FTC Prepares Antitrust Suit Against Amazon (wsj.com) 29
The Federal Trade Commission is preparing a potential antitrust lawsuit against Amazon that in the coming months could challenge an array of the tech giant's business practices as anticompetitive, WSJ reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The timing of any case remains in flux, some of the people said. The commission also could opt not to proceed, and doesn't always bring cases even when it is making preparations to do so. Amazon officials haven't had individual late-stage meetings with each of the FTC commissioners to make their arguments against a legal challenge, those people said.
The commission in recent years has been examining Amazon practices including whether it favors its own products over competitors' on its platforms and how it treats outside sellers on Amazon.com, according to some of the people familiar with the matter. The FTC also has been scrutinizing the company's Amazon Prime subscription service's bundling practices, some of the people said. Exactly which aspects of the business the FTC would target in a potential Amazon lawsuit couldn't be learned. Amazon and the FTC declined to comment.
The commission in recent years has been examining Amazon practices including whether it favors its own products over competitors' on its platforms and how it treats outside sellers on Amazon.com, according to some of the people familiar with the matter. The FTC also has been scrutinizing the company's Amazon Prime subscription service's bundling practices, some of the people said. Exactly which aspects of the business the FTC would target in a potential Amazon lawsuit couldn't be learned. Amazon and the FTC declined to comment.
Re:Just great (Score:5, Insightful)
It will of course take a few weeks to be shipped from seller IJHGLS89838fsdhjLS located in Hong Kong. If you ever get it make sure to tell us if it was actually a violin.
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Actually, seller IJHGLS89838fsdhjLS located in Hong Kong is no longer on the platform. He was not able to compete, so the "free market" shook him off. In fact, every single independent tiny violin vendor has up and disappeared.
Now you can get an even better Amazon Basics Tiny Violin. It looks exactly the same as seller IJHGLS89838fsdhjLS's product, but we came up with it all by ourselves, we swear.
A+ 5 star reviewed and always at the top of the search results.
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Government getting itself involved in "solving problems" that will inevitably fuck up products and services I use, making things less convenient and more expensive for me.
As usual.
That's just great.
Honestly, Amazon is doing that themselves easy enough. The gov can't make it much worse. What? The site goes down? I am convinced that the only reason that the house of card that Amazon seems like stays up is that they bought a metric ass ton of equipment and threw it all over the world to cover their shitty coding. They threw more hardware at the problem. So much they can rent the excess.
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I'm genuinely curious how you think Amazon could be fucked up any worse than it already is?
And moderators before you mod me down, note that this post has a 5 star review on Amazon with such references as "The best laser hair removal product we've ever aimed at the cat" so you know I'm not a troll.
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Re: Just great (Score:2)
Easy. I have no real complaints about Amazon now.
Anything the govt does that affects Amazon is likely to give me reasons to complain.
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You seem to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
Holy **** (Score:1)
Now do egg producers.
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I don't get this.
If you want lower/different prices...shop elsewhere besides Amazon.
They aren't the only game in town you know...there are other online and local places to shop.
And now that they have to charge sales tax, even for 3rd parties, they don't have that advantage any longer.
They do have a big advantage that they are EASY to search and buy fr
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A lot easier to protect if its in one place and not a dozen.
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They aren't the only game in town you know...there are other online and local places to shop.
There are other places to buy. That's correct. Sometimes those other places are even slightly cheaper. However, I have to pay shipping, and I usually can't get the items shipped as quickly. And most of the reviews on the internet are on Amazon. Amazon spent a ton of money on their shipping infrastructure and correctly gambled that it created a moat that is very expensive and difficult to replicate. Then they bundled a bunch of "free" stuff with their "free" shipping offer to strengthen their moat.
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You talk like this is a "bad" thing...??
I mean, seem a win win win for the customer...with Prime I get free video streaming, free ebooks/magazines, audio streaming...etc.
I fail to see where the down side of this is.
Offering better bang for the buck than your competitor is a bad thing now?
