[WheelsAtLarge]

I think we are there for some of the lower demand products even though it's not collusion in the strictest sense.

If an algorithm's goal is to match a competitor's price then it's not possible to find a better price for any item.

In theory, those item's prices don't move constantly, therefore, all prices will be the same across the board. As a vendor, all I have to do is hike my product's price and wait for all the competitors to match it and then hike it again. If I'm a large vendor like Amazon then it's only a matter of time until I can sell a product at my designated profit without worrying that a competitor will beat me.

A smaller vendor has no incentive to lower the price since it knows that Amazon can always win the pricing war so they compete on service or other ways.

Before algorithms and the net, this was not feasible on lower priced items so vendors had to set prices independently. Now, it's easy to just match your competitor no matter the price of the item.

It's not a conspiracy by definition but it has the same ultimate result of algorithms rasing prices.