Amazon - sum of all fears?

Two things I would think of here:

  1. From what I’ve heard, the anti-trust issues in the US are largely based on prices. If a monopoly creates higher prices then it’s bad (compare this to the EU where Google was fined simply for reducing consumer choice, when the services were free to begin with). It’s hard to point to anything where Amazon has the highest prices!

  2. I do wonder what Amazon would be worth if it’s split up. We know it’s a collection of profitable and unprofitable businesses. We don’t really know the numbers at this point. Imagine if each profitable business was its own independent public company. Is it possible that one or two would be valued at $200B, a handful would be worth $100B, and a few more would be worth $10-50B? If so that could easily add up to more than the current $500B. There is precedent in the market for a business being valued higher simply because the reporting is separated.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Ca…

Antitrust law is not just a simple precept, it is a very complicated set of laws and Supreme Court interpretations that can take up a library.

As an example, price fixing is illegal except…it is legal for a manufacturer to impose and enforce minimum retail prices. Why? They have economic theory to support it.

The NFL, NBA, etc. are all in restraint of trade as players cannot freely contract, the team owners are colluding with each thereby contract to exclude other teams, to restrict where and how players can contract, to stop teams from moving and a whole host of things, but the is not illegal because the antitrust laws in the United States that specify “there shall be no restraint of trade or contract” does not mean what it says.

Instead there is a century of “rule of reason” interpretations. It is not just about higher prices. The law is well aware that low ball prices can be equally as destructive to competition. The law is often also contradictory and piece meal, having been decided over the last 100 years, and mostly in the early to mid part of the 20th century.

I never practiced antitrust law and it has been quite a while since I last read an antitrust case so I don’t remember all these basic lines of cases, but rest assured that the tactics of Google can be challenged under antitrust laws. The practices of Amazon, that is a more difficult issue (as I discuss a bit below) Either way, the Justice Department and the United States Supreme Court will be interested in creating new laws as there has never been businesses like Google and Amazon before, and thus there is no legal precedent covering their specific issues that impact competition.

If Amazon were split up would you rather own retail or cloud? Cloud hands down I think. But splitting these businesses up will not be easy as Amazon cloud is basically and outreach of their retail and data businesses. Is it an unfair competitive advantage that Amazon can subsidize its retail business with billions in cloud profits?

As for Google, there is inherent efficiency, beneficial to society to have better and more accurate search. The more search Google does the better and more accurate it gets, and there is the problem. No one can catch up in search because of this scale issue.

Do you break up Google’s search business, which will intentionally decrease the accuracy of search?

Whatever the case, if such antitrust cases are brought, it will probably be a sign that the market has topped out for a few years, and such cases will take many years. And in the end will probably go nowhere as Google has more lobbyists on the payroll, and pays off more congress people and senators than anyone else in the country. And unlike Standard Oil, people (at least in the United States) actually like Google and Amazon, and thus there will be no populist political support for such an action against either party that would overcome the lobbying. I am sure Standard oil paid plenty of lobbyists, but there was a popular uprising against the trusts lead by Teddy Roosevelt back then.

Good luck getting momentum in congress for such an action against Google.

However, Bezos and Trump don’t like each other, and it is personal. However, I think Google is the company that is the much larger threat as a monopoly than Amazon. I don’t see how you bring a case against Amazon as there is plenty of competition in all its markets.

Walmart killed retail businesses around the country and there was no antitrust violation despite local outrage, I don’t see how Amazon can be in violation with their still small market share of retail, and they have real competition in cloud as well.

Google…they have monopoly power in search and information that they can use to actually and directly exclude competition. That is where an antitrust action would lay. Amazon is an amazing competitor in all its endeavors, but does it actually have market power to exclude? I doubt it. Not with companies like SHOP signing up 500,000 vendors, EBAY with all their vendors, brick and mortar that is still the predominant form of retail. Buying Whole Foods? That is a very small portion of the grocery market. I go there to buy coconut oil and then off to Kroger for the real food.

Tinker

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I held a position in Amazon for about 10 years. I recently sold my position; may be a less than smart move but I do not believe it there is a prudent risk/reward scenario there that I am comfortable with. CEO is “changing” (not being replaced). simply time to move on.

From what I remember (out of a book about Amazon…) minimum retail prices can’t exactly be specified in a contract but they can withhold shipments from retailers that undercut those prices (like Amazon). I think both their retailing and their cloud operations are interesting, although the cloud might have better prospects if you could invest in that on its own.

Underpricing for the purpose of killing a competitor may bring in the regulators. But if you can show that you’re making a profit at the lower price what will they say? After all that’s what competition is supposed to be for.

An interesting case of monopoly is Facebook. Watch how they can crush a startup by rolling out a new feature to 1B people overnight… and since all the services are free it’s hard to point to anyone losing money as a result.

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