So they're definitely trying to be anti competitive.
This is such an interesting topic.
If I open a fresh-fruit stand and refuse to sell the Chromecast and I being anti-competitive? How about if I grow my own fresh-fruit and refuse to sell yours in my stand?
The whole reason for me to spend money running my own store it to sell my stuff, not yours.
What about if Apple open an "Apple Store" and refuse to sell Microsoft products? Ford dealership refusing to sell GM?
It's Amazon's store, they can sell whatever they want, or not sell whatever they want. If you don't like it, shop elsewhere.
In your hypotheticals, if Ford controlled all dealerships then refusing to sell GM would be anti-competitive.
If Apple controlled all physical stores where computers are sold, it would be anti-competitive to refuse to sell Microsoft.
Amazon directly competes with Chromecast and is dominant on-line retailer in US so they do have have the power to alter dynamics of Chromecast vs. Fire TV competition. That's what makes that anti-competitive.
Notice that a big part of amazon.com value is being a platform to others to sell their stuff. I certainly bought stuff via amazon.com that was not sold by Amazon, merely distributed by them.
To go against that platform "neutratlity" (if you will) and refuse even 3rd parties to sell a very specific product, while allowing thousands more, is pretty damning evidence that it's straight up, anti-competitive leverage of their position in one area to gain advantage in another area while negatively affecting customers.
what? That's complete nonsense.
If I want to bring something to market, I can't just force my competitor to sell it in their stores. "Dan's Cars" could start up and force Ford to sell their cars in the Ford stores - crazy.
That's not how this works. If "Dan" expects to sell cars, then he has to do that himself, not rely on, or expect his competitors to do that for him.
How Dan's competitors sell their cars is frankly none of Dan's business.
1. Market share matters, for what should be obvious reasons. Amazon is, in that regard, a far cry from your sole proprietorship fruit stand.
2. Amazon is much closer to Walmart than it is to Apple or Ford; Amazon didn't do retail to support their product line, they rolled out a product line once they dominated in retail.
3. Sure, consumers can go order a Chromecast from somewhere else; just like how users could always download Netscape on Windows. That didn't stop antitrust claims from being brought against Microsoft for their practice of tying, because they were fundamentally abusing a dominant position in one market to assure their dominance in others despite weaker product offerings. And here we are, with everyone subscribed to Prime for the free shipping, and getting an unasked-for set of streaming services bundled with. Which aren't compatible with Chromecast. Which Amazon uses to justify banning Chromecast from its store. It makes the tying of MS years past look amateurish by comparison.
Analogies are limited but to play along, it's as if you own the largest supermarket in a place that only has 3 orchards (assume you're isolated from the rest of the world), and you own one of those orchards, and ONLY sell fruit from your orchard while refusing to sell fruit from the other 2 orchards.
Those other two sell directly to the customer (and to small grocers) so they still survive. But they miss out on the customers that come to the supermarket and might have otherwise bought fruit from those other 2 orchards.
If I go to the trouble of building a store (bricks n mortar or online) then I'm going to sell what I want to sell.
I built the fruit store, NO, I don't want to sell live Aardvarks from my store, and it's preposterous that you think you can force me to do that.
I built a store to sell my stuff and make money, after all.
I see this as flexing their muscles and stopping the sale of competitive video on demand services unless they play nice and support Amazon Prime Video.
What we don't know is if Amazon refuse to build their app for these devices.
Being upset about Amazon's response here would be like throwing a fit you couldn't buy a charger for your Chromebook at an Apple Store, it just doesn't make any sense.
0: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2016/06/amazon-ceo-explains...
EDIT: Sidebar, but the whole "Private business discussions should stay private" comment in your link... Bezos knows how appalled we'd all be if we saw the way these companies acted behind closed doors. There's a reason the MADA is confidential too.
That has nothing to do with Prime Video on Android (i.e. in Google Play) not supporting Google Cast. That's an intentional decision by Amazon. To enable Chromecast in their iOS/GPlay apps, Amazon just needs to register the app (https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/registration), not agree to the MADA on other devices.
