[brianliou91]

I think Warren is fantastic but I feel like her argument for Amazon is flawed and I'm curious to hear counter arguments.

In her example of Amazon being a platform and information aggregator, wouldn't a brick & mortar grocery chain like Safeway/Vons/CVS be guilty of the same anti-competitive practices when they sell "Safeway Brand Fruity Os" next to Kellogg Fruit Loops?

Businesses seem to have been able to be platforms and information aggregators for a very long time and we've had plenty of innovation and competition

[habnds]

IMHO, your analogy is exactly correct and if Safeway was as big as Amazon, Warren would be calling for them to be broken up too.

On the other hand, maybe the analogy isn't good because safeway displays products side by side while Amazon can more easily promote their own products. Level on a shelf has much less effect than a product being out of sight at the bottom of a webpage or even the second page of search results.

Grocery store margins are razor thin though, they compete with each other a lot.

[saddlerustle]

> IMHO, your analogy is exactly correct and if Safeway was as big as Amazon, Warren would be calling for them to be broken up too.

Walmart does this too and has double the revenue of Amazon. Warren has not called for Walmart to be broken up.

[habnds]

But as a percentage of their perspective markets Amazon is larger. The grocery/homegoods industries are very competitive. Think about how many alterantives you have to walmart.

How many places do you routinely go to order things online? How many places do you go for groceries? I bet you have at least three options. Walmart, Regional grocery store, and Target or some other alterative place like trade joes.

Amazon's ability to affect customer behavior is much stronger than walmarts I would argue.

edit: and maybe Walmart _should_ be broken up, just not as high visibility an issue.

[utopian3]

That’s not a reason to break the groceries or platforms up. Just ban them from producing their own brands if they’ve provided a similar competitor product for years. Although ironically, then the govt would be anti-competition

[habnds]

that's not how anti-trust issues are dealt with in the US, conglomerates are broken up so preserve the value of the existing buinesses but break the monopoly, not just legislating a business line out of existance, Bell telephone into a bunch of smaller providers for instance.

[nabla9]

> long time and we've had plenty of innovation and competition

I beg to differ with data:

https://concentrationcrisis.openmarketsinstitute.org/

Just pick industries industry and compare numbers.

Random example: Home Improvement Stores

2003: Market share of largest 3 Firms: 47%

2017: Market share of largest 3 Firms: 87%

[igravious]

Hilarious. The icon for the _entire category_ of social-networking-sites uses Facebook's logo. Unless I'm mistaken. No other category uses the logo of just one brand to denote its category. Now that's mind-share. Category penetration in 2012: 61%, in 2018: 70%. Oh dear, oh dear.

[geofft]

IMO there's a difference of scale - Amazon has quasi-monopoly power in the "buying things online" space, so much so that e.g. Anker, which makes cables and chargers and competes directly with Amazon Basics, has no distribution channel other than Amazon.

If I make Unprovable Loops ("Part of this Turing-complete breakfast") and I'm not satisfied with the distribution deal I get from Safeway, I can always call up Von's or CVS or Target or Whole Foods or Walmart and see what they'll do, and in most cities there are multiple such options.

I do wonder if the problem here is inherent to being an online store. If there's a Safeway in one part of town, a new Walmart in another part of town will sell roughly as much cereal as a second Safeway. But if Amazon.com exists and is generally useful, why would people go to another site? So perhaps some of the traditional/historical safeguards against any one store becoming a monopoly on the market no longer apply.

[igravious]

Amazon e-commerce market share 2016: 38%, 2018: 49%

What's the US market share of the largest offline retailer?

Also, consider this chart: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/worlds-largest-us-retail-chain...

Walmart, Costco, and Kroger are bigger than Amazon in terms of revenue. (Kroger only just.)

> But if Amazon.com exists and is generally useful, why would people go to another site?

Why wouldn't they? What's stopping them?

I agree we may need to reconsider some of our laws to better take into account online behaviour. But Amazon should not be penalised for mere success. They ought to be penalised for abusing market dominance if that is indeed what they are doing. No abuse, no penalty. Questions about tax payments on the other hand… Amazon have nowhere near the quasi-monopoly in their sphere that Microsoft has in desktop operating systems, Google has in web search, and Facebook has in social media.