If Google is bad for using AMP to try and drive publishers to AMP hosting, then how is Amazon not even worse for ramming crazy terms down publisher's throats while buying or undercutting every other shipping and shopping system in the country? Amazon's pretty much dismantled and eaten the entire American book industry, it's in mid gulp of the American consumer shipping industry, it's already business critical via AWS for a majority of American businesses, and now it's turning to selling "AI" products to government and law enforcement.
As for Facebook, I think maybe Facebook isn't a monopoly. But they shouldn't be allowed to buy Youtube or Twitter.
Yup. Amazon can legitimately respond to trust and monopoly allegations with "Walmart, Azure, GCP, and Netflix."
The most recent FT Alphachat podcast with an official from the Fed talks about Uber this way: Uber (and Lyft) are taking money from somewhere and undercutting the classical taxi business. This is a problem for competition. They could feasibly try to run losses until 'regular cabs are pushed out' (or largely) and then lock up the business.
Amazon can do this with any number of products, they can do it to shipping companies, to grocers.
More abstractly, Google does it with mobile OS, possibly browsers etc..
In our new world of globalization, it's a serious problem.
All this money from Saudi Arabia, under the control of Softbank is coming back and just throwing markets upside down in what is arguably tantamount to 'dumping' which is a bad business practice generally.
Even we work is like this - it's losing tons of money, ultimately selling stuff below market value.
In some cases it's much more clear than others, but it's going to pose a problem.
This issue very well highlights the problematic idea that business is about 'better products and service' or even 'free markets' due to the fact that so much cash provides leverage that distorts markets quite heavily.
Alphachat with Robert Kapla @ FT:
After FB manages these acquisitions well, we are now like "FB is evil and anti-competitive".
Are different vocal minorities loudest at different times?
I’m not convinced people is a coherent group.
Does the fact that some people were mocking X at some point in the past negate the validity of antitrust cases against X for ever?
YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, Linkedin, Reddit, Twitch are all major social networks and there are scores of smaller ones. In search it is basically just Google and Bing.
I don't know if this has been considered for these companies, but I suspect it may have been bypassed. At the very least, that's what an investigation would determine.
Removing competition is literally the most anticompetitive thing you can do. Like definitionally.
That’s why all major (edit: US) acquisitions take months to years to get approval from the SEC.
What is supposed to happen to competitors that are actually less efficient and/or produce less appealing products? Do people really expect “competition” to mean a perpetual exact tie between two or more competitors?
Well first off, predatory pricing is a thing, where competition shuts down because a market participant is deliberately losing money to gain market share in hopes of raising prices after everyone else gives up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#United_State...
But a competitor doesn't have to shut down to be bought out. In fact, why would a company ever buy a competitor who's only alternative is shutting down? Seems far simpler to buy the useful assets from the bankruptcy. Here's one possibility I've seen: an inefficient incumbent buys a startup that has been winning procurement bids away from them lately. They have deep pockets from all the contracts not yet up for renewal, and can afford to buy the company now while they only have a few source of cash flow. End result is that prices remain high, and the borg lives on a little bit less cash flow until the contracts they just bought are up for renegotiation.
> What is supposed to happen to competitors that are actually less efficient and/or produce less appealing products?
They sell less, and make changes. Maybe they drop prices, invest in efficiency or pursue some differentiation strategy. It doesn't need to be a 50/50 but winner-take-all markets should not be surprised when regulators come knocking.