Amazon might as well ban all Microsoft products because MS doesn't allow Amazon to replace Cortana with Alexa on all sold-thru-Amazon PCs.
When Amazon was selling other people's products, there were no problems. Now they have their own, and any time they push those in favor of a competing option that they used to sell without any qualms they're going to be in trouble.
Apple has this same problem, but it's mostly limited to accessories. If they stopped selling Belkin and Beats and LaCie in their stores, we'd hear a similar clamor and people would be justified in being pissed off.
By that logic, one could I think make an argument that Apple are being jerks by not carrying Logitech products in their physical or online stores. Considering Logitech (no affiliation) has without exception made the best mice for OS X for over 15 years, Apple offering their overdesigned and underdelivered 'mice' and excluding Logitech is a protectionist move.
The exact terms that Google uses to block Amazon devices from using Chromecast and other Google Apps is the same one they're expected to face a new recordbreaking fine for in the EU (larger than the last one) by the end the year.
I mean, I guess I could be sold on the statement that it's two behemoths throwing around their leverage to try and force each other to play ball.
One of those apps is Google Play Books. So in order for Google to permit them to support Chromecast, Amazon would've had to agree to pre-install their competitor's ebook store on every single Kindle.
See the issue?
Hell, the whole Play Store is basically a direct competitor to Amazon's multimedia offerings. While Amazon's own behavior is scummy, it's also unsurprising given the situation.
It's simply a coordination problem.
And being required to preload Google Play Books, a direct competitor to Amazon's Kindle platform, is similarly fundamentally unacceptable to Amazon. These two companies are completely unable to come to terms on this because their requirements are so blatantly opposed to each others' businesses.
As these mega-conglomerates start selling everything under the sun service-wise in lock-in ecosystems, these sorts of clashes are likely to increase in impact and number.
Every distribution contract I've seen has that clause. I worked for a game company that used to give away (to friends and family) the games they couldn't sell through their distributor because they weren't allowed to sell directly below list.
That said, I'm not aware of recent enforcement of this, but it is in the terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com_controversies. I call your attention to "Anti-competitive practices" and "Treatment_of_workers".
Is Amazon evil? Maybe. But no more or less evil than most every other organization that runs a large warehouse.
Firstly, I don't know that all warehouse work sucks. Post an assessment that shows this are the widespread conditions in the industry, or at least other examples of companies doing the same.
Secondly, if that were the case, it would be only more reason to be outraged! What, companies paying workers under minimum wage (as low as 2.70£ an hour), treating their employees as cattle without the bare minimum conditions of dignity, all the while making its CEO the richest man on earth? We're supposed to be okay with this?? Shrug our shoulders and say "eh maybe they're evil, so what", say "a company that makes 150,000,000,000$ a year can't pay its workers minimum wage, their work will be miserable but that's life"?
What an appalling way to see things.
What? Hot summers with lots of heavy lifting and long shifts for low pay, all while being treated by management as a completely replaceable cog (because at-will employment, union busting, and the low-skill nature of the job means YOU ACTUALLY ARE a replaceable cog)? That's warehouse work.
I'm not even sure if there are studies about this because it's just... completely common knowledge among the populations who work these jobs. Here's a blog post for example from 2011, describing exactly this conditions at probably-not-amazon from a former employee. Note he talks in broad strokes -- not "my employer sucked", but "warehouse work sucks". https://warehousetomarketer.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/warehou...
> What an appalling way to see things.
I'm not making a moral judgement. I'm describing reality. I don't think positive descriptions of reality can ever be appalling, unless your goal is to bury your head in the sand.
Focusing on Amazon doesn't solve the problem because Amazon is not the problem. They're just one more employer behaving the same way as all the other employers, in a system that explicitly allows and even incentivizes this behavior.
Realizing that working conditions for low-skill blue collar folk are systematically crappy, and that we need a systematic solution, is not "appalling". It's realistic and pragmatic.
Besides which, counting on the beneficence of particular corporations and/or particular instances of PR pressure has never been a sustainable method for producing good working conditions or livable wages.
