EU To Hit Amazon With Antitrust Charges Over Treatment of Third-Party Sellers, Report Says (cnet.com) 42
The European Union is preparing to file antitrust charges against Amazon over the e-commerce giant's treatment of third-party sellers on its site, according to a report Thursday from The Wall Street Journal. From a report: The European Commission, the union's top antitrust regulator, could file official charges as early as next week, according to the Journal. The charges will reportedly accuse Amazon of using data on independent sellers on its platform to launch competing products. The European Union's antitrust regulators opened an investigation into Amazon in July 2019. The goal is to explore whether the e-commerce giant breached the EU's competition rules with its use of data from independent retailers. Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is in charge of the EU's competition policy, said at the time that European customers shop online for the selection and pricing. "We need to ensure that large online platforms don't eliminate these benefits through anti-competitive behaviour," Vestager said. "I have therefore decided to take a very close look at Amazon's business practices and its dual role as marketplace and retailer, to assess its compliance with EU competition rules."
Great! Where's the US? (Score:2)
My only question is, where's the US in all this? The US prides itself as being the Beacon of Capitalism, yet they've been letting obvious anti-trust violations run rampant for decades.
Re:Great! Where's the US? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's about damn time. Good for the EU. My only question is, where's the US in all this? The US prides itself as being the Beacon of Capitalism, yet they've been letting obvious anti-trust violations run rampant for decades.
I don't know about the entire US, but I'm pretty sure the US political elite (Rep. and Dem.) is counting the protection money Amazon paid them in the form of political donations in order to prevent this very thing from happening in the US.
Re:Great! Where's the US? (Score:5, Informative)
The US prides itself as being the Beacon of Capitalism, yet they've been letting obvious anti-trust violations run rampant for decades.
Unlike the EUSSR, the U.S. tries to not interfere with the open market.
Yes, because the open market works so well for people. Oh, no. It doesn't. In fact it's shit for normal people. Great for the aristocracy, of course.
Amazon became big because Bezos and his investors took huge risks.
At what point did Bezos risk anything at all?
It took Amazon 7 years to turn a profit.
Not true. Amazon probably turned a profit from about three weeks in. That's why Bezos kept at it when he was running the thing from home. In fact it surprised him how quickly it took off and I can absolutely assure you that he made a per-unit profit on the first book he shifted and pretty well every one after that.
Amazon stopped declaring a profit as soon as Bezos could afford an accountant who could hide the money from the tax man (which means you had to pick up the slack). Eventually, for one reason or another, it became useful to declare a profit again but Amazon never made a loss or anything even close to it.
And now, obviously, the European Communists want their share.
Yeah, whatever.
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Not true. Amazon probably turned a profit from about three weeks in.
"Probably". That tells me you have no clue what you are talking about. You see, I did my research before posting something here on /.
From Wikepedia:
The company finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $0.00 (i.e., 1Â per share), on revenues of more than $1 billion. This profit margin, though extremely modest, proved to skeptics that Bezos' unconventional business model could succeed.
At what point did Bezos risk anything at all?
When he quit his nice Vice President role to become an entrepeneur.
Yeah, whatever.
Yes, indeed. Whatever. You're just like the rest of the European communists here on /. that moderate my posts as Troll because OOOOOOH I dare to criticize the EUSSR's Polit Buro.
Well, F the communists in Brussels that think they can dictate American companies on what to do.
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Yes, because the open market works so well for people. Oh, no. It doesn't. In fact it's shit for normal people. Great for the aristocracy, of course.
So, 30 years ago, you would get a HUGE catalog/magazine called "Computer Shopper", about 900 full-size pages, all with ads from various companies around the US, and you would look up and down, to find the best price on product XYZ, or looking for a seller of widget Q. And then you would call, and place an order, hope they took the credit card you had (or you had to mail a check) and a few weeks later after the funds cleared, your product might arrive.
Fast forward to today. You open your browser, you type
Re: Great! Where's the US? (Score:2)
Impressive, you've packed 20MB of dumb into a 2KB post. I don't know whether to refer you to an economics teacher or a patent attorney.
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You mean like fleecing VW?
People who live in glass houses should fuck in the cellar.
Re: Great! Where's the US? (Score:2)
Stop breaking the law, and nobody will get "fleeced."
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Yep, this is what the EU tells to Amazon.
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"Unlike the EUSSR, the U.S. tries to not interfere with the open market."
This is an incorrect statement. Not only does an "open market" not exist, the US definitely tries to interfere with what little openness we do have in the market remaining.
"Amazon became big because Bezos and his investors took huge risks. It took Amazon 7 years to turn a profit."
That is just part of the proof that the market is no very open.
"And now, obviously, the European Communists want their share."
The communists always want "you
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Capitalism requires a free market: all agents have access to full information without meddling and then voting with your wallet will work fine.
But the amazon case is a clear conflict of interests: they control a marketplace and started to compete with others sellers at this marketplace. The information disponibility is assymetric, both from buyers as for sellers. This req
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Unlike the EUSSR, the U.S. tries to not interfere with the open market. Amazon became big because Bezos and his investors took huge risks. It took Amazon 7 years to turn a profit.
Amazon became big because an open market with competition is inherently unstable and the only stable condition for such a market is that of a true monopoly.
And now, obviously, the European Communists want their share.
If this is communism, sign me fucking up! Competition and a perfect market, goods from multiple sources with cheap knockoffs not forcing smaller players out of the market through immense market power.
Comrade pass the vodka (just don't buy it from Amazon)
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Oh wait...
Re: Great! Where's the US? (Score:1)
IBM changed dramatically for fear of a DoJ do-over and Microsoft, while still giant dicks, were not quite as giant about it.
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I sincerely hope the EU applies this action equally to every retail operation in Europe with a house brand. That is only fair. If Amazon can't look at third party sales to help their house brand, then no grocery store in the EU should be able to do the same thing. No department store, no general merchandise store. If you are going to create this new ruling it has to apply to every one equally. House brands have existed for over a hundred years, if the rules are gong to change they have to change for everyo
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The EU wants a check.
The EU is trying to launch a 1.35 trillion € corona recovery program. They need all the money they can get.
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That's one big drawback of the Internet versus brick and mortar stores. When you're head to Best Buy to buy something, you see all the other stores you pass by on the road, and think "Oh I might want to go shopping there" and can stop by to look. When you h
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Best Buy is doing exactly the same thing Amazon is doing. Insignia is the Best Buy house brand.
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Best Buy is doing exactly the same thing Amazon is doing. Insignia is the Best Buy house brand.
Amazon and Best Boy don't do the same thing.
Best Buy doesn't have the kind of information on the business of the competitors of their house brands that Amazon has. The Amazon Marketplace is not Best Buy buying stuff from other companies and selling it alongside it's own house brands. The Marketplace is all the other mom and pop stores and specialist shops taking up shop within Best Buy and having all their sales go through the cashiers of Best Buy.
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Re: Great! Where's the US? (Score:2)
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Obviously they're only hitting American companies.
Selection bias. As an American (I assume) you only hear about the cases that involve American companies. American news outlets usually don't care about cases only involving European or Asian companies.
Feel free to search the EU data base on antitrust and anti-competition cases. See how many company names you know: https://ec.europa.eu/competiti... [europa.eu]
Never partner with a big company unless you plan (Score:4, Insightful)
Never partner with a bigger company unless you have a solid plan for when (not if) they decide to screw you over.
If they find that your product/solution is making you a lot of money. They will in time, come up with their own competing product and use their size to leverage it over yours.
Companies like to partner with this small companies, because they take all the risk, and try out different stuff. So when 90% of them fail, the big company doesn't have much stake in its failure. But if it works, then they know what direction to take.
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That's the thing. If these were just "partners" there would be no anti-trust issue, it would result in a case of contractual legal wranglings and nothing more. But Amazon pretends to be a platform. Well there are rules that are involved in being a large platform, and not waving your penis around is pretty high on the list of antitrust rules.
Europe has free market, USA has capitalism (Score:1)
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False understanding of the terms. Capitalism is the economic system that underpins a free market. Without capitalism you don't have a free market. What you are thinking about is a "perfect market". Lots of open competition, and this competition kept in check through market regulation (legal or otherwise).
Also China has nothing at all resembling a free market nor capitalism.
Democracy doesn't really come into it one way or another. The political concept of a democracy is unrelated to the market. Now the alter
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"China has nothing at all resembling a free market nor capitalism."
Free market? No.
Capitalism? Yes.
The Party is powered by MONEY. It's the carrot. Labor camps and death vans are the stick.
But you can't have a growing middle class without money.
They also don't have communism because the hallmarks of communism are lack of a class system and lack of a currency system.
Easy solution: (Score:2)
Amazon should just boot 3rd-party sellers off the platform in the EU. Hell, I wish they'd get rid of them here in the US too. It is infuriating as hell to miss that whatever I'm buying is not actually sold by Amazon, but from some sketchy fly-by-night outfit that is drop-shipping my merchandise on a 4-6 week slow boat from China... and that's if it arrives at all. And then, to get any resolution on these, Amazon's usually-very-good customer service turns into a slow and disorganized clusterfuck that take
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Fuck 3rd-party sellers on Amazon.
All of them? The way I see it many 3rd party sellers on Amazon are actually first party vendors selling their own product.
Amazon can be a store and/or a market place, but don't assume one is universally better than the other.
Don't Fine Them. Ban them. (Score:1)
Any fine you can give Amazon would be just a cost of doing business.
Tell them they have 30 days to address the issue or they'll be banned from EU internet until the problem is fixed.
And then also fine them but give 80% of the money to injured small businesses.
Private label share is higher than ever in the EU (Score:2)
This seems to a be an issue not unique to Amazon. Stores in the EU are developing private label brands at an increasing pace and their market share is higher than it has ever been.
https://storebrands.com/privat... [storebrands.com]
Surely, these stores are doing the exact same thing as Amazon. They look at the products that are moving through their inventory, look to see if they can be developed at a price advantage, and then sell their own products at rates that undercut the competitors on the same shelves. When will we h
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Surely, these stores are doing the exact same thing as Amazon. They look at the products that are moving through their inventory, look to see if they can be developed at a price advantage, and then sell their own products at rates that undercut the competitors on the same shelves. When will we hear of investigations into this growing problem?
Amazon doesn't just see the products moving through Amazons inventory, but also all the sales that other reseller make through the Amazon Marketplace. Amazon has a lot more information on the business of the competition than any of the other stores you're talking about.
What? (Score:2)
So reading several of the linked articles, what the EU is going after is because Amazon said in the past they didn't use the platform to view items that are sold for market research? Now they are?
I mean duh, yeah you have a platform that shows that a million widgets are sold and 900k of them are red, Amazon might look at making red widgets. That is anti-competive behavior? It is like GM asking dealers what kind of options people want on cars and changing what they do the next model year.
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It is like GM asking dealers what kind of options people want on cars and changing what they do the next model year.
It's not the same. If GM uses the information that their dealers are giving them when asked to decide what to produce, the actual sale still happens through those dealers. So both parties profit by GM better aligning production to demand. GM is the supplier of the dealers.
But Amazon is a competitor of the Marketplace sellers, not their supplier. When Amazon is using the sales information from the Marketplace sellers only one party profits: Amazon.