No. From TFA:

"First, by passing legislation that requires large tech platforms to be designated as “Platform Utilities” and broken apart from any participant on that platform.

Companies with an annual global revenue of $25 billion or more and that offer to the public an online marketplace, an exchange, or a platform for connecting third parties would be designated as “platform utilities.”

These companies would be prohibited from owning both the platform utility and any participants on that platform. Platform utilities would be required to meet a standard of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory dealing with users. Platform utilities would not be allowed to transfer or share data with third parties."

Note the word 'tech platform.' TFA also goes on to illustrate that this effort is essentially identical to trust-busting that has occurred multiple times over the past century when a single company became so large that it distorted an entire market.

Not sure why this is voted down. Amazon is just doing a scaled up version of what Walmart, Price Chopper, Trader Joe's and various other supermarkets have done for decades. Why should Steam and Amazon be barred from doing it if others aren't?

No they're not. All of the grocery stores are engaging in "white-labeling" - buying products from other manufacturers and putting their own label on them. It would maybe be a valid comparison if Price Chopper took in 50% of all grocery dollars spent in the US, saw what was popular, cloned those products in house and then used the top 80% of shelf space to prominently display their product, and moved the third party competitors to the very bottom shelf.

Additionally, Trader Joes ONLY sells white-labelled products, so it is even less applicable than your other examples.

> Additionally, Trader Joes ONLY sells white-labelled products, so it is even less applicable...

Their mix is heavily skewed toward private-label products, but "ONLY" is not accurate.

To pick one example: they sell name-brand beer alongside their private labels.

Fair enough. They also don't slap a Trader Joes marque on the produce they resell.

isn't the line between white labeling and competing with cloned products blurry? How much of the manufacturing/creation process must they own for it to no-longer merely be a white label product? Lots of companies contract out manufacturing and it's not automatically white labeling in those cases.

You're right. I think the distinction comes down to companies like Amazon having the kind of vast capital required to not only cut out the middle man but to _become_ the middle man in their own market.

In most cases, a market (in the specific sense, like a store or a site) will white label a product and undercut competitors by leveraging the volume/wholesale pricing that they can get. What's truly dangerous about the AMZNs and GOOGs (and Standard Oils and Ma Bells) of the world is that they can use brute monetary force to buy or subsume competition. To quote the legendary SF grifter Jack Black, "You can't win."

Thanks for letting me know.