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According to the FTC's lawsuit, Amazon no longer binds its sellers with a Most Favored Nation clause. Instead, Amazon now will refuse to promote an offer in its

According to the FTC's lawsuit, Amazon no longer binds its sellers with a Most Favored Nation clause. Instead, Amazon now will refuse to promote an offer in its "buy box" space if it detects a lower price for that good on another website. The FTC alleges that this simply reconstitutes the MFA since most sales on Amazon take place from the buy box. Amazon responds that it is within its rights to not promote uncompetitive offers that make its site look bad for not having the lowest available price.

helen___keller 3y ago
Does anyone have examples of popular / name brand products that are pushed down in ranking due to this? I would love to see for myself how this looks in practice
- granzymes 3y ago
  Here's one of the examples that the FTC cites in its complaint (at page 27): https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Retractable-Rollerball-Extra-Refillable/dp/B00MBL5BX2/ref=sr_1_11?crid=91VWVLCUB2PI&keywords=pilot+g2+red+retractable+rollerball+pens&qid=1696439775&s=office-products&sprefix=pilot+g2+red+retractable+rollerball+pens%2Coffice-products%2C152&sr=1-11 https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Retractable-Rollerball-Extra-Re... Compare it to this listing for a very similar product: https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Retractable-Rollerball-Ultra-0-38mm/dp/B09R86PMNX/ref=sr_1_4?crid=91VWVLCUB2PI&keywords=pilot+g2+red+retractable+rollerball+pens&qid=1696439900&s=office-products&sprefix=pilot+g2+red+retractable+rollerball+pens%2Coffice-products%2C152&sr=1-4 https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Retractable-Rollerball-Ultra-0-... You'll see that in the FTC's example, you need to click to see more buying details and that at the time of this comment the lowest price is $14.28 with free shipping (on October 12th for my location). In the other example, the "buy box" highlights the best offer of $9.99 with free shipping (on October 5th for my location).
  - helen___keller 3y ago
    Thanks! I had misunderstood what “buy box” is As a consumer I definitely avoid products with no buy box. I thought it was only related to Amazon fulfillment (which in turn I use as a proxy for being likely to receive the product on time and undamaged)
    - _jal 3y ago
      That's funny. I _only_ buy things from Amazon that are not shipped by Amazon. Their logistics are utter garbage for me - part of it is an urban setting with nowhere to leave things, part of it is that they don't give a shit, and leave things.
  - AlanYx 3y ago
    That first example is eye-opening for me. I always thought that when Amazon doesn't show a buy button on the product page, it's because that product is not currently available to be shipped from Amazon.
    - granzymes 3y ago
      That's one possibility! But Amazon also hides the buy box when the only offers are not what Amazon considers "competitive" because it hurts their brand if consumers see shitty deals. In this example, the pens with the buy box are 50% cheaper and have much faster shipping.
      - AlanYx 3y ago
        They're not the same pens though (extra fine v. ultra fine). I can understand why the FTC is concerned. This has the potential to be worse for competition than MFN agreements, because it forces any supplier whose products might end up on Amazon to police its entire distribution network for minimum pricing.* It also forces suppliers to crack down on (legal, authentic) grey market imports, even if those are never sold on Amazon, or risk losing the ability to effectively sell on Amazon. * Moreover, that minimum pricing has to be sufficiently high to account for Amazon's cost structure, even if other competing vendors are more efficient.
        granzymes 3y ago
        I was offering the comparison because those two pens should be priced within a few cents of eachother (the difference is the tip width and ironically "extra fine" is more expensive). If the products were the same then there would only be one product page and the $9.99 offer would be the highlighted deal. The fact that one product has the buy box at $9.99 and 1-day shipping and the other product does not have the buy box at $14.28 and 8-day shipping lets us infer that $14.28 is not a competitive price for these pens and there may be a cheaper price elsewhere (likely closer to $9.99).
        taeric 3y ago
dgb23 3y ago
This argument seems sound. Amazon is not a neutral entity or a public space. It's a private platform with its own interests that are very often in conflict with sellers. There is this weird cultural expectation of platforms and platform-like applications (social media, multiplayer video games, online stores, proprietary libraries/engines, even entertainment media "universes" and franchises etc.). Participants and consumers seem to think that these platforms are somehow public spaces that they partially own, or at least they act that way. But you only own what you actually own. There are legal instruments and structures that actually let you partially own things and/or grant you rights so you can act on these kinds of expectations: coops, open source and other such licenses etc. When internet culture and commerce wants to mature, then maybe we should start focusing more on building on _legally_ trustworthy foundations.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  Except when you corner the entire market and use your position to stifle competition. Then it doesn't matter what you 'own'; you are breaking the law.
