[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.