[alberth]

Dumb question: why is this not allowed?

Presumably, Apple paid Amazon to reduce the number of ads.

What's so wrong about that?

All companies allow large enterprise customers (who drive high revenue), to have custom / tailored offerings based on their requests.

[paxys]

The issue is primarily about counterfeiting, which is illegal regardless of the companies involved and the deals between them.

Samsung has an Amazon store, and other companies bid for ad spots shown right on the official store page which link to illegal knockoffs of Samsung products. Samsung complains, and Amazon says "sorry we can't help it, that's just how things work".

Then Apple comes along, and Amazon magically cleans up their store page (demonstrating that they have the ability to do so), but leaves the rest of them as-is.

So now the take away is – if you don't sign an exclusive agreement with Amazon they will give counterfeiters full access to your products and customers, and that can be easily challenged in court (which is exactly what the FTC is doing right now).

[scarface_74]

Apple doesn’t have an exclusive agreement with Amazon for online sales.

I agree though bidding on a trademark where you can advertise as a competitor when someone explicitly searches for a brand should be considered copyright infringement.

It’s definitely a horrible user experience - Apple, Google, and Amazon all do it

[lovepronmostly]

Apple does it in the app store. At least for me, search for any app by name, the top 1 or 2 results is never the app who's name I typed in exactly.

Just searched for "Netflix". First result is some app called "Chewy" (with [ad]) next to it. Search for "GitHub". First result is some app called "ServerCat". Search for "Grand Theft Auto". First result is some app call "One State RP". Search for "23andMe". First result is for "BodyFast: ..."

[fragmede]

why would it be copyright infringement and not trademark infringement?

[scarface_74]

You are absolutely correct.

[kube-system]

When a company controls a large part of a market, regulators give extra scrutiny to any efforts that company may make that harms competition.

[scarface_74]

You mean 36% of e-commerce and an even smaller portion of all retail?

[kube-system]

Yes, 36% (I believe it's actually 37.6%) of e-commerce is a large portion. It is 587% larger than the second place competitor.

[scarface_74]

Yes because Amazon used unfair practices to crush small competitors like Walmart…

[kube-system]

No, I don't think I've seen that being claimed. It has been claimed that they have used their anticompetitive practices against others. Having Walmart as a competitor doesn't mean that they don't have a dominant market position with power to abuse at their disposal.

[MichaelZuo]

How do they have the 'power to abuse' with only 37.6% of the e-commerce marketshare?

And probably less than 15% of overall retail marketshare?

[vkou]

Someone who owned 36% of all the land in the United States would certainly be considered to 'controlling a large share of real estate'.

In the case of Amazon, it's even worse, because despite a 'mere' 36% market share, there is a lot of evidence that they have market-moving pricing power.

They generally exercise it by restricting the prices sellers can charge in other stores. This happens to almost all sellers on Amazon.

[neogodless]

It's allowed. The word in the article was scrutiny.

The law suit is not about the ads, per se. It's about price-fixing, which you can probably agree should not be allowed.