
Ask HN: Is Amazon “dumping” streaming video and should it be prevented? - danblick
From my understanding, Amazon doesn&#x27;t currently make money off its Amazon Instant Video service.<p>Cheap, high quality streaming TV like this probably hurts (1) traditional TV channels, (2) online competitors like Netflix, and (3) any new companies trying to enter the online streaming market.  On the other hand, consumers ought to be happy that their consumption is being subsidized (for now).<p>Is it fair to call this behavior &quot;dumping&quot;? At what point does &quot;dumping&quot; lead to anti-trust action by the government?
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twobyfour
And Uber is dumping taxi services by selling them below cost (subsidized by
VC) to undermine the competition. Nobody's even tried going after them from
that angle.

The US government, at least, basically doesn't enforce anti-trust regulations
any more. And even if it did, the current administration's philosophy
essentially doesn't include the enforcement of ANY regulations against
businesses for the public good.

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exikyut
> The US government, at least, basically doesn't enforce anti-trust
> regulations any more. And even if it did, the current administration's
> philosophy essentially doesn't include the enforcement of ANY regulations
> against businesses for the public good.

Yup.

2001: "Microsoft is abusing their power to ship their own Internet browser on
PCs!"

2017: [Washington DC] "We'd like to place an order for 2,000 Chromebooks,
please."

~~~
d0lph
Those things aren't very similar.

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jgowdy
There’s a fine line here between dumping, bundling, and loss leading. Amazon
bundles video with a Prime subscription. Not all customers under that
promotion have to be profitable, and not all of them have to be profitable in
the same way (based on usage pattern and the associated costs). Loss leading
is also a legitimate technique to drive customers into the funnel for up
sales.

For this to be properly considered dumping, Amazon would have to be
intentionally putting price pressure on Netflix and Hulu by under pricing
their offering significantly.

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aidenn0
IANAL, but in the US, this is one of the hardest anti-trust cases to make.

See e.g.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#United_States)

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freeone3000
It doesn't hurt #2 because, at least in the past, Netflix was actually
_cheaper_ than prime. It's still cheaper month-to-month.

Moreover, due to copyright and the existing streaming deals, any new companies
trying to enter the online market will be selling a different product package.
They'll have different shows, essentially selling a different service. It's
not as if PBS or FoodNetwork have been "dumping" their video streaming
services as a detriment to Netflix.

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jotjotzzz
No. If Amazon expects to sell their hardware, such as the Amazon Fire TVs,
Echo, and their tablets -- they heavily market these services on those
hardware and it is part of their benefits proposition. Now that YouTube is no
longer on the Echo and on their tablets, they better keep it alive. It's also
partly subsidized via Prime subscription.

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cjbprime
Isn't it part of a Prime subscription?

~~~
danblick
Yeah, you could argue, "Prime is sufficiently expensive and video streaming is
a sufficiently large part of Prime that it's not dumping".

I can see that, it's possible. I mean, if Prime cost $1, it wouldn't be a good
argument, but Prime is more expensive than that in reality. How much of the
value of Prime is in streaming video (as opposed to free shipping)? It's hard
to say (for an outsider at least, I'm sure someone at the company has run the
numbers).

The gray area here does make the situation a little more confusing...

For the sake of argument, what if we suppose Prime costs $1/year and the value
of free shipping is more than that. Would that be the kind of situation where
the government would take antitrust action?

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ggg9990
The government won't take any antitrust action because its enforcement
capabilities against corporations have been eviscerated. If the same people
who prosecuted Microsoft were in charge today, there would be active lawsuits
against ALL of the major tech companies. The book "Chickenshit" is a good one
to read in this area.

