AMZN

piezoe said:
If your software works with fewer bugs, if you deliver faster than the competition, if you make customer returns incredibly simple, if you respect your customers time more than your competitors do, if your pricing is more up front and honest, if your customers choose you over your competitors, are you "unfairly" undercutting competitors.

Traditional monopolies were built by selling at a loss to force competitors out of business or to sell to you (think J.D. Rockefeller, who famously said, "competition is a sin." ) Amazon so far as we know, does not engage in any of these practices. It buys businesses at competitive prices that are not competitors at the time of acquisition. This practice allows Amazon to move into entirely new ventures. It competes by doing things better than the competition. Is that unfair?

Amazon is not trying to sell at lower prices than Walmart or at a loss, in an attempt to drive Walmart out of business, and it is not interested in buying Walmart. It competes with Walmart.com by doing things much better than Walmart.com does them! And it will eventually put Walmart.com out of business, unless Walmart changes the way it does business. Amazon buys, so far as I know, only non-competing businesses! Although Amazon was trying to make headway into the grocery business before it bought Whole Foods, no one in their right mind would, before the purchase of Whole Foods, have said that Whole Foods and Amazon were legitimate competitors.

I think Amazon will come through any FTC investigation, based on current statutory law, without much difficulty. Where they are more vulnerable would seem to be within the political arena. But I don't think they face much difficulty there either.

So long as Amazon has legitimate competitors in all its areas of operation I think it will easily withstand FTC scrutiny. The problem for Amazon is rather an ironic one. If it doesn't stop doing things so much better than the competition it may indeed eventually end up having a monopoly in one area or another. Then, through no fault of its own, Amazon may become an accidental monopoly.
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It's just the latest market manipulation via POTUS. For similar actions this week, look at facebook and google
 
Amazon Brand

Amazon is now the world's most valuable brand at $315.5 billion, which is up more than half on a year ago, according to Kantar's BrandZ Top 100. This is the first time in a dozen years that the top spot has not been occupied by Apple or Google. Here's Kantar's Doreen Wang, giving CNBC a masterclass in marketing-speak: "The boundaries are blurring as technology fluency allow brands, such as Amazon, Google and Alibaba, to offer a range of services across multiple consumer touchpoints." CNBC
 
Amazon's giant Sudoku puzzle. Wired visited one of Amazon's cutting-edge warehouses in Colorado, where robots and people work together to ensure that customers get their packages delivered on time. To help the robots move in the warehouse, the company created a cloud-based coordination system that directs where each robot goes, when they should recharge, and when they should get back to work. An Amazon robotics manager describes managing the robots as "basically a very large sudoku puzzle."
 
Wonder if these congressmen have taken short positions since they're protected from inside trading?

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/do...ntract-over-investigation-of-amazon-conflicts

Lawmakers urge Trump to delay $10B defense contract over Amazon conflicts probe

The finalists for the large contract -- known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) -- are Amazon and Microsoft, but allegations about conflicts of interest related to Amazon are currently under investigation by the Defense Department's Inspector General's Office. The concerns are based on Defense Department staffers who worked on the deal who previously or subsequently worked for Amazon, or in at least once case, both. The contract is expected to be awarded as soon as August 23.
 
Amazon Ring


Amazon's Ring smart-doorbell subsidiary has now partnered with over 400 police forces in the U.S. to allow cops to ask owners for footage from the devices. Privacy advocates are heavily against the program, as the doorbell-cameras capture images of many people who are innocent of crimes. Fortune
 
Amazon Antitrust


The Journal is reporting that Amazon tweaked its product-search system to potentially favor its own brands. The internally controversial change apparently promotes the visibility of the products that are the most profitable for Amazon, rather than those that are most relevant to users. If so, this will be of intense interest to antitrust regulators in the U.S. and EU, where Amazon's stewardship of its marketplace is already under scrutiny. WSJ
 
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