MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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How Amazon and other cash-burning giants may be illegally cornering the market
By ocean-kat on Fri, 08/16/2019 - 4:35pm |The second branch is the Amazon Marketplace: a virtual mall in which sellers pay Amazon for the right to display and sell their goods on its platform. The crucial difference is that in the Marketplace, sellers shoulder the costs associated with storage and fulfillment. In recent years the share of the Marketplace has grown dramatically. In 2001, 6 percent of merchandise sales on Amazon came through the Marketplace. Today, the figure is around 58 percent.
URL:
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2019/superpredators/
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This appears to be what Amazon did with books, where it all started. They became the near monopoly seller of books putting most other sellers out of the market by their super low prices. Then they began to pressure content producers to take lower remuneration to get their books on Amazon. The authors and publishers had no choice but to knuckle under since there were few other outlets left to sell their books. In the short term this appears to be good for the consumer since we get lower prices but in the long run if content producers aren't paid there will be fewer content producers and they will put less effort into quality content since they're getting less and less for the time spent producing it.
by ocean-kat on Fri, 08/16/2019 - 4:43pm
The biggest bait and switch of all times.
by artappraiser on Fri, 08/16/2019 - 11:08pm
[Finished updating now]
Just a reality check - this is similar to how Microsoft e.g. used its DOS/Windows monopoly to squeeze out Lotus 123 for its new bought Excel, how Apple shoved out RealPlayer and Adobe, how Wal-Mart got Vlasic pickles to run a special then never let them un-run it til bankrupt, and so on. Control the platform/chain/catalog and you dictate the terms - a succession of monopolistic practices where possible, from railroad and oil barons on up.
Often there's talk of breaking up or regulating these monopolies and quasi-monoplies up to the point where their leverage disappears or weakens - Microsoft's stranglehold was weakened by Linux, the new mobile phone platform and Google's free (search-paid instead of licensed) Office over Microsoft's. Apple's leap to iPad failed to extend its iPhone juggernaut while iTunes shriveled and Macbooks flatlined and iPods went extinct, leaving Apple as a 1-trick pony, sorry, gorilla again.
Google and Facebook are splitting 70% of *all* industry ad dollars. Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google split 90%+ of Cloud revenues. There's nothing like Amazon's online store tied to its vertical expansion to include globally distributed warehouses, control of shipping incl own trucks and planes along w control of 3rd parties, control of new bricks 'n mortar chains such as Whole Foods... but it's still not that different from Wal-Mart trying to monopolize prescriptions sales nationwide or earlier music sales (before Apple iTunes killed the physical record market) using its own innovative regional hub and distribution warehouses providing Just-in-time restocking while avoiding (banrupting) city centers and focusing on less costly city edge greenfield megastores it could get to faster.
And yes, re polls and likeability, Amazon's always passed on savings and convenience to consumers (and had tiny profits if at all through most of its existence), thus the attractiveness of Bezos and Buffett trying to end-round health costs,, while Facebook is really gouging advertisers and does really really creepy things with your data and privacy while lying about it, with Google a bit further behind in creepy/just be evil territory.
BTW, Google's bought a ton of startups to try to extend its product line. Android, Google Maps and Google Office, now Google Cloud are a resounding success, but 90% have been failures.
[finished writing now]
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 2:14am
But Amazon is not buying these people out nor offering to do so.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the way I understand the situation: Amazon lured all these businesses in with the idea that they would handle all the servicing of selling as long as they bring prices down and brought a huge market for their goods so they could grow their customers BUT NOW they are going back on that and expecting more expenses paid by those businesses. Now since they have been made reliant on Amazon as they haven't built their own storage facilities and packing and shipping programs and customer service in order to offer lower prices than they normally would. It's more of the Walmart model of squeezing the supplier and then make them your slave. It's kind of difficult to go off on your own if you have to do so by offering higher prices than you did before.
Let me be clear: I use Amazon often. But then I'm a realist, not an idealistic revolutionary. I figure out what about the current situation will benefit me and I use it. It is what it is.
Looks to me like it is true this will lead to less variety in choice, it has that monopoly affect. And I can see it in the choice by millennials to want to buy second hand clothing, they want the low prices and the variety of choices too.The problem is somebody has to originally make create/manufacture the stuff.
The whole thing says to me: eventual lowering of GDP everywhere, smaller number of businesses, fewer choices. Which is what millennials want for health of the environment but the down side is mostly service jobs at low pay. It will take an extremely special product to get retail prices so one can afford all the extra costs of running a business. ou can see it on sites like Etsy which were supposed to be an alternative where craft quality or inventive goods are offered at prices that would pay the labor for creating them, they end up offering their stuff real cheap to compete. This is what is already happening one can see it, in the extreme competion.to develop branding at places like Instagram, so that people will eventually pay you more money than what they can get similar on Amazon for very little.
by artappraiser on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 1:43pm
Didn't mean to imply Amazon was being nice - just that they were being similar.
Apple negotiated music rights & other royalties way down - "choose us or you'll be in the desert".
All of these "communities"/platforms are built on these kind of conceits.
Uber's waiting to drive out the competition so they can raise the price (not driver pay) and pay back their investors.
All this preached love, serving the customers, the suppliers, etc. - easily discarded at the right time.
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 2:33pm
Yes, when I posted, " what Amazon did with books, where it all started," I didn't mean it started with Amazon but that Amazon started with books.
