11 ms·

US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward

kelseyfrog 2y ago
Why does this keep happening?
- christophilus 2y ago
  Why does what keep happening? Antitrust cases or companies becoming monopolies?
- closewith 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    Yeah, there's no corruption, graft, or abuse of power in any place without capitalism. Breaking rules definitely isn't an innate part of human nature at scale. Edit: more seriously, it doesn't help that the laws are entirely subjective. You're not a monopoly until after the fact. Monopolistic behavior is sometimes rewarded, and sometimes punished. Look at court cases involving Apple and Google. The only real difference between them is scale. You're allowed to be big, up until someone decides that you're actually too big. It's only a question of "too big to fail" or "too big to exist".
- kghara 2y ago
  [flagged]
- peppers-ghost 2y ago
  Monopolies are a feature of unregulated capitalism. Every company wants to dominate the sector they're in, competition invariably leads to monopolies.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  Because it's very profitable? The issue is that even if you know it's wrong, what are you going to do to. You grow to a certain size, and it then becomes clear that you're inching closer and closer to becoming a monopoly. Do you then stop and inform your shareholders that you unfortunately reached the maximum size for your organisation? Even if you have no moral issue continuing down your current path, you have very little to fear, because the precedence is that you'll get a relatively mild punishment. For Amazon, if this was to have any real meaning, the US government could step and an say: Because of the actions of Amazon, the online store, we're no longer able to utilize AWS in good faith. This would force Amazon to split their businesses into two, or lose government contracts, which would both be a real punishment.
psunavy03 2y ago
Ruling at the below link, because apparently every US news reporter is allergic to actually providing source docs in court cases . . . https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.326809/gov.uscourts.wawd.326809.289.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32...
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  It's in violation of the sacred law of the attention economy: Never link outside your garden.
  - braiamp 2y ago
    For some weird reason, outlinks are to be avoided, because it's seen as "leaving your site". In a store front, I can see that making sense. In a site to provide information... not so much.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      News sites aren't just providing information: they're trading reporting for ad impressions.
      - tmtvl 2y ago
        Serious question: are paywalled news articles better at outlinking and do they have no ads?
        nemomarx 2y ago
        in my experience of i pay a sub it removes ads from the site at least, although not sponsored content
        2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
        NYT will often outlink or if they're talking about a report, will provide a PDF of the report. Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/us/politics/trump-jan-6-case-jack-smith-evidence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/us/politics/trump-jan-6-c...
scohesc 2y ago
I hope they include Amazon's practice of taking popular products on their storefront, making generic "Amazon Basics" versions, and selling them to undercut the popular options. Simultaneously owning a marketplace, approving who can and can't sell products on it, and then putting your own products on it to undercut other sellers is so scummy and muck rake-y. I hope they also include Amazon allowing thousands of Chinese retailers to stock Amazon's warehouses with counterfeit, faulty products, and potentially dangerous out-of-spec parts - with no way to meaningfully report or bring the offending product to Amazon's attention.
- macinjosh 2y ago
  Not every one can afford the name brand. - Sincerely a kid raised on everything store brand.
  - saltymug76 2y ago
    I dont think anyone's arguing against generic alternatives of name brand items. The issue here is Amazon using up-and-coming and popular products as fodder for them to generic-ize and push to the top of results, essentially knee capping the original seller.
    - megaman821 2y ago
      Those original sellers mainly just look like drop-shippers to me. So Amazon just going straight to the source and selling at lower margin is better for me as a buyer.
    - wvenable 2y ago
      Is there a business with a "house brand" that doesn't do this?
    - tomschlick 2y ago
      Does Walmart/CostCo/BestBuy/Kroger/etc not do this exact thing?
LorenDB 2y ago
I don't care who wins the election next month, Lina Khan needs to be kept as FTC chair. The FTC has been on a roll the past while.
- jjtheblunt 2y ago
  What has she done that didn't fail or get shot down as political overreach? (not being sarcastic...i mean that i may have missed something inadvertently)
  - Multicomp 2y ago
    Not GP. I would say that her effectiveness is both in Fire and Motion [1], while one wants more Fire, before the status quo was not only no fire, but also no motion. Even the motion is a good starting point that businesses are having management adapt their strategies and plans to account for the motion, just out self-interested risk mitigation in case there is more fire than there currently is today, and that fire gets trained on them. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/
    - BoiledCabbage 2y ago
      A good analogy, but I think you swapped the meaning of fire and motion in your usage of it. In this case, her cases even if lost would be the equivalent of cover fire. Businesses need to re-act to the cover fire and cannot advance (perform their own motion) while she is firing. The second part is that you would hope/expect her to be able to gain territory in the near future via the "motion" part of the strategy. So I agree in your framing, just from my perspective you flipped the terminology.
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
      That seems really bad for the government to be doing this. If she is losing, then using the resources of the government to harass businesses that are acting lawfully seems like fascism.