- fyrn_ 3y ago
  That's nice, but the reality is that Amazon has almost 90% control of e-commerce. They have huge monopoly power, and laws exist to protect consumers from that. Is it the ideal way to build a society? No, But the government should still step in when it happens.
  - abduhl 3y ago
    90% by what metric?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - fyrn_ 3y ago
      I actually misread fig. 14 from the article which was the set of top market participants. So it has a 90% share of the ecommerce of those top 5, not the whole market. Honestly feel the article intended that misreading
londons_explore 3y ago
> Amazon responds that it is within its rights to not promote uncompetitive offers Sounds to me like Amazon has found a loophole in the law. It agrees to list anything for sale, with no anti competitive conditions, but then only recommends customers buy things that it believes are in the customers best interests. The FTC will struggle to argue that is illegal. Amazon can't be compelled to recommend stuff. (free speech etc). Also, what they recommend is in the consumers immediate best interests. It will be hard for the court to argue that amazon should start recommending more expensive items to consumers, just to push consumers into looking for a cheaper platform.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
  Amazons fees are making the offer uncompetitive thus Amazon is actually not competitive meaning that they’re relying on their monopoly position to maintain market dominance instead of competition which they evidently cannot do.
- piannucci 3y ago
  I haven't studied antitrust policy in ages, but IIRC one aspect of this in the past has been to forbid the monopolist from peeking at their competitors' prices.
- mcguire 3y ago
  Could you explain how this is in the customers' interests?
- granzymes 3y ago
  >It will be hard for the court to argue that amazon should start recommending more expensive items to consumers, just to push consumers into looking for a cheaper platform. Yes, 100% this. That's why I said that this lawsuit has a major remedy problem. Even if the court agrees this is anticompetitive, how do you fix it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37767994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37767994
  - femto113 3y ago
putlake 3y ago
This is a good point and your comment below ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37768419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37768419 ) highlights it well. What people don't realize is that this is in the interest of the consumer. I used to work at Amazon (although not on any of these teams) so that's probably why I know that "see all buying options" means the price is not competitive. As a consumer I value this. Amazon scours the web to make sure their products are competitively priced. So if a Western Digital external hard drive is $99 on NewEgg, then Amazon wants to sell it for $99 or lower. If it's a 1P product (i.e., Amazon is the seller), they can easily price match in real time. But if it is a 3P (third party seller) product then Amazon cannot take that action unilaterally take that action since it is the seller setting the price. So the best they can do to protect their customer in real time when their crawlers detect a lower price elsewhere is to hide the buy box behind the "see all buying options" button. I'm sure when this feature was rolled out, Amazon's sales must have dropped. They are taking that short term hit in order to protect customer trust in the long term.
- lozenge 3y ago
  How does an extra click help the customer? Unless the customer used to work at Amazon and specifically knows that "see all buying options" means "scour the internet to find a better price, it should be easy this time".
  - jjk166 3y ago
    They aren't hiding the better priced items behind an extra click, they are hiding the worse priced items. If you buy something listed in the "see all buying options" it means that you are spending more than you have to, as you will likely be able to find it for less elsewhere, whereas the normally presented items are the ones Amazon is selling for the same or less than elsewhere.
edmundsauto 3y ago
I wonder if the shrink wrap T&Cs on allowed web usage, combined with lawsuits could help. “By using this site, you agree you are not an agent of Amazon. You also agree that you will not use pricing information except as allowed herein.”
imtringued 3y ago
>uncompetitive offers that make its site look bad for not having the lowest available price. Those costs are Amazon specific... Way to shoot oneself in the foot. Why should Amazon get to offload their own uncompetitiveness onto sellers?