Focusing on specific company's workers instead of focusing on systematic improvements to the negotiating power of labor is what's appalling. It takes a serious political problem and turns it into a corporate PR problem that's solvable without addressing the underlying problems. Because the empirically effective PR expenditures -- installing air conditioning, clamping down on loud mouths, token improvements to workplace culture, marginally shorter shifts... none of this makes manual labor on $12/hr with zero workplace protections and a minimal social safety net any less dehumanizing.
(And Bezos's net work has absolutely nothing to do with whether working conditions in warehouses suck -- IDC if the CEO is making 100K or 100B, and neither do the employees working in the warehouse because their job sucks just as much either way.(
Fair enough, you changed my mind in that regard (if indeed it is the case that this is the widespread situation in the warehouse industry, which, again, I'm not convinced of based on word-of-mouth or one single blog post; nonetheless I will look into it).
What I was referring to as appalling, though, is the idea that this is somehow okay, somehow excusable, somehow not scandalous, either because "everyone does it", or because "it's unqualified labour", or any other excuse. There is no excuse. A company, furthermore one so obscenely profitable for its owners, absolutely cannot be allowed to operate this way and to treat their workers this way. That is what I classify as appalling. We the people cannot indifferently let that slide. We can give no rest, else the balance shifts entirely to their favour.
I don't know how much of a choice Amazon really has here. Amazon is the ubiquitous online marketplace for everything. If I find your product on amazon, and then later find it for cheaper on your website, I'm not going to visit amazon anymore to purchase said product. You just used amazon as an advertising platform against itself.
I will almost never sign a so-called "standard" software development contract because standard practice is to treat the little guy poorly. I think the same goes with amazon. Just because it is standard doesn't mean it's right.
How is it stifling competition to say "If you want access to our marketplace, you can't charge a premium"?
Not that I have any insider information but from what I read above I assume (perhaps incorrectly, please correct me if I am incorrect) that these agreements only apply to "ships from and sold by" and "ships from" Amazon.com.
Why not create an Amazon exclusive SKU, the same way manufacturers do for Costco and the like?
They monitor against other sites and may remove if yours is too much more than other sites.
Well, ok, there are others fixes around, tried more often. They have an unbeatable track record of failure. Thus it's perfectly fine for the author to ignore them.
Facebook cloning snap features? They are dominant in social media, should they be allowed to do that?
Google and their ad blocker plans?
Being willing and able to lose money for a few years to drive a startup out of a new market?
I'm seriously wondering what about Amazon (the store) is so great. They are just a shop. They may have a little more inventory than anybody else. Their ordering system works fine. They have good user reviews. But all that does not justify the enormous negative effect they have on competition. And they also have problems, e.g. with counterfeit products.
In other words, saying "more power to the best" does not make much sense if "the best" is only marginally better than everybody else.
As a store they're... frankly terrible. Search is complete garbage. Filtering is clunky. The product categories are an absolute disaster. And it's often impossible to tell genuine product from counterfeit (a fact that, by the way, has me terrified for folks inadvertently buying fake solar observation glasses for use during the 2017 solar eclipse) It's honestly a terrible shopping experience in almost every way imaginable.
But through direct supply and their fulfillment program they can get products to consumers insanely fast for zero cost (edit: to the consumer). IMO, that is what puts Amazon above the rest. With Prime I'm honestly dismayed when I see an arrival date that's more than 2-3 days out... that's the level of expectation they've set in the market.
Of course, competitors are starting to match them. Walmart, for example, is really advancing in this space. But IMO Amazon is still the king of logistics.
For now, anyway.
Amazon UK sends me tons of counterfeit products, and their stock of many items I like is extremely unstable. That is, many products or supplies I need often get discontinued.
That said, almost everything is 1-day delivery on Prime. I often order at 10 pm and have my products at 9 am. Sadly, they now use contractors to deliver on their Amazon Logistics, instead of good parcel companies. And the quality of service is going down.
They still use DPD for expensive items (that's how much they trust their own Amazon Logistics), which is cool as they offer a 1 hour delivery slot. When they used DPD for everything it was awesome.
