[HN Gopher] US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward
___________________________________________________________________
US antitrust case against Amazon to move forward
Author : christhecaribou
Score : 251 points
Date : 2024-10-07 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Why does this keep happening?
| christophilus wrote:
| Why does what keep happening? Antitrust cases or companies
| becoming monopolies?
| peppers-ghost wrote:
| Monopolies are a feature of unregulated capitalism. Every
| company wants to dominate the sector they're in, competition
| invariably leads to monopolies.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Ruling at the below link, because apparently every US news
| reporter is allergic to actually providing source docs in court
| cases . . .
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It's in violation of the sacred law of the attention economy:
|
| Never link outside your garden.
| braiamp wrote:
| For some weird reason, outlinks are to be avoided, because
| it's seen as "leaving your site". In a store front, I can see
| that making sense. In a site to provide information... not so
| much.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| News sites aren't just providing information: they're
| trading reporting for ad impressions.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Serious question: are paywalled news articles better at
| outlinking and do they have no ads?
| nemomarx wrote:
| in my experience of i pay a sub it removes ads from the
| site at least, although not sponsored content
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| NYT will often outlink or if they're talking about a
| report, will provide a PDF of the report.
|
| Example:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/us/politics/trump-
| jan-6-c...
| mrandish wrote:
| No, not in my experience. They _usually_ have less
| external ads but a lot of other cruft is still there.
|
| Enshittification
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) is
| getting so bad, I'd be willing to pay for sites that
| actually work. So far, paywall offers are just to remove
| external ads and that's only part of what I want. The
| rest of what I want is for the fucking site to actually
| work. For example, both Google and Amazon search have
| been seriously degraded and de-featured in recent years
| and it's been done very intentionally and systematically
| to optimize for their ad or sales revenue.
|
| I suspect this degradation has crept deeper into their
| stacks than just at the top layer where it could be
| easily turned off with a flag and sold as a paywall
| upgrade.
| nnf wrote:
| _The Atlantic_ seems to have no problem linking to
| multiple outside sources in seemingly every article I
| read.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The _Financial Times_ is also good about this.
| kredd wrote:
| If You leave the website, your eyes won't catch a headline
| that's on the side that you might also click, spending more
| time on your website. Which translates to more money.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| As a culture we don't value primary sources.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| I find this to be the case with most primary sources, not just
| for court cases. A couple days ago, an American WWII bomb
| exploded at a Japanese airport and the article linked on HN
| didn't even show or link the video.
|
| Legacy media really sucks.
| daemoens wrote:
| Why single out legacy media for this specifically? This isn't
| something newer media is better at.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Many popular podcasts would show the video, or pull up
| fact-checking in real time. If that's what you mean by
| "newer media" I would say it's 10x better.
|
| Reuters is legacy media, hence why I mentioned legacy
| media.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Linking the publishing source is needed too. So many
| videos get reposted and mislabeled.
|
| Like basically any rocket attack I assume happened in
| like 2006 and between completely different belligerents
| than whatever a post claims at this point
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Many popular podcasts would show the video
|
| A podcast doesn't include any video data. How could it
| show a video?
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| YouTube is the biggest podcast platform in the world
| bombcar wrote:
| "Podcast" is now a generic term that covers any "talking
| head"-type Internet show, most of which are on YouTube.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Well nobody asked me before changing the meaning! And by
| the way, a "selfie" can only have one person in it, and a
| "video" is something on MTV. Don't get me started on
| "hack."
| jpc0 wrote:
| There's this modern trend to call a bunch of people
| staring around a table a podcast. Whether they have
| cameras or not...
|
| It annoys me too but I'm young enough to tolerate the
| kids on my lawn...
| scohesc wrote:
| I hope they include Amazon's practice of taking popular products
| on their storefront, making generic "Amazon Basics" versions, and
| selling them to undercut the popular options. Simultaneously
| owning a marketplace, approving who can and can't sell products
| on it, and then putting your own products on it to undercut other
| sellers is so scummy and muck rake-y.
