[ilayn]

I would argue otherwise. I have absolutely zero negotiation power. In the past there was more. See Apple-Epic saga or multiple reports that show Amazon manufacture popular products clones and pushing the original manufacturer down in the search results. These are impossible moves with Walmart. You need to physically erase products to outcompete your competitor.

Secondly, in Walmart we are all physically seeing the same product on the same shelf. With online "markets", I don't even know if I am seeing the stuff I wanted because there is an algorithm that hides certain things from me but shows it to you. These are exceptionally intrusive moves by the mall itself. Walmart could only dream about such manipulations. In the old model, I can still stand side-by-side with my competitor as product options.

In that sense, it is fundamentally malicious and a very new economic model.

[vladms]

I am not that sure it was the case before either. If you have 40 very similar products at Walmart where are they placed? Which one is placed on the top shelf (less visible) which one is placed at average height? How many packages of 1 type of product you have (you can have 10 of 1 product and 1 of another product - which one will be seen first). And so on.

Yes, you can do even more with an online market, but that in my opinion is "do similar things, only faster and more dynamic". Moving products from bottom shelf to middle shelf in all supermarkets = probably 1 week planning/executing. Moving all apps from first page to 3rd search page = probably 5 minutes.