Elon Musk calls for breakup of Amazon
twitter.comIn what sector is Amazon a monopoly. Retail? Walmart is much larger and Amazon's share of the market is too small to be a monopoly. Ecommerce? Even in ecommerce, Amazon's share is <50%. Fun fact, Tesla has a 60% of electric car market in the US (https://electrek.co/2020/02/04/tesla-electric-car-sales-us-m...). Does that mean Tesla is a monopoly, and should be broken up?
I think the most likely business unit that would be considered a monopoly is its IAAS business unit called AWS which has a very high profit margin. Ecommerce and E-books/books are probably the runner ups.
With those two business units, Amazon can then subsidize short term loss making business strategies and M&A that focus on gaining an eventually obtaining a monopoly advantage such as grocery, general brick and mortar retail, shipping and logistics, tablets, etc.
The other companies in technology focus on PAAS, self driving cars and VR, etc. and haven't used their profit margins to extend into the real world thus far.
Honestly this came to me after I've read your reply, and I think you're onto something:
Is the 50% market share really necessary to claim who's a monopoly?
Maybe it's time to re evaluate the definition of monopoly.
Sure, let's give politicians a stick to break businesses arbitrarily, since we don't like objective criterias. Got a problem with some CEO, cry monopoly and break it up.
I didn't say we shouldn't have criterias.
I said that the "50% market share" seems to have flaws. Why not look at market caps?
Well, the last monopoly was broken in 1982, isn't odd that since then no other monopoly has ever existed?
You currently have monopolies that serve political agendas, that's a better stick I guess.
What does monopoly have to do with market cap? Market cap is an abstract concept on how much the market values something, and doesn't have much concrete stuff to be based on. Market cap goes way up during bubbles. If companies were to be broken for profits, there are so many companies ahead of Amazon.
>Well, the last monopoly was broken in 1982, isn't odd that since then no other monopoly has ever existed?
Many monopolies have existed, like Microsoft for the most famous example. But there is no industry in which Amazon is a monopoly. Unless we were playing a witch hunt where we had to create a monopoly by thin air, I don't know what makes Amazon qualify as one.
>What does monopoly have to do with market cap?
Well my point is that 50% of a 100 million USD market is different from 50% of 1 trillion USD market. On the later you don't that much market share to pull your weight on the market.
>If companies were to be broken for profits, there are so many companies ahead of Amazon.
That wouldn't work, specially with the gymnastics that's done.
>But there is no industry in which Amazon is a monopoly.
Not even AWS?
How is AWS a monopoly? There are several competitors, two with similar market cap as Amazon and likely more cash in the bank. AWS neither builds on any pre existing monopoly, not is being used to push another product.
Contrast this with Azure, which greatly benefited from the Windows and Office monopoly. I am pretty sure the Windows, AD, