Imagine what the exact same FTC would be saying if Amazon exerted control over which ads were displayed based on what converted to more product sales (and thus revenue for Amazon).
Advocating for a less equal ads marketplace seems like such a strange position for the FTC to take.
Are they simply throwing out every possible accusation and seeing what sticks?
The correct solution is a no ads marketplace. Where search results return what the user searched for and literally no one (not even Amazon) gets to pay to put their products at the top of the results.
SEO is hidden? SEO is the sea that the entire internet has drowned in, unless you know where to go diving through it to find underwater caves that still have some air left.
Can a regular person (or an expert) tell that you see an ad? Usually yes, as it's banner or some visually distinct piece of a web or real estate.
Can one tell that a text is produced by SEO? Usually no (especially, when it's good quality).
Now, the difference is:
- In ads case, a government comes and asks for a tax. Because there is a clear case for a transaction in an economy sense (ad for money).
- In SEO case, no transaction proof is there. Can't come and ask to pay tax, or regulate anything. It could be a happy customer who wrote a piece of text. Or clever SEO author. Or both mixed. Can't tell! In this sense SEO brings less or no tax.
How do you define that? Do you exact match on query text? How products that convert better? Have lower return rates? Is a 1 start product that matches the query exactly better than a 5 start that mostly matches? Etc, etc.
I don’t follow your reasoning. Amazon stands acccused of “pay to play” market behavior. If you want to participate as a seller in the Amazon monopsony marketplace, you have to pay. That’s the behavior of a monopolist.
Grocery stores sell shelf space, particularly prime positioning, and that’s a practice that predates the internet. Add to that the fact that most websites sell ad space as a primary or secondary revenue generator.
Yes, Amazon is a middleman and they take as big a cut as they can.
Is that abusing a monopoly or simply the nature of being the most successful marketplace? That’s for the courts to decide, I guess. (Or not since they’ll obviously settle before it goes to decision.)
Amazon is not only charging sellers for placement, but they deliberately threw a bunch of fake and shitty products up on their marketplace to force sellers to cough up more money.
They also require sellers not to sell their product cheaper anywhere else, which I’ve never understood how they can get away with.
I find Amazon's search to be worthless. Frequently, I search for a book with author's name. Frequently, that book does not show up. On more than a few occasions, it would be on the 2nd page of search "results" (most of page 1 are "sponsored" = adverts). Now, I just use Google and that results in the book I'm looking for. On other things, I find Google returning less than useful results when searching for things.
Advocating for a less equal ads marketplace seems like such a strange position for the FTC to take.
Are they simply throwing out every possible accusation and seeing what sticks?