago
    You do not need > 50% market share for the government to go after you for monopolistic practices. If Amazon made that case in court, they would be laughed out of the building.
• pseudosavant 3y ago
  I get the sentiment behind this reaction that most people have. I just have a hard time understanding how it is any different than brick and mortar companies using their sales data to determine which products they should have a store brand version of. Costco, Walmart, Target, etc. all do this, and have been doing it for decades. At a Costco, they'll often stop selling the brand name product if they introduce a "Kirkland Signature" version. Amazon doesn't take down competing products when they launch Amazon Basics versions. Not really intending to defend Amazon, because they are indefensible, but by big corporate standards, I don't see how they are anywhere near as bad as Walmart. And nobody is trying to break Walmart up.
  • dragonwriter 3y ago
    > I just have a hard time understanding how it is any different than brick and mortar companies using their sales data to determine which products they should have a store brand version of. Costco, Walmart, Target, etc. all do this, and have been doing it for decades. The legal difference underlying the lawsuit between this behavior by Amazon and the behavior you raise by those stores is not the behavior, but its context. Amazon, the complaint alleges, has durable monopolies in two relevant markets which the behavior leverages and reinforces, making it a means of illegally maintaining a monopoly. The other stores do not have monopolies, so the behavior is not part of a system of illegally maintaining a monopoly. This is very similar to the kind of discussion that happened at the time of the Microsoft antitrusts suit about bundling software: one of the ways Microsoft illegally leveraged their Windows monopoly – in this case to monopolize other markets rather than to maintain the Windows monopoly, but same kind of issue – was bundling IE with Windows. People made all kinds of “well, how is this different than maker A bundling software X with software Y”, and mostly it wasn’t, except that maker A didn’t have and thus wasn’t leveraging a monopoly in the market of software X, so them bundling software Y with it wasn’t an issue.
    • symlinkk 3y ago
      Amazon does not have a monopoly on online shopping that’s absurd. Chewy, Wayfair, Target, Walmart, AliExpress all are huge competitors.
• hinkley 3y ago
  I ate a lot of popcorn during the Microsoft trials - plural - and the received wisdom from previous generations that was already being forgotten at the time is this bit of torch-passing, which I now impart to you. Anti-trust cases usually only succeed once the court of public opinion has turned against the monopolist. If the public is still in favor or ambivalent, then you will not find the political will to successfully prosecute your case. But once the company has abused their power enough to turn the public against them (arrogance in addition to greed), then the charges tend to stick. My read is that there is no amount of lobbying that can be successful once the pitchforks have come out. But it could also be how many whistleblowers you can hunt up. Once your brother is giving you shit for working for the Evil Empire, it's a lot easier to get up the courage to be a witness.
  • dhimes 3y ago
    IIRC Microsoft lost in Europe, not in the US.
• rattlesnakedave 3y ago
  As a consumer, this doesn't really hurt me. I get good products for cheap delivered in two days or less. I don't see how the FTC is helping me here.
  • max_ 3y ago
    Exactly, the purpose of capitalism is to serve the consumer not the competitors.
    • wolverine876 3y ago
      The purpose is to serve the public, full stop (including consumers, employees, shareholders, other citizens). The mechanism is the free market, not capitalism, and the free market requires free competition. Capitalism is one tool in the free market toolbox, and it works very well in many ways. One way this tool doesn't work well is that it leads to monopolies, which stifle competition, which hurts the people listed above.
  • mikem170 3y ago
    How do you know that you're not missing out on an even better deal? If amazon had real competition maybe they would not have raised seller fees so much, and would not have prevented sellers from allowing lower prices in other places. So a cases can be made that they are using their market share to drive up prices, not lower them. Costing the consumer more. There's other issues besides cost, for example counterfeits. If they had real competition then maybe they'd have to do something about all the counterfeit products they sell, which hurts both buyers and sellers. Just a couple examples. There are other ways that monopolies can impact markets. I've had similar thoughts about facebook. We could have had much better social/messaging systems, but facebook bought the competition. We likely missed out on more variety and perhaps much better options. Consumers were harmed by these lost opportunities.
  • tw04 3y ago
    >I get good products for cheap delivered in two days or less. You would be getting the same products for cheaper, that's the point. Their "two days or less" hasn't been true for several years. "Prime" to me basically has become "sometime in the next week" and there's a massive warehouse within 30 miles of my house.
• jrochkind1 3y ago
  To "make the case that they" are or aren't violating antitrust law, you need to know and talk about antitrust law. To not be sure how someone can make either case, without being familiar with antitrust law and framing the discussion in terms of it, is only to be expected. I came to HN hoping to see some legal analysis, but I guess that's not what HN is for. You can get good technical discussion of technology, but when it comes to legal technical stuff it's just ideology and people talking about how they think things should be. What's HN for lawyers?
• fallingknife 3y ago
  Grocery stores do this all the time and undercut brand names. They even put up signs with "compare to <brand name>" by the generic. I'm really not sure how you could make the case that it isn't legal given that it is a long standing and accepted practice, and is clearly beneficial to the consumer.
• graeme 3y ago
  Monopoly is very specific. Anti competitive isn’t monopoly. Amazon simply hasn’t got monopoly market share or even e commerce monopoly market share. And btw all retailers copy products. Surely you’ve bought store brand corn flakes at some point for instance.
• jldugger 3y ago
  > I'm honestly not sure how you could make the case that they aren't maintaining and abusing monopoly power Well, the obvious way would be "Amazon is not a monopoly." It's blatantly anti-competitive but hasn't produced a competitor yet. And heck, they didn't even have to buy off the competition from Jet.com, Wal-Mart somehow inexplicably did that for them.