helen___keller 3y ago

Does anyone have examples of popular / name brand products that are pushed down in ranking due to this? I would love to see for myself how this looks in practice

granzymes 3y ago
Here's one of the examples that the FTC cites in its complaint (at page 27): https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Retractable-Rollerball-Extra-Refillable/dp/B00MBL5BX2/ref=sr_1_11?crid=91VWVLCUB2PI&keywords=pilot+g2+red+retractable+rollerball+pens&qid=1696439775&s=office-products&sprefix=pilot+g2+red+retractable+rollerball+pens%2Coffice-products%2C152&sr=1-11 https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Retractable-Rollerball-Extra-Re... Compare it to this listing for a very similar product: https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Retractable-Rollerball-Ultra-0-38mm/dp/B09R86PMNX/ref=sr_1_4?crid=91VWVLCUB2PI&keywords=pilot+g2+red+retractable+rollerball+pens&qid=1696439900&s=office-products&sprefix=pilot+g2+red+retractable+rollerball+pens%2Coffice-products%2C152&sr=1-4 https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Retractable-Rollerball-Ultra-0-... You'll see that in the FTC's example, you need to click to see more buying details and that at the time of this comment the lowest price is $14.28 with free shipping (on October 12th for my location). In the other example, the "buy box" highlights the best offer of $9.99 with free shipping (on October 5th for my location).
- helen___keller 3y ago
  Thanks! I had misunderstood what “buy box” is As a consumer I definitely avoid products with no buy box. I thought it was only related to Amazon fulfillment (which in turn I use as a proxy for being likely to receive the product on time and undamaged)
  - _jal 3y ago
    That's funny. I _only_ buy things from Amazon that are not shipped by Amazon. Their logistics are utter garbage for me - part of it is an urban setting with nowhere to leave things, part of it is that they don't give a shit, and leave things.
- AlanYx 3y ago
  That first example is eye-opening for me. I always thought that when Amazon doesn't show a buy button on the product page, it's because that product is not currently available to be shipped from Amazon.
  - granzymes 3y ago
    That's one possibility! But Amazon also hides the buy box when the only offers are not what Amazon considers "competitive" because it hurts their brand if consumers see shitty deals. In this example, the pens with the buy box are 50% cheaper and have much faster shipping.
    - AlanYx 3y ago
      They're not the same pens though (extra fine v. ultra fine). I can understand why the FTC is concerned. This has the potential to be worse for competition than MFN agreements, because it forces any supplier whose products might end up on Amazon to police its entire distribution network for minimum pricing.* It also forces suppliers to crack down on (legal, authentic) grey market imports, even if those are never sold on Amazon, or risk losing the ability to effectively sell on Amazon. * Moreover, that minimum pricing has to be sufficiently high to account for Amazon's cost structure, even if other competing vendors are more efficient.
      - granzymes 3y ago
        I was offering the comparison because those two pens should be priced within a few cents of eachother (the difference is the tip width and ironically "extra fine" is more expensive). If the products were the same then there would only be one product page and the $9.99 offer would be the highlighted deal. The fact that one product has the buy box at $9.99 and 1-day shipping and the other product does not have the buy box at $14.28 and 8-day shipping lets us infer that $14.28 is not a competitive price for these pens and there may be a cheaper price elsewhere (likely closer to $9.99).
        taeric 3y ago

dgb23 3y ago

This argument seems sound. Amazon is not a neutral entity or a public space. It's a private platform with its own interests that are very often in conflict with sellers. There is this weird cultural expectation of platforms and platform-like applications (social media, multiplayer video games, online stores, proprietary libraries/engines, even entertainment media "universes" and franchises etc.). Participants and consumers seem to think that these platforms are somehow public spaces that they partially own, or at least they act that way. But you only own what you actually own. There are legal instruments and structures that actually let you partially own things and/or grant you rights so you can act on these kinds of expectations: coops, open source and other such licenses etc. When internet culture and commerce wants to mature, then maybe we should start focusing more on building on _legally_ trustworthy foundations.

