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Comment by theturtletalks | Hacker News Reader

This is different that Costco selling their own brand vodka or toilet paper because buyers can see those items side by side when shopping. Amazon has their products on the top every time and if 3rd party sellers want to be next to them, they have to pay for ads. Amazon doesn't pay for its own ads so they can effectively hide their competition.

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You say Amazon doesn't pay for ads, but by them taking the space of the ads others aren't buying, they're losing ad money, which probably equates back to the value of the ad. ?

Good point, is Amazon only PPC?

I mean, they own the whole platform so click fraud would be easy to get away with but hopefully that's not happening. I'm not sure if anyone has the ability to audit their honesty.

> because buyers can see those items side by side when shopping

I can't speak for Costco, but that's not really true in a conventional supermarket though.

It's pretty well known that food manufacturers [can/are required to] pay to get better shelf placement (e.g. eye level vs. way high up or way down low): https://qz.com/807723/inside-the-secret-backroom-deals-big-b...

I believe amazone should pay for their own advertisement to well themsell and prices should be transparent (amazone has to pay them self what other would have to pay), _because then they would still need to pay tax_ for this. At least in countries where taxes are not very low this could make the situation slightly better. Through not that much better tbh.

Yes this sounds like an antitrust situation to me (I know they are not technically a monopoly but different countries have different takes on these laws so it's worth considering why they exist).

A phone wholesaler with a retail business will be broken up since it is a problem for their other retail customers.

This is quite similar where Amazon is acting as both the provider and a retail customer competing against their other retail (marketplace business) customers, with a number of advantages.

Having them forced to provide services at arm's length, at published costs, with audited public books and no inside information would level the playing field. They probably already account for advertising "spend" internally anyway if they're smart, since as another poster alluded they miss out on PPC when someone clicks on an Amazon product so need to know what it cost them.

That is how it works in the physical goods world, at least. A corporate owned store "buys" it's inventory from the corporation. I'm not sure exactly how taxes intersect with those transactions, but they establish a much clearer picture of how money moves within the organization. Opportunity costs become a lot clearer when it's not "we could have made X amount from ads here" but instead "we spent X on advertising."

You think store brands are sitting side by side with name brands? If anything they’re at eye level. And with amazon, they can’t actually delete the listing, but maybe you have to scroll down a bit.

You think store brands are sitting side by side with name brands?

Based on my last trip to the supermarket, absolutely.

The stores have to put their brand next to the name-brand, or nobody will see their stuff.

They can't just shove the name brand items to the bottom of the shelf because the brands have done all of the advertising, and those are the logos, colors, and packaging that people are looking for.

Yeah, this. I often buy house brands of things like Ibuprofen (same stuff, but cheaper), but they absolutely put it next to the well-advertised brands, because otherwise finding it would be a nightmare and nobody would bother.

Display in a store is much more limited than online. They have to put like items together if they want customers to find them.

Then that's even worse! They're counting on the fact that you're going to look at one item, to make you see theirs. The point isn't that Amazon is great, it's just that stores do the exact same dumb shit and we've grown accustomed to it.

Why the sudden outrage?

PS: I didn't read the article because of what I consider an even more grotesque form of consumer manipulation...blocking your news website from displaying the full article unless you interact with it, and breaking reader mode so that you have to see their ads/graphics. I'd get my pitchfork out for that.

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