oldpersonintx 2y ago
[dead]
adam_arthur 2y ago
Competition is the core tenant that makes capitalism beneficial to broader society. Consolidation over the past few decades has limited the capacity for firms to compete in many sectors. So I appreciate the sentiment of what the FTC is trying to do, but they really come across as amateurs bringing far too many lawsuits and often with weak legal reasoning/argumentation. In many of the cases they've brought there exists alternative, yet stronger arguments that could have been made. I'd support congress legislating towards more competition (e.g. forcing open standards for things like APIs/chat clients/smart watches etc), or a more active FTC. But the current approach is far too disorganized and weak.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I mean, I'm not a lawyer so I won't really judge what's a good or bad argument. My impression is that forcing open standards is a much harder argument than an antitrust one. Open standards can come at a later step. And if you haven't kept up this year, Chevron being overturned is showing that the SCOTUS is more than happy to reduce FTC interference.
  - adam_arthur 2y ago
    (Compelled) Open standards isn't an argument, it's an act of congress. Unfortunately Congress is largely old and non-technical so the problems present aren't very well recognized or understood. History will look at walled gardens as bad for competition and thus broader society.
tarkin2 2y ago
[flagged]
taeric 2y ago
Anyone have an easy summary of what all was dismissed? This story is surprisingly light on details. (Did I just miss them?)
- BadHumans 2y ago
  From what I have read, the pieces that were dismissed are still sealed so we don't know yet.
  - taeric 2y ago
    The ruling is linked in another thread. The last two pages outline what all is dismissed. My naive read is that a lot of the claims were dismissed already. I have no idea if that is normal or not. I also assume nobody really expected the entire case to get dismissed? I am interested in reading an analysis of this.
    - nneonneo 2y ago
      Only four of the twenty counts were dismissed (motion to dismiss granted), and only half of one claim was dismissed with prejudice. The remaining three dismissed claims can be amended and resubmitted to the court. All the federal claims stand. This is definitely not a win for Amazon.
      - taeric 2y ago
        I was going on the naive count of GRANTS at the last page of the ruling. So, was about 6 of the 12 parts of the summary at the end. Which makes it sound like a lot. :D Still, I did not mean to imply it was most or even a majority. I didn't think anyone expected the case to be dismissed in full. I have no idea what the impact of getting States items dismissed is, all told.
- enragedcacti 2y ago
  All of the federal counts move forward, some of the counts relating to specific states who joined the lawsuit are dismissed. > Last week, before the order was unsealed, some of the initial coverage called it a “partial victory” for Amazon, but as it turns out, the portion of the ruling in which the company was victorious was relatively slim. > The areas where the judge granted Amazon’s motion to dismiss were related to specific aspects of state claims, including elements of allegations brought by Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Maryland. Eighteen states and one territory, Puerto Rico, joined the FTC in the lawsuit against Amazon. https://www.geekwire.com/2024/unsealed-order-in-amazon-antitrust-case-lets-entire-ftc-case-proceed-dismisses-some-state-claims/ https://www.geekwire.com/2024/unsealed-order-in-amazon-antit...
akavi 2y ago
Reminder that a mere 15 years ago, Walmart was the unfair monopolist whose market position rendered competition infeasible. Also unclear to me why "ecommerce" is a market unto itself that we should be concerned with level of concentration in, as opposed to simply a slice of the broader "retail" market (which is much less concentrated)
- andrewia 2y ago
  Yes, but we don't know when the next technology shift will happen. Amazon might be able to abuse their position for decades if a disruption doesn't come. Aa for E-commerce, it can have a larger inventory than physical retail. You're not going to find many solar charge controllers or mechanical keyboard parts at Walmart, but Amazon will have tons of options deliverable within 48 hours. Few sites can have comparable shipping cost/speed and you have to research each one, whereas Amazon enjoys the position of being the default. A decade ago, I helped a small Amazon seller with his inventory, and it was eye opening to see all the fees and risks compared to eBay. But he couldn't sell on eBay without losing a massive portion of his customer base, despite their better shopping/buying UX in my experience.
- LordKeren 2y ago
  The criticisms of Walmart 15 years ago are still pretty valid today, so I’m not sure this whataboutism really resonates with people. It seems completely reasonable to split brick and mortar sales from web-based, given that the business model is pretty significantly different. And AWS
- eikenberry 2y ago
  This is why pinning anti-trust to monopolies is a mistake. Anti-trust is about competition and creating more of it... and if it's about increasing competition then they both need attention. They are both very big and abuse their dominance in ways that stifles competition. That is, in the last 15 years we added another company that needs anti-trust attention, nothing was replaced.
- enragedcacti 2y ago
  The original complaint has a number of pages starting at 39 (43 in pdf) dedicated to defining the relevant markets and why they feel brick and mortar isn't part of the relevant market. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134amazonecommercecomplaintrevisedredactions.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134amazonec...
resters 2y ago
Amazon currently does not honor its prime shipping agreement with all domestic customers and has no customer service path to get the issue resolved. In some places USPS is unreliable and Amazon insists on using it repeatedly, violating its own promise to customers. This suggests to me that Amazon faces no competitive pressure to deliver good customer service.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Didn’t they drop the two-day shipping promise a while back?