I still remember in the early days of the internet when a group of brilliant programmers spent a year developing what was considered by those in the know as the most innovative internet browser, the early version of firefox. As we were all waiting with anticipation for it's release, just days before Microsoft decided to give away Internet Explorer for free and totally destroyed Netscape's business model. They had no choice but to give firefox away for free after a year in development.
Amazon is a gorilla of the moment and there are so many problems with it's business model. Problems that are hard to see for the ordinary person who only see how that business model benefits them.
eta: I want to add this even though you've replied since my addition is unrelated to your reply.
Why is it a problem that Microsoft decided to give away IE for free? The consumer hugely benefits in that they now get IE for free and can download what was the much superior Firefox for free. Well now no young group of programmers will look at browsers and think I can make a much better browser and make a good amount of money selling it for $10 or $20. But it's not just browsers. Every time young programmers look at competing with the behemoths they look at the Netscape story as a cautionary tale.
And it's not really free. The cost of creating Internet Explorer is folded into cost of the Microsoft operating system. Worse yet, other browsers are paid for through other means. Google Chrome isn't actually free. The cost of development is paid for with increased browser data collection that google can use to sell ads in other parts of it's business.
by ocean-kat on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 4:48pm
Here's one thing I've seen going to EBay to buy stuff for myself and others and then working hard to find lowest price. I'm coming from this place: a person who has loved real auctions my whole life and worked for auction houses and as bidder for others at them. To this day I mourn the passing of the 1990's Ebay where every item was auctioned. As soon as the "buy it now" option invaded, a whole bunch of much bigger companies invaded and took it over, just basically using the site as another sales venue, and this killed the idea of small sellers doing auctions, they'd do the same.
That's the past, just to set up the history.
What I want to mention is what I've seen a lot of evidence of the last couple of years.
I've run across a huge number of sellers, including Chinese ones, that list their goods at all three places:
Amazon, Ebay and Etsy.
At the same time. The prices on their offering varies for the same item, depending on their costs.
A few examples just so it's understood what I am talking about: jewelry-making supplies; plexiglass for whatever; picture framing supplies; printing of public domain images on canvas or metal. You eventually realize that it is the same exact seller, listing on all 3 sites. Some go further and list on specialiy sites, too, catering to whatever clientele, hobby, interest.
They are sort of protecting themselves if they decide not to list on one of the sites, they've still got the others. Or it is reflected in how they price. Some people don't bother to shop by price, you see, sometimes you just get a sucker who doesn't check you are offering it lower elsewhere. It does require getting real organized about automating listings. But once they have done that, they can be more flexible.
by artappraiser on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 3:44pm
P.S. I should throw in what I have learned a lot about this learning about the out-of-print used & antiquarian book market the past year or so. Many of those businesspeople list both on Amazon and on one or several of the big antiquarian book dealer sites as well, like Abe Books or Al Libris (Bookfinder.com is the tool where you see that clearly, it gives you all the offerings of the books across the world,and tells you who is the actual vendor selling it. There is where you see that the vendor is offering it at more than one conglomerate site, including Amazon, and how the price differs depending upon the fees to them where you buy it.
Here is one crazy thing that has developed from that situation, to game the reality of people who have no time to check prices
There are scammers out there who have set themselves up as supposed book sellers (I imagine they are like in Thailand and Nigeria) when what they are actually doing is an automated offering of the out-of-print book when they have zero inventory, they don't actually have the book, they probably have zero books. If they get an order, they just buy the book from one of the real dealers and have it sent to you. They offer the book at an exorbitant price on the conglomerate sites, this shows up on Bookfinder. The results you get for a book are sorted by price, and you will often see, for example, 10 vendors are offering it at like $40 to $200 depending on condition and their overhead and things like that. THEN you see these scam guys at the bottom of your results, they are offering the very same but for like $1,200! They are doing that because every once in while, a blue moon, someone who has money and no time to shop for prices and no understanding of what makes an out-of-print book valuable, orders a book from them and they make out like bandits on the one transaction. I.E., the buyer is desperate to find a birthday gift for the guy who has everything but likes fishing, so they are buying him a rare book on fishing, and they overpay without researching price, just grab the first example they see who in reality is just a re-sale broker. This is using the automation in a way not intended, of course.
by artappraiser on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 4:09pm
Netscape made the mistake of rewiting its browser, took much longer than expected, 2-3 years - by that point they were dead. But maybe they were dead already, this was just a way of softwning the blow.
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 5:19pm
Yeah, I knew I might have a few of the details wrong. My memory is pretty good but definitely not photographic and I didn't feel like refreshing my memory with a search of the history. And it's possible that in the end it was inevitable that an internet browser would be included as part of an operating system. Computers and the operating system were a growing thing before the internet and any need for an internet browser. That was going to change. But I do think the gist of my version is accurate.
by ocean-kat on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 5:40pm
Yes, I think a free browser was pretty hard to compete against, whatever marketshare Netscape had before. Microsoft just banked its Windows monopoly money.
Tho pretty similar to Google giving away its (search-funded) Office Suite or competing against Apple by giving away (search-funded) mobile operating systems to handset makers.
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 7:10pm
Oh I can definitely see the equivalence in evil bland Microsoft killing all the innovation.
In totalitarianism you can make the trains run on time but this also comes along with banning degenerate art (and if you are a Soviet, you might not be able to make the trains run on time either...)
by artappraiser on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 3:18pm
Nate Silver and Josh Barro (business reporter @ NYMag) were having a discussion on the political angle as regards Amazon, based on a Vox article on how popular Amazon is as an institution:
by artappraiser on Sat, 08/17/2019 - 2:19am