[Hemospectrum]

First AWS, now this.

At what point does the DOJ step in? Isn't this anticompetitive behavior? I've heard that Reagan-era deregulation changed a lot of the relevant law, but I'm not clear on how. Is Walmart doing this with the expectation of impunity because there's no longer a crime to charge them with, or because they see themselves as immune to prosecution?

[dman]

Hard to make the case that walmart is a monopoly. For what its worth amazon has pulled similar stunts like not selling the chromecast.

[revelation]

A monopoly is not some magic necessary condition for illegal anti-competitive practices. The most obvious example is price fixing.

[fatjokes]

I can see the argument* to say "we can't invest the work to support chromecast". Whereas it's harder to say "we won't talk to these other truckers who work with our competitor".

*A argument, not one that would hold in court. IANAL.

EDIT: It seems I misunderstood Amazon's lack of Chromecast support. I hadn't thought of trying to buy Chromecast through Amazon before. I own three of them and bought all through the Google store.

[travem]

I don't think this is about supporting chromecast for Amazon Video, it's about actually selling the google chromecast itself on amazon.com.

I don't think there is any argument that passes the sniff test for them not to be able to sell a physical device like chromecast from amazon.com. The level of incremental work is basically zero to add an item into the store.

[bagels]

Even better, when you search for chromecast on amazon.com, the first listing is for Amazon's competing product, the 'Fire Stick'

[ikeboy]

They banned even third party sellers from selling chromecast. You can sell basically whatever you want on their site, except for chromecast and apple tv.

There are exceptions to "sell anything", but chromecast and apple tv are the only business exceptions, not based on safety/legallity/ authenticity etc.

[StevePerkins]

You're confused. Amazon didn't just refuse to integrate with Chromecast, for their Prime videos or whatever. They refuse to carry Google's product in their inventory, period. You can't buy a Chromecast on Amazon.

That IS pretty much directly comparable.

[nathankleyn]

I think it was less that Amazon wouldn't provide support for Chromecast with their services and more that they refused to stock and sell Chromecast devices at all.

I suppose the difference between this and Walmart's move is that we are not entitled to buy the things we want from every shop, whereas these drivers are probably entitled to employment without discrimination in regards to other customers they provide services to?

[riveted]

The work to support it? They just refused to list it on their marketplace/products