If they aren't reducing sales/income in the long term, then that is also a defense to "not fostering competition." If they are literally selling more, this is easy to frame in a way that shows more competition. And again makes the case a bit weaker to prove that they were hurting what has been growing on their platform.
If you think they will be able to prove this, great. The plausible defenses here are just overwhelmingly against it. The criticism of Amazon going to crap is that Amazon is turning into a Dollar store, as far as quality goes. And, yeah, it is. Is why you don't have people making a killing as suppliers to Dollar stores...
It seems unlikely to me that they will be able to do so, especially with weak pretexts like "we aren't effectively punishing sellers who sell cheaper elsewhere, we're just rewarding those who don't", given how damning the anticompetitive behaviors in question are.
If you think they will be able to, great. The plausible interpretations of what we see are just going overwhelmingly against it.
> if they aren't reducing sales/income in the long term, then that is also a defense to "not fostering competition."
Definitely not. I don't see at all how that fosters competition to Amazon's marketplace. Especially since it seems Amazon is punishing sellers for selling cheaper in Amazon's competitors' marketplaces, which is, again, an anticompetitive business practice. Indeed, Amazon's sales here are irrelevant, because both a successful and a failing company can engage in anticompetitive business practices.
What evidence have we been given that they punished folks? There is evidence that it is punishing to be lower in the search results. But this is the same for any leaderboard mentality. Am I punished by having more people ahead of me when I join a peloton race that is live with 2k+ people? Or am I just more likely to be on a class with competitive people when I join it live?
So, reframe your complaint. They don't have to show it isn't punishing to be lower in the ranks. They have to show that they didn't purposely drop someone in the ranks for punishment. Competition is, by definition, fierce. You expect most competitors to lose when the contest is "be top 5 of N", the more so as N increases.
Oddly, bike racing is a good one here. I bet early adopters of Peloton and the like found earlier races much easier than they do later ones. They can blame cheating, of course. And we should do what we can to eliminate cheating. But, at large, more competitors leads to fiercer contests and more losses. Pretty much period.
> What evidence have we been given that they punished folks?
What evidence do we have that the ones who listed cheaper elsewhere happened to suddenly be "unable to compete" in the same environment without any action by Amazon? Seems like a convenient coincidence. An unconvincingly convenient one.
We'll see what more comes out as far as communication goes, but more importantly, as far as disparate impact goes: given the data we'll receive as a result of this suit, we'll be able to tell statistically if there was any difference in treatment for sellers who sold cheaper elsewhere vs. not, regardless of pretext (suddenly becoming "unable to compete")
>at large, more competitors leads to fiercer contests and more losses. Pretty much period.
Perhaps. Amazon is fighting competition by engaging in anticompetitive business practices, and they're still around. Maybe there's something to that. If we want more competition to Amazon, then, that means we need Amazon to stop engaging in anticompetitive business practices.
Competition is fierce, worse when your marketplace is engaging in anticompetitive business practices.
As for evidence that those that listed cheaper elsewhere would see lower ranking here, I only need to point at what is largely merchants arbitrage for so many items on Amazon today. By and large, if you see an ALL CAPS seller, know that you can get that exact item cheaper on another site. (Honestly, by and large, know that Amazon is never the cheapest option. Never really claimed to be.)
For maximum amusement, I've personally seen Walmart boxes from some sellers that were evidently taking advantage of a local sale to make some money online. (Not just 1-2 dollars, mind. Beginning of covid had people stocking up on trampolines and whatnot to resell online. You could easily flip some of those for 100% markup in that market.)
Hopefully this whole suit doesn't take years. Would love to see a prediction market on it. :D
are they, though?
I'm not convinced that it's a total coincidence that sellers who sell for cheaper elsewhere are being penalized in search results, especially if the excuse is that a multi billion dollar company which relies upon search can't do search.
And honestly, that seems anticompetitive to me, thus wrong and illegal, thus the suit.
> They would not be doing things to reduce purchases
I haven't seen any evidence the anticompetitive behavior in question would reduce total income in the long term. They would be doing things to punish sellers for selling cheaper elsewhere though, and seems like they are. That doesn't necessarily mean reducing purchases though, especially if Amazon has already copied the product and started selling their copy themselves. And whether it reduced some purchases (but not others) for Amazon is irrelevant, as they could easily be willing to threaten taking a tiny hit to punish competitors.
You keep coming up with pretexts for the anticompetitive behavior, but they simply aren't a more convincing explanation than anticompetitive behavior. It's like saying you didn't stab a guy, he just ran into your knife 100 times. Maybe technically possible, but not convincing, and definitely not more likely than maliciousness. If it walks like a duck, etc.