  - ClassyJacket 2y ago
    It's only two day in America? It's next day in Australia. And we haven't even had Amazon for long...
    - dymk 2y ago
      It depends where you live and what’s in the closest warehouse. Many things are overnight delivered in the morning for me now, as I have a fulfillment center close by.
    - packetlost 2y ago
      > we haven't even had Amazon for long Yeah, that's probably why. They get people hooked with actually good service and then drop quality to save money once they've captured the market.
    - NavinF 2y ago
      It's usually same-day where I live in the bay area. Same for Walmart, Costco, etc
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      In the US it’s next day sometimes, a week other times, and 30 days on the slow boat from China. I suspect it isn’t next-day in, say, Broome. Last time I was in Hobart even it definitely wasn’t next or two-day shipping, lol.
slibhb 2y ago
More and more, antitrust is a means for people who dislike big, successful companies for no particular reason to attack them. On some level, the government is just throwing its weight around. The message is "don't forget who's really in charge." Consider all the "Lina Khan fans" you see on HN and elsewhere. They rarely articulate why the government should be suing these companies, which laws that company broke, or if those laws make sense. They just don't like big companies and want them taken down a peg. The Google suit was particularly egregious. There was no alternative to Google search because no one had built a better product for reasons that have nothing to do with anticompetitive behavior. And the real irony here is that Google appears to be behind on LLMs, which have finally given us an alternative to typing things into Google. So the government picked the exact moment when Google's search market share is seriously threatened to sue!
- xracy 2y ago
  The entire conceit of capitalism is that competition is good, and that competition forces companies to better address their customers needs. If they're not doing this, then someone can come in and undercut them. But what happens in the scenario where the person comes in, undercuts them, and then sells to the bigger company? How does this force the larger company to change? This is like antitrust 101. I don't understand people who claim to be proponents of capitalism and are opposed to antitrust. If you want the free market to determine anything with fewer regulations, then we need antitrust. Otherwise we need a lot more regulations. Which one would you prefer? I have a feeling you wouldn't recognize anticompetitive behavior despite it hitting you in the face for the past 10 years.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Here you go: * I'm a big fan of Chairwoman Khan. * The government should be suing many of the companies FTC is going after because their behavior yields bad outcomes for consumers, such as worse health outcomes after a private equity group captures an entire geography then drives up prices while reducing quality. * They tend to have broken laws around creating and abusing monopoly positions, usually with various illegal details like kickback arrangements and self-dealing. * These laws make sense. * I don't mind big companies and many of the companies FTC goes after are not particularly big. * Companies that utilize edge cases in market dynamics to produce bad outcomes for consumers should be taken down a peg.
Spivak 2y ago
> Amazon’s practice of coercing sellers who want their products to be Prime eligible into using Fulfillment by Amazon, which makes it more difficult and more expensive for rivals to offer increased product selection. How would this even work? It's on Amazon to deliver your stuff in 2 days but they also have to allow 3rd party shipping they have no control over? Are they allowed to require such a seller to fulfill the order by a specific date? Because to me a lowly customer Prime === Item Shipped by Amazon. That's the whole value.
- aspenmayer 2y ago
  Fulfilled by Amazon is a 3rd party seller program where you send your items for sale to Amazon to be colocated and commingled with other 3rd party FBA seller items with the same SKU and also 1st party Amazon products with that SKU. If that sounds like a horrible idea for all involved, I would agree.
  - stephenr 2y ago
    Didn't I read something a few years ago about shitty sellers abusing that system by sending counterfeit versions of products to Amazon, and then legitimate sellers get fucked over when their customers get the counterfeit version (because hey were commingled)?
    - aspenmayer 2y ago
      I seem to remember something like that. Here are some pros/cons for opting out of commingling which I don’t think that is possible with FBA, but would likely make the products ineligible for Prime I would assume, which is one of the main reasons you would want to use FBA in the first place. https://www.amazonsellers.attorney/blog/pros-and-cons-of-amazon-commingling-fba-inventory-of-third-party-sellers#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways,how%20to%20resolve%20the%20issue https://www.amazonsellers.attorney/blog/pros-and-cons-of-ama.... > In summary, Amazon's commingling inventory can have serious implications for FBA sellers who are wrongfully accused of selling defective or inauthentic products. While the practice may improve efficiency, it can also make it difficult for sellers to prove their innocence in the event of false accusations. Sellers should be aware of these risks and take steps to protect themselves, such as opting out of commingling inventory or closely monitoring their inventory and customer feedback.
yapyap 2y ago
anti trust is really on a roll right now
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
One can only imagine how authoritarian regimes look at this from the outside. My guess is "The house of bezos has lost favour at the court of the king and is thus to be disbanded and reliefed from oligarch status"..
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
chihwei 2y ago
This is also needed for Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta

Why does this keep happening?

christophilus 2y ago
Why does what keep happening? Antitrust cases or companies becoming monopolies?
closewith 2y ago
[flagged]
- zdragnar 2y ago
  Yeah, there's no corruption, graft, or abuse of power in any place without capitalism. Breaking rules definitely isn't an innate part of human nature at scale. Edit: more seriously, it doesn't help that the laws are entirely subjective. You're not a monopoly until after the fact. Monopolistic behavior is sometimes rewarded, and sometimes punished. Look at court cases involving Apple and Google. The only real difference between them is scale. You're allowed to be big, up until someone decides that you're actually too big. It's only a question of "too big to fail" or "too big to exist".
kghara 2y ago
[flagged]
peppers-ghost 2y ago
Monopolies are a feature of unregulated capitalism. Every company wants to dominate the sector they're in, competition invariably leads to monopolies.
mrweasel 2y ago
Because it's very profitable? The issue is that even if you know it's wrong, what are you going to do to. You grow to a certain size, and it then becomes clear that you're inching closer and closer to becoming a monopoly. Do you then stop and inform your shareholders that you unfortunately reached the maximum size for your organisation? Even if you have no moral issue continuing down your current path, you have very little to fear, because the precedence is that you'll get a relatively mild punishment. For Amazon, if this was to have any real meaning, the US government could step and an say: Because of the actions of Amazon, the online store, we're no longer able to utilize AWS in good faith. This would force Amazon to split their businesses into two, or lose government contracts, which would both be a real punishment.

Ruling at the below link, because apparently every US news reporter is allergic to actually providing source docs in court cases . . . https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.326809/gov.uscourts.wawd.326809.289.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32...