|
| I hope they also include Amazon allowing thousands of Chinese
| retailers to stock Amazon's warehouses with counterfeit, faulty
| products, and potentially dangerous out-of-spec parts - with no
| way to meaningfully report or bring the offending product to
| Amazon's attention.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Not every one can afford the name brand.
|
| - Sincerely a kid raised on everything store brand.
| saltymug76 wrote:
| I dont think anyone's arguing against generic alternatives of
| name brand items. The issue here is Amazon using up-and-
| coming and popular products as fodder for them to generic-ize
| and push to the top of results, essentially knee capping the
| original seller.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Those original sellers mainly just look like drop-shippers
| to me. So Amazon just going straight to the source and
| selling at lower margin is better for me as a buyer.
| wvenable wrote:
| Is there a business with a "house brand" that doesn't do
| this?
| tomschlick wrote:
| Does Walmart/CostCo/BestBuy/Kroger/etc not do this exact
| thing?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I think the algorithms make the difference here. You
| can't really make a cereal box stand out on a physical
| shelf in any unique way (or you can, but it'll be a cost
| expense. Ruining the point of undercutting). IME with
| online storefronts for traditional brick and mortar their
| own brands never seem to come on top.
|
| Meanwhle I will almost always get an AmazonBasics if it
| exists as a first result.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| All retailers do that. It's called private labels. None of
| the products are made by the retailer either. As
| unfortunate to those who might genuinely believe Trader
| Joes products are unique to them, or that Great Value was
| Walmart using its massive distribution systems to quickly
| scale core products like Milk out. It's all private
| labelling.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Yes, how dare they use their scale to make more cost-
| effective versions of popular things.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| how dare they use their algorithms to make sure all their
| cost effective versions will show up first.
|
| That's probably the more pressing issue.
| the_gorilla wrote:
| I don't think it's part of an antitrust case, but I am tired of
| seeing every item being sold from 200 chinese companies with
| randomly generated names and fake/bought reviews. Walmart has
| started to do something similar with their online store. I'll
| use their words.
|
| > It's easy to sell online with Walmart.com. Partner with the
| largest multi-channel retailer and put your products in front
| of millions of Walmart shoppers.
|
| Americans are used to American storefronts going through
| American regulations, but now you're essentially being
| dropshipped hazardous unregulated products. I generally try to
| buy from companies directly but this hasn't stopped my family
| from buying chinesium children toys for me that go straight
| into the trash.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > you're essentially being dropshipped hazardous unregulated
| products.
|
| How did we end up here? Like why the hell can I buy things on
| Amazon that can't legally be sold on shelves in the US? Why
| aren't retailers suing?
| esskay wrote:
| > Why aren't retailers suing?
|
| Because Amazons wiped a lot of them out, and the ones that
| remain are either doing the same thing, or stand zero
| chance of comign out of it anything less than bankrupt.
|
| Amazon for all its convenience has decimated likely close
| to if not more than a million businesses at this point
| across the world.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| The CPSC has sued and won
| https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2024/CPSC-
| Finds-...
|
| Amazon used the excuse it wasn't acting as a distributor
| and thus shouldn't be held responsible for protecting the
| public from these products
| psunavy03 wrote:
| You mean you don't like having the choice between ZOSLRD-
| branded stuff and TUMACO-branded stuff, both of which have
| descriptions that look like someone put Mandarin Chinese
| through an LLM, because that's probably what they did?
| shitlord wrote:
| Why is it so common for Chinese sellers on Amazon to have
| uppercase company names?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Selling on Amazon requires a registered trademark. If
| you're a random factory in Shenzhen you don't care about
| branding, you just want to be able to sell your stuff on
| Amazon, so you just put together random letters in the hope
| that your registration won't conflict with anything else.
| You don't want to have to deal with back-and-forth with
| USPTO, you don't care about having a meaningful, memorable,
| or interesting name, you _just_ want an Amazon listing.
|
| Coincidentally the majority of USPTO trademark submissions
| are literally just random strings of letters now for this
| reason.