Eisenstein 3y ago
Except when you corner the entire market and use your position to stifle competition. Then it doesn't matter what you 'own'; you are breaking the law.
fyrn_ 3y ago
That's nice, but the reality is that Amazon has almost 90% control of e-commerce. They have huge monopoly power, and laws exist to protect consumers from that. Is it the ideal way to build a society? No, But the government should still step in when it happens.
- abduhl 3y ago
  90% by what metric?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - fyrn_ 3y ago
    I actually misread fig. 14 from the article which was the set of top market participants. So it has a 90% share of the ecommerce of those top 5, not the whole market. Honestly feel the article intended that misreading

londons_explore 3y ago

> Amazon responds that it is within its rights to not promote uncompetitive offers Sounds to me like Amazon has found a loophole in the law. It agrees to list anything for sale, with no anti competitive conditions, but then only recommends customers buy things that it believes are in the customers best interests. The FTC will struggle to argue that is illegal. Amazon can't be compelled to recommend stuff. (free speech etc). Also, what they recommend is in the consumers immediate best interests. It will be hard for the court to argue that amazon should start recommending more expensive items to consumers, just to push consumers into looking for a cheaper platform.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
Amazons fees are making the offer uncompetitive thus Amazon is actually not competitive meaning that they’re relying on their monopoly position to maintain market dominance instead of competition which they evidently cannot do.
piannucci 3y ago
I haven't studied antitrust policy in ages, but IIRC one aspect of this in the past has been to forbid the monopolist from peeking at their competitors' prices.
mcguire 3y ago
Could you explain how this is in the customers' interests?
granzymes 3y ago
>It will be hard for the court to argue that amazon should start recommending more expensive items to consumers, just to push consumers into looking for a cheaper platform. Yes, 100% this. That's why I said that this lawsuit has a major remedy problem. Even if the court agrees this is anticompetitive, how do you fix it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37767994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37767994
- femto113 3y ago

putlake 3y ago

This is a good point and your comment below ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37768419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37768419 ) highlights it well. What people don't realize is that this is in the interest of the consumer. I used to work at Amazon (although not on any of these teams) so that's probably why I know that "see all buying options" means the price is not competitive. As a consumer I value this. Amazon scours the web to make sure their products are competitively priced. So if a Western Digital external hard drive is $99 on NewEgg, then Amazon wants to sell it for $99 or lower. If it's a 1P product (i.e., Amazon is the seller), they can easily price match in real time. But if it is a 3P (third party seller) product then Amazon cannot take that action unilaterally take that action since it is the seller setting the price. So the best they can do to protect their customer in real time when their crawlers detect a lower price elsewhere is to hide the buy box behind the "see all buying options" button. I'm sure when this feature was rolled out, Amazon's sales must have dropped. They are taking that short term hit in order to protect customer trust in the long term.

lozenge 3y ago
How does an extra click help the customer? Unless the customer used to work at Amazon and specifically knows that "see all buying options" means "scour the internet to find a better price, it should be easy this time".
- jjk166 3y ago
  They aren't hiding the better priced items behind an extra click, they are hiding the worse priced items. If you buy something listed in the "see all buying options" it means that you are spending more than you have to, as you will likely be able to find it for less elsewhere, whereas the normally presented items are the ones Amazon is selling for the same or less than elsewhere.

edmundsauto 3y ago

I wonder if the shrink wrap T&Cs on allowed web usage, combined with lawsuits could help. “By using this site, you agree you are not an agent of Amazon. You also agree that you will not use pricing information except as allowed herein.”

imtringued 3y ago

>uncompetitive offers that make its site look bad for not having the lowest available price. Those costs are Amazon specific... Way to shoot oneself in the foot. Why should Amazon get to offload their own uncompetitiveness onto sellers?