Workaccount2 2y ago
It's in violation of the sacred law of the attention economy: Never link outside your garden.
- braiamp 2y ago
  For some weird reason, outlinks are to be avoided, because it's seen as "leaving your site". In a store front, I can see that making sense. In a site to provide information... not so much.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    News sites aren't just providing information: they're trading reporting for ad impressions.
    - tmtvl 2y ago
      Serious question: are paywalled news articles better at outlinking and do they have no ads?
      - nemomarx 2y ago
        in my experience of i pay a sub it removes ads from the site at least, although not sponsored content
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
        NYT will often outlink or if they're talking about a report, will provide a PDF of the report. Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/us/politics/trump-jan-6-case-jack-smith-evidence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/us/politics/trump-jan-6-c...

scohesc 2y ago

I hope they include Amazon's practice of taking popular products on their storefront, making generic "Amazon Basics" versions, and selling them to undercut the popular options. Simultaneously owning a marketplace, approving who can and can't sell products on it, and then putting your own products on it to undercut other sellers is so scummy and muck rake-y. I hope they also include Amazon allowing thousands of Chinese retailers to stock Amazon's warehouses with counterfeit, faulty products, and potentially dangerous out-of-spec parts - with no way to meaningfully report or bring the offending product to Amazon's attention.

macinjosh 2y ago
Not every one can afford the name brand. - Sincerely a kid raised on everything store brand.
- saltymug76 2y ago
  I dont think anyone's arguing against generic alternatives of name brand items. The issue here is Amazon using up-and-coming and popular products as fodder for them to generic-ize and push to the top of results, essentially knee capping the original seller.
  - megaman821 2y ago
    Those original sellers mainly just look like drop-shippers to me. So Amazon just going straight to the source and selling at lower margin is better for me as a buyer.
  - wvenable 2y ago
    Is there a business with a "house brand" that doesn't do this?
  - tomschlick 2y ago
    Does Walmart/CostCo/BestBuy/Kroger/etc not do this exact thing?

LorenDB 2y ago

I don't care who wins the election next month, Lina Khan needs to be kept as FTC chair. The FTC has been on a roll the past while.

jjtheblunt 2y ago
What has she done that didn't fail or get shot down as political overreach? (not being sarcastic...i mean that i may have missed something inadvertently)
- Multicomp 2y ago
  Not GP. I would say that her effectiveness is both in Fire and Motion [1], while one wants more Fire, before the status quo was not only no fire, but also no motion. Even the motion is a good starting point that businesses are having management adapt their strategies and plans to account for the motion, just out self-interested risk mitigation in case there is more fire than there currently is today, and that fire gets trained on them. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/
  - BoiledCabbage 2y ago
    A good analogy, but I think you swapped the meaning of fire and motion in your usage of it. In this case, her cases even if lost would be the equivalent of cover fire. Businesses need to re-act to the cover fire and cannot advance (perform their own motion) while she is firing. The second part is that you would hope/expect her to be able to gain territory in the near future via the "motion" part of the strategy. So I agree in your framing, just from my perspective you flipped the terminology.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
    That seems really bad for the government to be doing this. If she is losing, then using the resources of the government to harass businesses that are acting lawfully seems like fascism.

oldpersonintx 2y ago

[dead]

adam_arthur 2y ago

Competition is the core tenant that makes capitalism beneficial to broader society. Consolidation over the past few decades has limited the capacity for firms to compete in many sectors. So I appreciate the sentiment of what the FTC is trying to do, but they really come across as amateurs bringing far too many lawsuits and often with weak legal reasoning/argumentation. In many of the cases they've brought there exists alternative, yet stronger arguments that could have been made. I'd support congress legislating towards more competition (e.g. forcing open standards for things like APIs/chat clients/smart watches etc), or a more active FTC. But the current approach is far too disorganized and weak.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
I mean, I'm not a lawyer so I won't really judge what's a good or bad argument. My impression is that forcing open standards is a much harder argument than an antitrust one. Open standards can come at a later step. And if you haven't kept up this year, Chevron being overturned is showing that the SCOTUS is more than happy to reduce FTC interference.
- adam_arthur 2y ago
  (Compelled) Open standards isn't an argument, it's an act of congress. Unfortunately Congress is largely old and non-technical so the problems present aren't very well recognized or understood. History will look at walled gardens as bad for competition and thus broader society.

tarkin2 2y ago

[flagged]

taeric 2y ago

Anyone have an easy summary of what all was dismissed? This story is surprisingly light on details. (Did I just miss them?)