| shitlord wrote:
| That explains the random names, but what's with the upper
| case lettering?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| if I had to take a blind guess: Chinese doesn't have a
| concept of casesensitivity. It's a logographic language
| so casesensitivity is almost irrelevant.
| richwater wrote:
| > I hope they include Amazon's practice of taking popular
| products on their storefront, making generic "Amazon Basics"
| versions, and selling them to undercut the popular options.
|
| I guess you hate every grocery store ever then
| adventured wrote:
| And competition. One of the ways companies like Walmart hold
| their popular brand name companies in check on pricing power
| is through their store brands.
|
| Why should I feel bad about Kraft being under permanent
| pressure by Walmart's Great Value brand?
|
| More competition is needed, not less. Along with more
| transparency. Banning Amazon from competing would be a
| mistake. They need a more level playing field, not fewer
| players.
| LorenDB wrote:
| I don't care who wins the election next month, Lina Khan needs to
| be kept as FTC chair. The FTC has been on a roll the past while.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What has she done that didn't fail or get shot down as
| political overreach?
|
| (not being sarcastic...i mean that i may have missed something
| inadvertently)
| Multicomp wrote:
| Not GP. I would say that her effectiveness is both in Fire
| and Motion [1], while one wants more Fire, before the status
| quo was not only no fire, but also no motion. Even the motion
| is a good starting point that businesses are having
| management adapt their strategies and plans to account for
| the motion, just out self-interested risk mitigation in case
| there is more fire than there currently is today, and that
| fire gets trained on them.
|
| [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-
| motion/
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| A good analogy, but I think you swapped the meaning of fire
| and motion in your usage of it.
|
| In this case, her cases even if lost would be the
| equivalent of cover fire. Businesses need to re-act to the
| cover fire and cannot advance (perform their own motion)
| while she is firing.
|
| The second part is that you would hope/expect her to be
| able to gain territory in the near future via the "motion"
| part of the strategy.
|
| So I agree in your framing, just from my perspective you
| flipped the terminology.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| That seems really bad for the government to be doing this.
| If she is losing, then using the resources of the
| government to harass businesses that are acting lawfully
| seems like fascism.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| I suppose the question is - despite her failures, do we agree
| with the policy that she / the Biden administration are
| pushing?
|
| If so, then if she isn't the right person for the job, is
| there someone who will be more successful?
| hughesjj wrote:
| > didn't fail or get shot down as political overreach?
|
| Progress requires testing the system and seeing where the
| failure points _are_. It 's significantly better than the
| relative nothing we've gotten from past admins.
|
| Also with the current judicial and congressional makeup it's
| a wonder anything gets done.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| but things that do get done were definitely critically
| reviewed, so that's something.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| The FTC has succeeded at a lot of things that just aren't
| very interesting to report on. I'd recommend reading through
| FTC press releases. They generally release a statement
| whenever a major action is started and resolved. By my count
| in the past year or so the FTC was involved in at least 12
| successful anti-monopoly actions (I counted modified mergers,
| killed mergers, and divestments).
|
| The most consequential merger win was probably the NVIDIA/ARM
| merger that died under FTC litigation.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-
| releases/2022/02/...
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Thanks...that's the insight i was hoping for, great links.
| much appreciated.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/never-seen-anything-
| like-...
| megaman821 wrote:
| I don't know if I accept Khan's framing of, even though I
| haven't won any cases I have scared off potential mergers and
| that is a win. I think the US already leans too heavily on
| tying everything up in courts forever.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Was the successful Google antitrust case not brought by the
| feds?
| megaman821 wrote:
| That was the DOJ not the FTC.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Don't fall for the Silicon Valley propaganda that things are
| on the downswing because the FTC is not allowing mergers or
| acquisitions. Plenty of both of those have happened this
| year. DirectTV is in the process of acquiring Dish Network
| and SlingTV which is one of the largest acquisitions of the
| year and should alone perish the thought that mergers aren't
| happening.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If only the FTC could claim credit for the disappearance of
| free money
| megaman821 wrote:
| The claim that there are less mergers happening is from
| Khan not Silcon Valley.
