I can use plugins in a web browser to effectively visit 100 stores to shop for the best price on an item. Amazon is just another vendor.
-edit-
To add to this. If you want to compare to Amazon then you have to look at the market share and revenue of those stores too. Not simply their existence. It doesn't matter if an ACE hardware is in the area if it is 3% of the market.
Sure you could, but is that how most users use the web? According to Statista (2019 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c...) [same link I put before], over 50% of the market is just Amazon, even though it's soooo easy to chose another one.
Since they now have a grip of the majority of the market, they should be having lots of eyes on them, as they can easily abuse their position, which most of us don't want to them to do.
It’s not clear what the point is here.
> According to Statista (2019 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c...) [same link I put before], over 50% of the market is just Amazon, even though it's soooo easy to chose another one.
Could it be that people choose Amazon because despite its faults it provides the best service?
I dislike Amazon and try to avoid them wherever possible, but in practice I probably use them 50% of the time, because in those instances there isn’t a better alternative.
To answer your question - it doesn’t matter. We don’t determine monopolies simply because of market share. If we did, why aren’t we filing another anti-trust investigation against Microsoft and Windows?
The point anyway is that people have no switching cost. Amazon faces stiff competition not just in America but globally. I remain unconvinced that they have a monopoly on e-commerce. Sure they may have take some monopolistic actions which could be addressed, but that’s not enough for me to demonstrate that they are a monopoly.
Frankly, I think Amazon has really been struggling. Prime sucks. 2-day shipping is slipping not just in service but as new competitors enter the market. It’s a fierce competition.
Google and Facebook on the other hand are monopolies. That’s a no-brainer.
Apple I’m not sure how they’ve even been in the discussion.
Remember that Apple and Google pulled a legal app from their stores, regular Apple users (like 50% of US) can't install stuff on their device without Apple parental approval and the "make it a website argument also fails because Apple is does not let you install a better browser".
50% still affects a lot of people, though Apple fanboys will attempt to say is not a big enough number (remember you could install other browsers and whatever application you wanted on Windows without a Microsoft approval or tax).
> Apple and Google pulled a legal app from their stores
I can't sell anything I want at Wal-Mart. Doesn't PayPal not allow porn sites to do business? I don't see how this is different.
> Windows without a Microsoft approval or tax
So is it market share or what? What exactly is the monopoly? Microsoft doesn't allow me to play PlayStation games on Xbox. Most computers are sold with Windows operating systems. I don't know what the monopoly is supposed to be with Apple.
- monopoly, duopoly is not that important, you can have 3 big actors in a market that are cooperating against the users for their own interests, so the market share is irrelevant and the abuse/damage is relevant. Is Apple not allowing say 10 million users to install some app because of political reasons or 50 million users to install a game because some other policy reason? This people were affected , for example Joe did not know when he bought his iPhone that Apple can block his favorite game , or some app , is friend Bob has Android and he side loaded it, Joe is pissed now and feels tricked because on the box it was not printed that Apple can abuse his trust like this.
I'm currently on chrome on my iphone. Maybe you can't install arbitrary browsers, but you can certainly install different ones. And there's always jailbreaking.
I will have to let someone else to continue this since I don't own a iOS device and at work we don't target mobile.
Though I had to fix soem iOS issue sin a third party plugin, it was using some WebGl and it was broken on iOS, so the plugin was using a software(slow and ugly thing) for iOS but then Apple change things so tablets pretend they are desktops and broke the plugin(so from my limited experience iOS browsers are inferior ).
That is a very visible case, but there were other smaller cases , where smaller applications were blocked because they had a link and that link was going to a page and on that page a developer would accept donations and Apple wanted a but from that.
Then you have apps blocked on totalitarian states, an entire nation is affected because they can't side load applications.
Of course not, the final issue is companies becoming monopolies and companies abusing their market positions, that is what we want to prevent, in order to foster innovation and open markets.
> I would say Home Depot has far more control of their markets than Amazon does
Maybe you're right, I know nothing about what's going on on the ground of the US. So if Home Depot do have more control of their market than what Amazon has of the e-commerce market (more than 50%), then they should also be under watch to see what "strategies" they employ to get more profits.
Just because the House is now investigating technology companies doesn't mean that hopefully whatever legislation comes out of this, cannot be applied to other industries.
> This is why it's different between Amazon and Home Depot, they hold different amount of the market, so even if Home Depot wanted to exploit their position, they probably couldn't.
I would say Home Depot has far more control of their markets than Amazon does. Pick any smaller metro, and the only consumer building materials store around is Home Depot or Lowes. The two basically split up all the markets, and if there’s not enough business to sustain both, then there will be just one. But no other store will be able to compete.
If you’re a manufacturer and you can’t convince Home Depot or Lowes to stock your item in their store, then you’re not going to reach 90% of people via in store attention (for home improvement stuff).
Almost all big box store brands have whittled down to two viable options, or even one in the case of Best Buy. Although, I think that might be the natural state of things given how low profit margins are for retail (low single digit percentages).