They claim certifications and safety ratings they do not have.
If they're not actually suitable, the result can be severe eye damage.
As for identifying the "real thing", I found the specific brand NASA recommends, and then tried to find a reputable supplier through Amazon with reviews indicating, by people who've tested them, that they were genuine.
It's still not foolproof, but at least it's something.
At minimum, if you're in the market for glasses for the eclipse, if you can see anything other than the sun when you put them on, they're not dark enough. Solar glasses are REALLY dark.
- posted from my screenreader
What do you mean zero cost? They still have to pay for mail, right?
When I order a product from a random small internet shop, it also arrives usually within 1-3 days. I don't see the difference with Amazon, except that I have to find that small shop through a Google search, whereas I can order on Amazon directly.
I had a feeling that would be confusing.
Zero cost to the consumer.
When I order a product from a random small internet shop, it also arrives usually within 1-3 days.
Well, maybe this is unique to Canada, but that's absolutely not my experience. Not even close. 7-10 days is optimistic for smaller retailers. 14-21 is not unexpected.
Amazon is scary in that way, because the ease of which you can magically manifest goods through its app means it becomes ingrained your routine, even to the point where you're itching to order something, even if you don't need it. They've really nailed the worst of consumerist culture, too.
It's also scary in the sense that they're slowly becoming the source of everything I buy. Whether I want household stuff, electronics, a suitcase, some hardware tool -- I invariably reach for Amazon unless it's something I know that Amazon doesn't have. (Amazon is still pretty useless for high-end, quality home decor and furniture, for example.)
As for the search, I suspect it works fine from Amazon's point of view. It's designed to offer you products that Amazon thinks you will buy, not what you searched for, and it tries very hard not to return "no results found". It is very frustrating for "power users", though.
Search for something specific like "white nike hightops" and maybe 30% of the results will be what you are looking for. Even if you navigate through their categories to "Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry : Men : Shoes : Athletic : White", 20% of the results are not white athletic shoes for men.
The relevance tanks even further if you're searching for specific computer components -- I have fled to NewEgg or NCIX for this purpose.
While I understand your frustration, there is an explanation. You are thinking of search & filtering as some sort of mathematical / boolean algebra process (hey, it's ok, I'm a CS grad).
Amazon is thinking about it as, "what does our show show that customers who have searched for [white nike hightops] have actually purchased in the past?" This is their search fitness function and they don't think they are wrong.
I agree on the broader point that 3p sellers and counterfeit products along with spam listings are a mess.
I don't understand what is taking Google so long to figure this out. This is where the money seems to be.
(Otoh ... maybe they are afraid of becoming too large.)
Google already does that. At least in my area. Type in a search. Click "Shopping" and it shows stores nearby that could have the item. It's not 100% perfect because it'll be decades before retailers allow Google to monitor their inventory in real-time, but it at least gives me leads, especially when I'm in an unfamiliar city.
The combination of (a) not needing to log in again to place an order (b) most things I'm interested in ordering being in their inventory (c) receiving most orders within 48 hours (and many within 24) is really potent. I've placed maybe a half-dozen non-Amazon orders online in the last six months, and apparently 163 with Amazon.
When possible, I avoid anything that's not fulfilled by Amazon due to point (c) above -- I'll find alternatives or even pay slightly more to get prime shipping.
Recently I wanted to buy some electronics, and I found a good offer on a non-Amazon website. But when I wanted to proceed with the purchase, they asked for so many of my personal data (all of it required) that I decided I prefer to pay slightly more and buy from Amazon, than to hand my personal data to yet another third party.
From what I have read and my experience, they are stifling competition. For example, I read a persons blog post who said amazon had a rule that you can't sell your product on amazon and sell it for less on your own site. That's just rotten. Also I have an ebook on amazon and in order to get exposure you have to exclusively sell on amazon. I get why he does these things, but that's just not right.
Amazon isn't a horrible corporation, but I think some of the things they do are anticompetitive and should be changed.
So are they too big? No being big is fine and helps them be more efficient. The real question in my mind is if they are using their size to compete unfairly.