|
| "Sometimes, you know, the companies decide that they're
| going to abandon the merger," Khan said. Stahl asked if
| abandoning a merger amid the FTC's scrutiny was a win, to
| which Khan said, "That's right." https://legal-
| mag.com/ftcs-lina-khan-defends-merger-and-acqu...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's a mix of both. Some mergers fall through under
| regulation fear. Others fall through because aquisitions
| are expensive and it'd take years to make up for the cost
| (like the activision/blizzard one that was announced when
| money was cheap and went through when money became
| expensive).
| mrandish wrote:
| Yes, Khan has been a disaster for the FTC. Grossly
| overreaching, media grandstanding and then quickly losing in
| court in not-even-close rulings is not some kind of win.
| mrkurt wrote:
| I'd piss off a lot of investors I know by saying this -
| nerfing the Adobe and Figma acquisition seems excellent for
| consumer good.
|
| 3 years ago that would have just been rubber stamped.
|
| Their work on non-tech stuff has probably been even more
| effective, too.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >I think the US already leans too heavily on tying everything
| up in courts forever.
|
| yes, because companies have decided to consider courts as a
| cost to do business instead of a regulator they must not piss
| off at any cost. the courts in that capacity will simply be
| abused, especially as these fast moving tech companies can
| make billions beofore a case shuts it all down.
|
| Definitely needs to be some reform to how punishment works,
| especially retroactive costs.
| carabiner wrote:
| Wrath of Khan and I'm here for it.
| hornban wrote:
| I happened to come across her on 60 Minutes a couple of weeks
| ago, and that interview seemed awkward and sound-bitey to me.
| Thinking that she just might not be great at short-form
| segments I dug a little deeper and found an awesome long-form
| interview that she did with the Council on Foreign Relations. I
| highly recommend this to get a feel for what she is actually
| like as a policy person. She really impressed me.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L_QaZk5iJOA
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Prof G also interviewed her recently. It was a good one.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| Nice link, that was an interesting watch.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Too early to call. At least initially, her FTC was incompetent
| to the point that M&A lawyers were urging companies to attempt
| mergers because shit that wouldn't usually get through would
| get bungled in court. She was aggressive but incompetent.
|
| She appears to be improving. But the FTC chair isn't an
| internship.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I am happy for her to be aggressive and would forgive
| mistakes in court simply due to the value brought to society
| by her prominently going after these large anti-competitive
| companies. And yes she might fail to address that as well,
| but I wouldn't ascribe that failure to her competency. The
| reality is that no one in this seat has even been trying.
| They've been asleep at the wheel as the economy gets
| increasingly captured by megacorps that don't really face
| competition. And if she fails to rein them in, it'll be
| because the existing law (antitrust law) is inadequate, more
| than anything else.
|
| I think the attention she's bringing to the issue will cause
| many people to ask why antitrust enforcement has to be so
| hard. Any company with more than $100B in revenue is a quasi-
| government, and damages fair competition merely through their
| existence. Instead of making enforcement rely on years-long
| court cases, we need more immediate ways to break up or
| regulate these companies, and what we have today is not
| enough. If her attempts make more people realize the current
| laws aren't enough, that might be its own form of success.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Competition is the core tenant that makes capitalism beneficial
| to broader society.
|
| Consolidation over the past few decades has limited the capacity
| for firms to compete in many sectors.
|
| So I appreciate the sentiment of what the FTC is trying to do,
| but they really come across as amateurs bringing far too many
| lawsuits and often with weak legal reasoning/argumentation.
|
| In many of the cases they've brought there exists alternative,
| yet stronger arguments that could have been made.
|
| I'd support congress legislating towards more competition (e.g.
| forcing open standards for things like APIs/chat clients/smart
| watches etc), or a more active FTC.
|
| But the current approach is far too disorganized and weak.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I mean, I'm not a lawyer so I won't really judge what's a good
| or bad argument. My impression is that forcing open standards
| is a much harder argument than an antitrust one. Open standards
| can come at a later step.
