>It will be hard for the court to argue that amazon should start recommending more expensive items to consumers, just to push consumers into looking for a cheaper platform.
Yes, 100% this. That's why I said that this lawsuit has a major remedy problem. Even if the court agrees this is anticompetitive, how do you fix it?
Amazon isn’t recommending “more expensive” items to consumers, it’s offering different products.
It should be recommending the best product for the user at the price it can offer the product at.
The fact that the product exists $1 cheaper on another site does not make it not the best recommendation for the customer’s need. If I search “tablet” are you saying I should be recommended a cheap off brand tablet promoted to me because Amazon has the cheapest price or an iPad even though I can buy an iPad on apple.com for $10 cheaper?
>The fact that the product exists $1 cheaper on another site does not make it not the best recommendation for the customer’s need. If I search “tablet” are you saying I should be recommended a cheap off brand tablet promoted to me because Amazon has the cheapest price or an iPad even though I can buy an iPad on apple.com for $10 cheaper?
I think you are misunderstanding the issue. Amazon is selectively determining to show the "buy box" on a specific product page based on whether the prices for that SKU on Amazon are competitive with prices for the same SKU on other websites.
In your example, Amazon might not have a buy box for a given iPad model if the same model was available on apple.com for less. The presence of cheaper non-iPad tablets would not impact the iPad buy box.
I was referencing the article which seems to indicate it’s more than just a buy box issue.
> Today, Amazon tells sellers that if it detects a lower price for their products on any other online store, they will be punished, which is to say, their ability to get their products onto a place on the Amazon website where customers click will go away. The net effect, as Amazon itself wrote, is that "prices will go up."
The insurmountable problem is that the practical interests of "consumers shopping on Amazon" don't actually align with the abstract interests of "consumers in general" that the government is purporting to defend. On Amazon we want to find the right item (search, description, reviews), have strong confidence in the inventory and shipping promises (fulfilled by Amazon) and have reasonable confidence we're not getting screwed on price including shipping (Buybox, Prime eligible etc). If you chop those things apart it becomes essentially impossible to offer the overall experience that consumers clearly prefer.
The cause of this is that it should be an anti-trust violation for any wholesaler or manufacturer to dictate retail prices to the retailer. They agree on the wholesale price because that's what they're negotiating with one another, then the retailer chooses the retail price in their store.
Now if Amazon wants the MFN clause, no problem -- but it's the wholesale price they can't sell to someone else below, not the retail price. If Amazon wants the lowest retail price, that's up to them.
Yes, 100% this. That's why I said that this lawsuit has a major remedy problem. Even if the court agrees this is anticompetitive, how do you fix it?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37767994