And besides...you don't have to pay for Prime, you can just do regular ordering, pay shipping like all other site shop
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They are trying (I think) to make the same argument that was made about MS bundling Internet Explorer with their Windows OS, that using their market-share to squash their competition.
Apparently, when a company gets large enough it becomes their responsibility to make sure their competitors make a fair profit...
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They aren't the only game in town you know...
Except they literally are in some cases. Amazon has single handedly killed a whole world of various retailers out there.
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Stop.
If you can get to Amazon over the internet, then you can get to every other retailer on the internet. What product/offering is unique to Amazon and amazon alone?
If your local grocery store went out of business because all your neighbors opted to buy thier groceries from Amazon, your issue is with your neighbors, not Amazon.
If your local grocery store went out of business because Wal-Mart opened a Super Center in your town, same thing - blame the local grocery store customers that abandoned the local st
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Interesting...I've heard someone else recently complain about this.
I don't really ever get "junk" I have to wade through when I search for something.
I will admit, 99.99% of the time, I know exactly what I'm searching for...usually brand, size and model....
But even on times I don't and search more broadly, I really don't get a ton of unrelated junk, etc...?
Is
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Now do egg producers.
Avian flu isn't illegal. The producers who had to cull their chickens lost be. Those that didn't get avian flu did well. Like a market should. You don't need a stupid conspiracy.
Amazon isn't a monopoly (Score:1)
There are numerous market places online to sell yourself. You can even setup your own website to sell stuff.
I'm quite curious to know what they are doing that is any different from how Walmart, Target and the grocery stores have been operating since forever.
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The only other big players with Amazon are already established big box stores. They are the only ones that can to afford to complete.
Amazon will just copy your product and undercut you on it, or kick you off there AWS platform.
Then there is the down sides of shopping at a bunch of different online stores. That is a lot of exposure to personal data out there. With no technical or legal standard what so ever. So while Amazon is comp
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Yes, we can regulate based on how economics textbooks says people and companies operate (just shop somewhere else, customers will move suppliers for a 0.05% undercut price, everyone involved is a rational actor) or we can regulate based on how people and markets are actually operating where Amazon has become an integral part of the entire retail ecosystem, not just in selling items, not just in pricing but also becoming one of the largest logistics operations on the planet and controlling so much of the und
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Amazon will just copy your product and undercut you on it, or kick you off there AWS platform.
Please.
Go look at the products offered as "Amazon Basics" for example - they are rather generic products (no "Amazon Basic MacBook Pro") like batteries, tripods, towels, etc...
Imagine you ran a general store in a small town. Now imagine you never carried "Organic Honey", then one day a local farmer asks if he can put some "Organic Honey" on your shelves to sell, giving you a small cut of the sale price. This is what Amazon offers "Affiliate Sellers". Now, time goes on, "Organic Honey" is a hit, and the farm
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For Amazon, the issues are likely to be:
1. It has a massive grip on third party sellers. Their search results and Prime makes it the first place a huge proportion of the world goes to to buy something. And most Prime members won't even bother to look elsewhere if they find what they want and it's at a good price. That makes the "You can start your own website" argument tougher.
No, it makes "being successful with your own website" harder. Actually, with their AWS offering, it could be argued that Amazon makes it easier for small shops to compete online.
2. They have abused the information they have about third party sellers to set prices, undercut other sellers, and so on in the past.
Uh, how? Amazon has the right to track the types of items sold through their website, and there's nothing in the affiliate agreement (as far as I know) that says Amazon won't offer competing products.
If you ran small store and a local farmer wanted to sell their produce in your store, unless the farmer gets you to sign a no-compete
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The difference is this: Amazon will allow anybody to setup shop and then sit back and watch the logistics, sales numbers, and margins, all while skimming off the top for providing the platform. If a product does too well, Amazon Basics will magically come up with a suspiciously similar product all by themselves, price this product lower, and put it above said product in the search results, and launch it with 100 generic 5 star reviews.
This is different from grocery-store brand fruit roll-ups vs name brand