|
| And if you haven't kept up this year, Chevron being overturned
| is showing that the SCOTUS is more than happy to reduce FTC
| interference.
| taeric wrote:
| Anyone have an easy summary of what all was dismissed? This story
| is surprisingly light on details. (Did I just miss them?)
| BadHumans wrote:
| From what I have read, the pieces that were dismissed are still
| sealed so we don't know yet.
| taeric wrote:
| The ruling is linked in another thread. The last two pages
| outline what all is dismissed. My naive read is that a lot of
| the claims were dismissed already. I have no idea if that is
| normal or not. I also assume nobody really expected the
| entire case to get dismissed?
|
| I am interested in reading an analysis of this.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| All of the federal counts move forward, some of the counts
| relating to specific states who joined the lawsuit are
| dismissed.
|
| > Last week, before the order was unsealed, some of the initial
| coverage called it a "partial victory" for Amazon, but as it
| turns out, the portion of the ruling in which the company was
| victorious was relatively slim.
|
| > The areas where the judge granted Amazon's motion to dismiss
| were related to specific aspects of state claims, including
| elements of allegations brought by Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
| Oklahoma, and Maryland. Eighteen states and one territory,
| Puerto Rico, joined the FTC in the lawsuit against Amazon.
|
| https://www.geekwire.com/2024/unsealed-order-in-amazon-antit...
| akavi wrote:
| Reminder that a mere 15 years ago, Walmart was the unfair
| monopolist whose market position rendered competition infeasible.
|
| Also unclear to me why "ecommerce" is a market unto itself that
| we should be concerned with level of concentration in, as opposed
| to simply a slice of the broader "retail" market (which is much
| less concentrated)
| andrewia wrote:
| Yes, but we don't know when the next technology shift will
| happen. Amazon might be able to abuse their position for
| decades if a disruption doesn't come.
|
| Aa for E-commerce, it can have a larger inventory than physical
| retail. You're not going to find many solar charge controllers
| or mechanical keyboard parts at Walmart, but Amazon will have
| tons of options deliverable within 48 hours. Few sites can have
| comparable shipping cost/speed and you have to research each
| one, whereas Amazon enjoys the position of being the default.
|
| A decade ago, I helped a small Amazon seller with his
| inventory, and it was eye opening to see all the fees and risks
| compared to eBay. But he couldn't sell on eBay without losing a
| massive portion of his customer base, despite their better
| shopping/buying UX in my experience.
| LordKeren wrote:
| The criticisms of Walmart 15 years ago are still pretty valid
| today, so I'm not sure this whataboutism really resonates with
| people.
|
| It seems completely reasonable to split brick and mortar sales
| from web-based, given that the business model is pretty
| significantly different.
|
| And AWS
| eikenberry wrote:
| This is why pinning anti-trust to monopolies is a mistake.
| Anti-trust is about competition and creating more of it... and
| if it's about increasing competition then they both need
| attention. They are both very big and abuse their dominance in
| ways that stifles competition. That is, in the last 15 years we
| added another company that needs anti-trust attention, nothing
| was replaced.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| The original complaint has a number of pages starting at 39 (43
| in pdf) dedicated to defining the relevant markets and why they
| feel brick and mortar isn't part of the relevant market.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134amazonec...
| AntiEgo wrote:
| Amazon's "favoured nation" policy stipulates that vendors can't
| sell an item anywhere else for a lower price. This policy seems
| designed by them to put a moat between them and retail.
| resters wrote:
| Amazon currently does not honor its prime shipping agreement with
| all domestic customers and has no customer service path to get
| the issue resolved. In some places USPS is unreliable and Amazon
| insists on using it repeatedly, violating its own promise to
| customers. This suggests to me that Amazon faces no competitive
| pressure to deliver good customer service.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Didn't they drop the two-day shipping promise a while back?