BadHumans 2y ago
From what I have read, the pieces that were dismissed are still sealed so we don't know yet.
- taeric 2y ago
  The ruling is linked in another thread. The last two pages outline what all is dismissed. My naive read is that a lot of the claims were dismissed already. I have no idea if that is normal or not. I also assume nobody really expected the entire case to get dismissed? I am interested in reading an analysis of this.
  - nneonneo 2y ago
    Only four of the twenty counts were dismissed (motion to dismiss granted), and only half of one claim was dismissed with prejudice. The remaining three dismissed claims can be amended and resubmitted to the court. All the federal claims stand. This is definitely not a win for Amazon.
    - taeric 2y ago
      I was going on the naive count of GRANTS at the last page of the ruling. So, was about 6 of the 12 parts of the summary at the end. Which makes it sound like a lot. :D Still, I did not mean to imply it was most or even a majority. I didn't think anyone expected the case to be dismissed in full. I have no idea what the impact of getting States items dismissed is, all told.
enragedcacti 2y ago
All of the federal counts move forward, some of the counts relating to specific states who joined the lawsuit are dismissed. > Last week, before the order was unsealed, some of the initial coverage called it a “partial victory” for Amazon, but as it turns out, the portion of the ruling in which the company was victorious was relatively slim. > The areas where the judge granted Amazon’s motion to dismiss were related to specific aspects of state claims, including elements of allegations brought by Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Maryland. Eighteen states and one territory, Puerto Rico, joined the FTC in the lawsuit against Amazon. https://www.geekwire.com/2024/unsealed-order-in-amazon-antitrust-case-lets-entire-ftc-case-proceed-dismisses-some-state-claims/ https://www.geekwire.com/2024/unsealed-order-in-amazon-antit...

akavi 2y ago

Reminder that a mere 15 years ago, Walmart was the unfair monopolist whose market position rendered competition infeasible. Also unclear to me why "ecommerce" is a market unto itself that we should be concerned with level of concentration in, as opposed to simply a slice of the broader "retail" market (which is much less concentrated)

andrewia 2y ago
Yes, but we don't know when the next technology shift will happen. Amazon might be able to abuse their position for decades if a disruption doesn't come. Aa for E-commerce, it can have a larger inventory than physical retail. You're not going to find many solar charge controllers or mechanical keyboard parts at Walmart, but Amazon will have tons of options deliverable within 48 hours. Few sites can have comparable shipping cost/speed and you have to research each one, whereas Amazon enjoys the position of being the default. A decade ago, I helped a small Amazon seller with his inventory, and it was eye opening to see all the fees and risks compared to eBay. But he couldn't sell on eBay without losing a massive portion of his customer base, despite their better shopping/buying UX in my experience.
LordKeren 2y ago
The criticisms of Walmart 15 years ago are still pretty valid today, so I’m not sure this whataboutism really resonates with people. It seems completely reasonable to split brick and mortar sales from web-based, given that the business model is pretty significantly different. And AWS
eikenberry 2y ago
This is why pinning anti-trust to monopolies is a mistake. Anti-trust is about competition and creating more of it... and if it's about increasing competition then they both need attention. They are both very big and abuse their dominance in ways that stifles competition. That is, in the last 15 years we added another company that needs anti-trust attention, nothing was replaced.
enragedcacti 2y ago
The original complaint has a number of pages starting at 39 (43 in pdf) dedicated to defining the relevant markets and why they feel brick and mortar isn't part of the relevant market. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134amazonecommercecomplaintrevisedredactions.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134amazonec...

resters 2y ago

Amazon currently does not honor its prime shipping agreement with all domestic customers and has no customer service path to get the issue resolved. In some places USPS is unreliable and Amazon insists on using it repeatedly, violating its own promise to customers. This suggests to me that Amazon faces no competitive pressure to deliver good customer service.

ceejayoz 2y ago
Didn’t they drop the two-day shipping promise a while back?
- ClassyJacket 2y ago
  It's only two day in America? It's next day in Australia. And we haven't even had Amazon for long...
  - dymk 2y ago
    It depends where you live and what’s in the closest warehouse. Many things are overnight delivered in the morning for me now, as I have a fulfillment center close by.
  - packetlost 2y ago
    > we haven't even had Amazon for long Yeah, that's probably why. They get people hooked with actually good service and then drop quality to save money once they've captured the market.
  - NavinF 2y ago
    It's usually same-day where I live in the bay area. Same for Walmart, Costco, etc
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    In the US it’s next day sometimes, a week other times, and 30 days on the slow boat from China. I suspect it isn’t next-day in, say, Broome. Last time I was in Hobart even it definitely wasn’t next or two-day shipping, lol.

