I think it's a slippery slope. While I agree fundamentally that a
business can do whatever they want and that typically the market will
right itself, I do think in the case of these enormous entities that
there is definitely an argument to be made against certain actions.
It's hard to worry too much about Google losing a lot of money over
Chromecast not being on Amazon, but how does this progress? Google
strips all links to Amazon.com from search results? What if this wasn't
a huge company they were doing this to, but they pulled all of Chuck
McCown's gear off Amazon because they bought out some antenna manufacturer?
I think you need to be able to compete on your own merits, if someone
has to resort to underhanded tactics, they're probably already in the
losing position and they're probably not going to win by adopting that
stance. IMO.
On 10/4/2015 7:46 PM, Chuck Macenski wrote:
As big as Amazon is, aren't they using their dominant market position
to suppress competition? When I was at Motorola, they used to teach us
to be very careful about that as it might violate anti-trust laws.
On Sun, Oct 4, 2015 at 5:38 PM, Keefe John <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
It is a free market. Amazon can do whatever they want.
On 10/4/2015 3:30 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
What do folks make of Amazon going so far as to prohibit even
third party sellers from selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast
on their site?
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9439281/amazon-ban-apple-tv-chromecast-why
Apparently Amazon refuses to sell these new devices because they
don’t support the Amazon Prime streaming service.
I ask from two perspectives:
1) No doubt a lot of people here buy stuff from Amazon,
including for your business. Does this alter your loyalty as an
Amazon customer at all?
2) Seems to me this demonstrates the market power of companies
like Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. The sort of thing the
government seems to think we ISPs would do, but not those nice
folks in Silicon Valley. And of course Google is an ISP, but no
one seems to suspect Google Fiber would ever use their market
power in an anti-competitive way. (note that Google is now
Alphabet and changed their motto from "don't be evil" to "do the
right thing") What is the end game for these giant corporations
like Amazon and Google, and will there have to be antitrust
action? Will Google Fiber manage to stay neutral and not favor
other parts of Google? What if Google bought Netflix?
