[TheDong]

The retail and ads portions here seem inextricably linked. It does not seem possible to treat those as separate things.

What's more, if you tell amazon "no more retail ads", surely they can just do what normal stores do, and charge a slotting fee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slotting_fee) instead.

If right now the first 10 results on amazon.com for "mattress" are all ads because those companies paid $1000 to be advertised first, how is that meaningfully different from amazon only carrying 10 mattresses at all, and instead of charging ad fees, charging a $1000 slotting fee to the mattress companies?

I am not particularly arguing for or against anything, just speculating that breaking it up would, in practice, be hard. Perhaps some other regulatory action would work better.

[peyton]

There’s a $40bn/yr business here. I’m sure somebody can figure out how to decouple.

Also, many breakup scenarios for Amazon involve spinning out the fulfillment business. Who cares if Amazon.com stocks 10 mattresses if I can just build a competitor stocking 10,000 while using the same infrastructure.