FTC and 17 States Sue Amazon, Alleging Illegal Online-Marketplace Monopoly (wsj.com) 55
The Federal Trade Commission and 17 states on Tuesday sued Amazon, alleging the online retailer illegally wields monopoly power that keeps prices artificially high, locks sellers into its platform and harms its rivals. WSJ: The FTC's lawsuit, filed in Seattle federal court, marks a milestone in the Biden administration's aggressive approach to enforcing antitrust laws and has been anticipated for months. The agency's chair, Lina Khan, is a longtime critic of Amazon who wrote in the Yale Law Journal in 2017 that earlier generations of competition cops and courts abandoned the law's concerns over conglomerates such as Amazon. The FTC and states alleged that Amazon violated antitrust laws by using anti-discounting measures that punished merchants for offering lower prices elsewhere. The government also said sellers on Amazon were compelled to use its logistics service if they want their goods to appear in Amazon Prime, the subscription program whose perks include faster shipping times, the FTC said.
Bezos has been a bad boy (Score:3)
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Now he needs a kick to the back.
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It's because they are bought and paid for! lololol
Government does fight large corporation:
It's because they want to be bought and paid for! lololol
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Now go ahead and move the goalpost...some suggestions:
"Amazon wasn't split up"
"Amazon wasn't split up into enough companies"
"the companies will just eventually merge"
"why did the FTC spend time on this instead of {other thing}"
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So, until the point Amazon is broken up, this is nothing but hot air to me.
I don't believe the politicians will be successfully in anything but lining their own pockets. Amazon will pay enough bribe money. There will be some condition agreement, or something without teeth. Life will continue to get worse.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the politicians will actually do somethin
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No appealing options really.
Trying to appeal to you is a lost cause anyway.
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That is what people like doing. Talk up a good game and are unable to back it up.
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It's like you don't realize Walmart and Target have online stores of their own and if you go for more specific items, say computer gear, you can find other websites that sell that stuff as well. I check Amazon but I also check other merchants for the same items as well. To me, that's me having a choice.
Beyond Thursday Night Football, you don't NEED amazon.com
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Whatever Amazon is guilty of, they are too and havent been caught yet.
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That's fair but then again, that's just how America works. Maybe the EU has real choice. I don't know, I don't live there. I sort of doubt it though.
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Why does everything default to a conspiracy in your eyes?
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Alright then can you elaborate on this kickbacks story?
1) What branch or agency of the government is Bezos supposed to pay?
2) If it's not the government directly then what politicians are getting paid?
3) Has Bezos been making payments in the past or is this a new development?
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2. The ones that sued Amazon and Bezos.
3. To get this large, it has been going on for a while. 2010 at least.
Why not go for the BIGGER fish first? (Score:2, Insightful)
Their hold on the web is really dangerous, as that at a whim of their algorithms they can change political movement in whole countries and push societies in different directions.
Why not start there?
Hell, in that same vein, hit Facebook first....I'd rank Amazon may be #3 or #4 on the list....hit the dangerous ones first, eh?
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Google raising the price of a
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No one needs to buy things on Amazon to survive, either. You *choose* to buy things on Amazon because it's cheaper or more convenient, possibly because selection at local retailers is not what Amazon provides (but that's just a special case of convenience). Many of the vendors on Amazon also have their own websites, so if you want to skip Amazon, go directly to the source.
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Re:Why not go for the BIGGER fish first? (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of the vendors on Amazon also have their own websites, so if you want to skip Amazon, go directly to the source.
Part of the problem is Amazon is using the data from those vendors to decide what products to make themselves (the "Amazon Basics" brand) AND prohibiting them from selling those products cheaper on their own webpage than on Amazon. That kind of vertical integration is precisely what anti-trust law is supposed to prevent.
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Well, there is Microsoft Azure that is supposed to be a competitor...although after dealing with both, I'd never lay foot in Azure again, especially for a company that is primarily Linux and Oracle based.
But I digress...there's also Oracle's Cloud and I believe Google is in the Cloud game too?
Anyway, not sure you can get Amazon on the monopoly for Cloud...they do have other challengers/options out there in that area.
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This. Right here.
OP is unaware Google is already in court for anti-trust?
And the government doesn't have to line them up and do them one at a time. They can go after everyone at the same time. And should.
Can you imagine if the cops didn't pursue a rapist because that precinct was already working on a murder case?
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As odd as it may sound, there are alternatives to Google. I haven't used them in years instead going to DuckDuckGo.
As for Facebook, here's an idea. How about people stop using it?
But as always, because it's such a simple idea, it can't be done.
Re:Why not go for the BIGGER fish first? (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, that isn't how anti-trust works.
Being a monopoly is perfectly legal. It is ok. No problem.
Using your monopoly to take over other verticals is not ok.
That is a trust violation and will eventually get the Fed's attention if your company is blatant enough about it. For example: Google & Amazon.
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This is not correct. It's also illegal for companies to merge in ways that substantially reduce competition. You can't just buy all your competitors and jack up prices, even if they're in the same vertical.
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Uh, it is correct. Just because I didn't give a list of every possible trust violation doesn't make what I said wrong. The OCD is strong in this one.
You realize using your monopoly cash to buy up everyone also falls under the category of "using your monopoly to take over other verticals"? ...
Yeah.
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YOU are not Google's customer, you are their product.
If you are a Google customer (i.e., you want to place ads somewhere on the internet) then you don't really have many choices, you're stuck with Google, Amazon, or Meta. In terms of antitrust law, being one of three players that dominate a market, is sufficient to become a target, if your practices are anticompetitive.
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As for Facebook, here's an idea. How about people stop using it?
They already are, especially young people.
Facebook's revenues declined 8.5% last year.
Facebook is not in the same category as Google and Amazon.
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As odd as it may sound, there are alternatives to Google.
You can have dominant market power in many ways. As a company operating a website you can't realistically go without putting your site on Google, and as a company selling consumer goods it's tough to bypass Amazon. Some people on Slashdot seem to have a primary school understanding of anti-trust where it's about literally only one seller existing, but it doesn't work like that in anti-trust enforcement. It's about a disbalance in market power and somehow abusing that.
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It should be really simple, one corporation can not buy another.
That is a bad idea for many reasons.
1. A ban on mergers makes monopolies easier, not harder. When a first-mover gains a big market share, smaller rivals often merge to challenge them. Your proposal would prevent that, so those small rivals would fail to gain economies of scale and fold instead.
2. As long as they don't abuse their power, big companies are good for the economy. They pay higher wages, deliver higher profits to shareholders, and lower prices to consumers.
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They are going after Google as well.
https://9to5mac.com/2023/09/26... [9to5mac.com]
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How about going after the REALLY bad monopolies like Google.
You mean with a lawsuit like this [npr.org]? Yes, the government can chew gum and walk at the same time.
The Biden administration is going after the large corporations now, before the threat of an possible Trump re-presidency quashes the trust busters.
Yeah, what else is new? (Score:2)
The only question I have is "what took you so long?"
I don't buy from Amazon (Score:2)
It takes effort to avoid it. I usually go to ebay for those that cannot host their own or other "ma and pa" sites USA and internationally. The risk in my book is the same given the last few dealings I had with amazon and reason for boycotting them. They'll rip you off the same as if you had no "big name" behind it. Days of the reputable brand are done. No profit in pride of work. Caveat emptor.
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But if you avoid the third party marketplace then things generally go well.
Re:I don't buy from Amazon (Score:4, Informative)
But if you avoid the third party marketplace then things generally go well.
I worked for an MSP that was too cheap to use CDW or other reputable vendors. They bought everything on Amazon and it usually came from marketplace sellers. My favorite, we ordered a batch of HP Aruba switches, which were listed with the US skew. They arrived with EU power plugs and Arabic language firmware. I have no idea where those switches came from but it wasn't a legitimate source. Shipment originated in New Jersey, so, In the back of my mind I picture one of Tony Soprano's less important crews "liberating" them from a loading dock and listing for sale on Amazon.
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Unless something is deeply discounted, Amazon is usually more expensive than everywhere else. The broad selection is the only saving grace.
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Agreed. If I can't be bothered to go out and buy the thing from a local store, I will usually just order from Target.com or if I need something really specialized, ebay.com
No shit sherlock (Score:3)
The government also said sellers on Amazon were compelled to use its logistics service if they want their goods to appear in Amazon Prime, the subscription program whose perks include faster shipping times, the FTC said.
No fucking shit sherlock. They would probably also be sued to fucking oblivion if they didn't do that "because they said it's two day shipping, and 99% of the shit doesn't even get shipped out in two days much less get to my door in two days" when you let all the idiots in the third party stores there ship their own shit.
Re:No shit sherlock (Score:5, Interesting)
When customers order the Amazon-fulfilled offer and get "free" 2-day shipping, we are seeing a less than 90% on-time delivery rate. If a customer wants a refund, Amazon deducts it from us, the merchant.
Amazon requires us to raise prices on other websites, which I think it part of what got the FTC's attention. Even though our fees are higher on Amazon, they require (now secretly, since they were spanked once) that they be the lowest price. Well, in some cases that meant we had to raise the price for customers on other platforms.
My favorite one is that we had to stop shipping to military members. They used to order protein powder or headphones, things like that. A surprise to no one, overseas bases don't always have delivery confirmation on shipments. Perhaps it is a security issue? Who knows, but the lack of delivery confirmation more than a certain % of the time meant we either cut off the military, or we get shut down by Amazon for everyone.
I'm in agreement that shitty third party sellers have caused some knee-jerk reactions, but Amazon is hardly better at it themselves.
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If a customer wants a refund, Amazon deducts it from us, the merchant.
Amazon will refund you within 45 days, if it's a discretionary refund. My issue with that is that Amazon also charges the merchant a refund fee on top of that!
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This. So very much this. And really, if for no other reason, the dodgy and unreliable ship times and extra fees on top of the Prime expedited shipping I'm already paying extra for, have had me wishing for *YEARS* now that Amazon would kick all of these fly-by-night 3rd-party drop-ship outfits off the site entirely. Or, AT LEAST, give me the ability to filter them out so I'd only every see merchandise sold and fulfilled by Amazon themselves.
Khan will blow this like every other try. (Score:1)
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Artificially high???? (Score:2)
They keep prices high? Then why is that..... whenever I go to the seller's or manufacture's web store directly to buy products, the final price is the same at checkout. Or maybe just a few dollars difference?
If they were artificially high then you'd think that buying directly from the seller's web-store would be cheaper?
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One of the allegations is that Amazon's terms forbid you from offering the same item at a lower price anywhere else online.
I personally know this is true in the case of e-books.
what's in common (Score:2)
All 17 states are Dem controlled. What does that tell you about whether FTC is a political entity?
Definition of Monopoly (Score:1)