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| It's only two day in America? It's next day in Australia. And
| we haven't even had Amazon for long...
| dymk wrote:
| It depends where you live and what's in the closest
| warehouse. Many things are overnight delivered in the
| morning for me now, as I have a fulfillment center close
| by.
| packetlost wrote:
| > we haven't even had Amazon for long
|
| Yeah, that's probably _why_. They get people hooked with
| actually good service and then drop quality to save money
| once they 've captured the market.
| NavinF wrote:
| It's usually same-day where I live in the bay area. Same
| for Walmart, Costco, etc
| ceejayoz wrote:
| In the US it's next day sometimes, a week other times, and
| 30 days on the slow boat from China.
|
| I suspect it isn't next-day in, say, Broome. Last time I
| was in Hobart even it definitely wasn't next or two-day
| shipping, lol.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| _> In some places USPS is unreliable_
|
| I can live with USPS but what made me actually cancel my Prime
| account was their use of On-Trac shipping in California. They
| literally missed every single time and had to come back the
| next day.
| slibhb wrote:
| More and more, antitrust is a means for people who dislike big,
| successful companies for no particular reason to attack them. On
| some level, the government is just throwing its weight around.
| The message is "don't forget who's really in charge."
|
| Consider all the "Lina Khan fans" you see on HN and elsewhere.
| They rarely articulate why the government should be suing these
| companies, which laws that company broke, or if those laws make
| sense. They just don't like big companies and want them taken
| down a peg.
|
| The Google suit was particularly egregious. There was no
| alternative to Google search because no one had built a better
| product for reasons that have nothing to do with anticompetitive
| behavior. And the real irony here is that Google appears to be
| behind on LLMs, which have finally given us an alternative to
| typing things into Google. So the government picked the exact
| moment when Google's search market share is seriously threatened
| to sue!
| xracy wrote:
| The entire conceit of capitalism is that competition is good,
| and that competition forces companies to better address their
| customers needs. If they're not doing this, then someone can
| come in and undercut them.
|
| But what happens in the scenario where the person comes in,
| undercuts them, and then sells to the bigger company? How does
| this force the larger company to change? This is like antitrust
| 101.
|
| I don't understand people who claim to be proponents of
| capitalism and are opposed to antitrust. If you want the free
| market to determine _anything_ with fewer regulations, then we
| need antitrust. Otherwise we need a _lot_ more regulations.
| Which one would you prefer?
|
| I have a feeling you wouldn't recognize anticompetitive
| behavior despite it hitting you in the face for the past 10
| years.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Here you go:
|
| * I'm a big fan of Chairwoman Khan.
|
| * The government should be suing many of the companies FTC is
| going after because their behavior yields bad outcomes for
| consumers, such as worse health outcomes after a private equity
| group captures an entire geography then drives up prices while
| reducing quality.
|
| * They tend to have broken laws around creating and abusing
| monopoly positions, usually with various illegal details like
| kickback arrangements and self-dealing.
|
| * These laws make sense.
|
| * I don't mind big companies and many of the companies FTC goes
| after are not particularly big.
|
| * Companies that utilize edge cases in market dynamics to
| produce bad outcomes for consumers should be taken down a peg.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| On the charge of just wanting to break up big companies because
| they're big, I plead not guilty on the virtue of this not being
| a crime. The whole point of breaking up large companies is
| because their size renders them unaccountable quazi-
| governments. To properly regulate them requires making the
| government _even bigger_ with ever-more-complicated regulatory
| apparatus, compliance departments, administrative rulemaking,
| and "special understandings" (read: giving up) for the largest
| players.
|
| I'll put it to you another way: if you want smaller government,
| you need smaller corporations, too.
|
| > There was no alternative to Google search because no one had
| built a better product for reasons that have nothing to do with
| anticompetitive behavior.
|
| I would first argue that Google's unparalleled superiority in
| search is overblown. For one, there's ads in it. _As Google 's
| founders themselves stated_, ads are a perverse incentive to
| ruin the search experience in favor of advertisers and I can
| point to several examples[0] in which this happened.
|
| There are paid search engines that do not have advertising
| (e.g. Kagi) but they themselves have complained about the
| struggle that is competing with Google. For example, on iOS,
| there's only five default search engine options, there's no way
| to add a different search engine as default, and Google pays
| $$$ to Apple to be set to the default and for that search
| engine option to be buried in Settings. I don't see how that
| _isn 't_ anticompetitive.
