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Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

Walmart.com is another seller marketplace that does big volumes and works similarly to Amazon.

Still, I think Amazon is doing some pretty anticompetitive things, and the FTC lawsuit against them seems like it has merit in my layperson’s eyes.

Nobody else besides Amazon can get a random product to my door in under 12 hours for any reasonable cost. If I buy the product direct from the manufacturer I often get charged shipping. That situation could be easily argued to be a monopoly.

Apple vs. Google isn’t that much of a choice, either. There used to be so many smartphone options: BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm, and Symbian all existed at the same time as the iPhone and Android.

Now it’s just two, and most governments don’t seem all that interested in curtailing some of their most anticompetitive practices.

You don’t have to be a pure monopoly be in a small group of “lords” with a position of power that cannot possibly be overturned.

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> Nobody else besides Amazon can get a random product to my door in under 12 hours. If I buy the product direct from the manufacturer I often get charged shipping. That situation could be easily argued to be a monopoly.

Why do Amazon have a monopoly on this? Is it because they are engaging in anti-competitive practices preventing competitors from offering the same thing or do they just have the best logistics expertise and setup in the industry?

That's a genuine question btw because it matters a lot for whether or not regulation/the state should attempt to resolve it.

Nothing preclude from Amazon being good at shipping products while still engaging in anticompetitive behaviors.

They were a first mover and have captured the market to the point where no amount of private investment could spawn a true competitor.

You have to have Amazon’s sales volume before owning a delivery and logistics empire makes any financial sense, and you can’t provide Amazon’s level of service and low costs without owning your own global logistics company.

Then you’ve got the fact that Amazon’s technology infrastructure is a profit center. In contrast, any e-commerce competitor has to pay retail rates for cloud computing or run a data center as a cost center. Amazon e-commerce lost money for decades while AWS propped it up.

The anticompetitive practices come from the ways in which they exploit this enviable position, like the issue the FTC is suing them over where they are charging their merchants money to fight over search ranking, and knowingly promoting inferior and/or less relevant products with the result of raising prices for consumers and merchants artificially. Merchants can’t refuse to play the game because if you don’t sell on Amazon you lose most of the addressable customer base.

Amazon built its own logistics network to improve its service and margins. I don't think they ought to be punished for it. To do so would be to deny economies of scale.

Being successful is okay, but abusing your success isn’t.

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