slibhb 2y ago

More and more, antitrust is a means for people who dislike big, successful companies for no particular reason to attack them. On some level, the government is just throwing its weight around. The message is "don't forget who's really in charge." Consider all the "Lina Khan fans" you see on HN and elsewhere. They rarely articulate why the government should be suing these companies, which laws that company broke, or if those laws make sense. They just don't like big companies and want them taken down a peg. The Google suit was particularly egregious. There was no alternative to Google search because no one had built a better product for reasons that have nothing to do with anticompetitive behavior. And the real irony here is that Google appears to be behind on LLMs, which have finally given us an alternative to typing things into Google. So the government picked the exact moment when Google's search market share is seriously threatened to sue!

xracy 2y ago
The entire conceit of capitalism is that competition is good, and that competition forces companies to better address their customers needs. If they're not doing this, then someone can come in and undercut them. But what happens in the scenario where the person comes in, undercuts them, and then sells to the bigger company? How does this force the larger company to change? This is like antitrust 101. I don't understand people who claim to be proponents of capitalism and are opposed to antitrust. If you want the free market to determine anything with fewer regulations, then we need antitrust. Otherwise we need a lot more regulations. Which one would you prefer? I have a feeling you wouldn't recognize anticompetitive behavior despite it hitting you in the face for the past 10 years.
llamaimperative 2y ago
Here you go: * I'm a big fan of Chairwoman Khan. * The government should be suing many of the companies FTC is going after because their behavior yields bad outcomes for consumers, such as worse health outcomes after a private equity group captures an entire geography then drives up prices while reducing quality. * They tend to have broken laws around creating and abusing monopoly positions, usually with various illegal details like kickback arrangements and self-dealing. * These laws make sense. * I don't mind big companies and many of the companies FTC goes after are not particularly big. * Companies that utilize edge cases in market dynamics to produce bad outcomes for consumers should be taken down a peg.

Spivak 2y ago

> Amazon’s practice of coercing sellers who want their products to be Prime eligible into using Fulfillment by Amazon, which makes it more difficult and more expensive for rivals to offer increased product selection. How would this even work? It's on Amazon to deliver your stuff in 2 days but they also have to allow 3rd party shipping they have no control over? Are they allowed to require such a seller to fulfill the order by a specific date? Because to me a lowly customer Prime === Item Shipped by Amazon. That's the whole value.

aspenmayer 2y ago
Fulfilled by Amazon is a 3rd party seller program where you send your items for sale to Amazon to be colocated and commingled with other 3rd party FBA seller items with the same SKU and also 1st party Amazon products with that SKU. If that sounds like a horrible idea for all involved, I would agree.
- stephenr 2y ago
  Didn't I read something a few years ago about shitty sellers abusing that system by sending counterfeit versions of products to Amazon, and then legitimate sellers get fucked over when their customers get the counterfeit version (because hey were commingled)?
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    I seem to remember something like that. Here are some pros/cons for opting out of commingling which I don’t think that is possible with FBA, but would likely make the products ineligible for Prime I would assume, which is one of the main reasons you would want to use FBA in the first place. https://www.amazonsellers.attorney/blog/pros-and-cons-of-amazon-commingling-fba-inventory-of-third-party-sellers#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways,how%20to%20resolve%20the%20issue https://www.amazonsellers.attorney/blog/pros-and-cons-of-ama.... > In summary, Amazon's commingling inventory can have serious implications for FBA sellers who are wrongfully accused of selling defective or inauthentic products. While the practice may improve efficiency, it can also make it difficult for sellers to prove their innocence in the event of false accusations. Sellers should be aware of these risks and take steps to protect themselves, such as opting out of commingling inventory or closely monitoring their inventory and customer feedback.

yapyap 2y ago

anti trust is really on a roll right now

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

One can only imagine how authoritarian regimes look at this from the outside. My guess is "The house of bezos has lost favour at the court of the king and is thus to be disbanded and reliefed from oligarch status"..

deleted 2y ago

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chihwei 2y ago

This is also needed for Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta