Comment Re:Nothing to see here.... (Score 1) 163
So, to evaluate the monopoly claims, is Amazon the overwhelming leader (more business than all their competition combined) in a category of commerce?
Is Amazon using their overwhelming position in a category of commerce to bankroll undercutting competition in a different category of commerce?
Is Amazon the sole provider of a dominant standard while exploiting that advantage to shape a marketplace?
Yes. They've put every other major bookstore but one out of business, and the sole remaining at-scale competitor is Barnes and Noble, which just fired most of its store management because it is about to follow Toys'R'Us to oblivion, barring a miracle. At this point they have more business in e-books in particular than all of their competitors put together, they have more business in REGULAR books than all of their competitors put together, and they are rapidly pushing to achieve that sort of market dominance in several other categories if they aren't there already.
Yes to number two as well. How can they not? Their site sells everything! If you visit it to buy a book, you are cross-sold pen fillers. If you visit it to look for ANYTHING, you get cross-sold EVERYTHING. The money isn't sorted out so that only the money made from selling office supplies in competition with Staples and Office Max is used to fund office supply sales -- money they make in general has allowed them to enter whole new markets. They just bought Whole Foods -- an entirely different, new category of commerce. Did they raise new money to do so? Hell no, they used profits from selling everything else the sell to do so. Is that "undercutting the competition"? Damn skippy. They immediately dropped prices to undercut the competition because they don't have to be instantly profitable, because they can use profits from "everything" to make their new operation competitive and wipe out all the OTHER companies that are trying to get into e.g. internet based grocery delivery, not to mention Harris-Teeter, Food Lion, etc. But HT doesn't have a bookstore or general purpose store that generates profits that can be used to offset losses (if any) chalked up to "undercutting competition".
And overwhelmingly yes to number three. They "own" the Kindle and all kindle book sales. They have effectively eliminated their only serious competition -- B&N's Nook -- and are about to eliminate B&N itself along with it. Anything B&N sells Amazon sells (plus much more) and Amazon will deliver right to your door. Amazon is even moving towards opening its OWN brick and mortar stores, yet ANOTHER example of it branching out into "different categories of commerce" using money made from its first, internet sales.
We are at the point where it is entirely plausible that Amazon, unchecked, is going to become THE SOLE retail store in a huge number of markets, and the DOMINANT store in an even huger number. I'm on the board of a small indie bookstore chain -- a handful of stores in CA. If you want to (for example) sell used or rare books, you more or less HAVE to list them on Amazon and allow them to take their cut. More people search for things on Amazon than anywhere else, and for things like rare books especially, you simply aren't likely to show up on the radar of somebody looking for them without far more investment in internet visibility and staff to manage it than a small business is likely to have available or be able to afford. But they can be trained to put them up on Amazon, once you are set up as a "partner".
Amazon is "easy", and I'm not arguing whether or not it is a good or bad thing, but it is a thing that long since should have been subjected to antitrust action. Dealing with/through them is like doing business with the mob, but without the guns. They don't have to sell you insurance you have to buy to keep them from burning down your store, they just let you stay alive a bit longer than all of the other stores they are putting out of business if you sell things through them. If you want to sell something outside of your very own brick and mortar store, you have to let them "wet their beak", or accept the fact that you probably will take 2-3 times longer and a lot more human effort to sell if. Do an Amazon search on almost anything -- computers, clothes, etc. Chances are decent that EITHER Amazon will sell it to you directly -- their preference, highest margins -- OR that they have four small businesses that will sell it to you as an Amazon "partner". Amazon gets its beak nicely wet, and they don't even have to warehouse the item. Those business get to survive -- for now -- but small businesses are going out of business in the US literally every day because Amazon sells it faster, easier, cheaper, and delivers it to your door. Good thing, bad thing -- it is an illegal thing, for good reason.
The antitrust laws in the US, no matter HOW they are worded, are a joke. Let's face it: Government pension plans are heavily invested in Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Verizon, all the biggest of the big multinationals. Those companies all contribute heavily to all the candidates run by either party. The oligarchy that is actually running America right now pays over 90% of the cost of running for office for any candidate from either party that runs for office. This gives it veto power over who gets to run and everybody knows it. It reduces our supposed "democracy" to a joke. You don't even get to see a candidate who runs on a platform of enforcing antitrust laws or pushing for the constitutional amendment that is now required to remove corporate america from the political process, in spite of the fact that they aren't even MENTIONED in the Constitution as a political entity with the right to vote or directly participate.
Never has this been clearer than in the last presidential election, between the whore of babylon and the antichrist, both owned body and soul by the 1% (in both cases, they are part of the 1%, Trump obnoxiously so). Or in the net neutrality "debate". You can just go down the list of people who have supported this or acquiesced in this and rank order them by the amount contributed to their most recent campaigns by the companies that would benefit the most from the ending of net neutrality, ignoring the fact that Trump pretty much selected foxes to put in charge of every henhouse in the government in the first place.
Interesting times, in the direct sense of the Chinese curse...