|
| On a technical level, Google has a supracompetitive advantage,
| too. A lot of websites have restrictive policies that forbid
| scraping except for Google and Bing. This means only those
| search engines can actually return results for those sites.
|
| [0] Product ads in web search, every programming search query
| giving you four or five ads before the actual StackOverflow
| answer you're interested in, image search becoming a glorified
| product search with actual functionality being removed, Gemini
| rozap wrote:
| Point taken about the level of discourse on the internet and
| the mainstream media, no argument there. It is painful, but
| just because the _discourse_ around the topic is smooth brained
| doesn 't mean that the position is wrong. This is something
| that I struggle with. Sometimes the discourse is so
| unimaginably stupid that it pushes you to default to the other
| side's point of view, but that doesn't actually mean you got to
| that point of view through any reasoning, you got there from
| emotion.
|
| There are the standard points around consumer protection.
| Ticketmaster, Adobe, Amazon, really do engage in anti
| competitive practices and then burn the consumer once they've
| consolidated power. People feel that, but to your point, can't
| articulate all the moving pieces, and that's fine, use the mute
| button. God help us if Kroger and Safeway get their way and
| merge.
|
| To your point about "don't forget who's really in charge." - it
| might feel like there's no upside here, but in reality you do
| end up with companies that have more power than the government,
| and that's a dangerous road to go down in a democracy, since
| there's no real way to hold them accountable. Obviously the
| government is deeply flawed in a million different ways, but
| ultimately there are elected officials, which cannot be said of
| private companies.
|
| Also Lina Khan talks a lot about resiliency. Too much
| efficiency can make things worse [1]. With mass consolidation,
| black swan events lead to and outsized impact compared to what
| they would in an economy where there aren't monopolies
| everywhere. Climate change, pandemics, instability in Europe
| and the middle east, etc mean that it's worth trading extreme
| efficiency for robustness.
|
| [1] https://sohl-dickstein.github.io/2022/11/06/strong-
| Goodhart....
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >hey rarely articulate why the government should be suing these
| companies, which laws that company broke, or if those laws make
| sense.
|
| Because it's not productive and against HN guidelines to say
| "read the article".
|
| >Last year, the FTC alleged Amazon.com, which has 1 billion
| items in its online superstore, was using an algorithm that
| pushed up prices U.S. households paid by more than $1 billion.
| Amazon has said in court papers it stopped using the program in
| 2019.
|
| Price fixing is generally an illegal tactic. I'm not a lawyer
| but there's plenty of legal dictionaries that laymen can
| understand on the whats, why's, and hows. So yes, the goverment
| should sue if a law is suspected of being broken.
|
| >The Google suit was particularly egregious. There was no
| alternative to Google search because no one had built a better
| product for reasons that have nothing to do with
| anticompetitive behavior.
|
| did you ignore the point where google was spending 250m a year
| to Apple to be the default search engine on IOS?
|
| Please actually read the topics before complaining that there
| is no rationale behind it. You're doing the very thing you
| accuse others of doing. YOu're not providing an argument you're
| saying arguments don't exist and inserting a strawman.
|
| >the government picked the exact moment when Google's search
| market share is seriously threatened to sue!
|
| Googles been under scrutiny since pre-pandemic. There is no
| such thing as "good timing" for a lawsuit because they take
| years to bring to court, let alone to resolve.
| Spivak wrote:
| > Amazon's practice of coercing sellers who want their products
| to be Prime eligible into using Fulfillment by Amazon, which
| makes it more difficult and more expensive for rivals to offer
| increased product selection.
|
| How would this even work? It's on Amazon to deliver your stuff in
| 2 days but they also have to allow 3rd party shipping they have
| no control over? Are they allowed to require such a seller to
| fulfill the order by a specific date?
|
| Because to me a lowly customer Prime === Item Shipped by Amazon.
| That's the whole value.
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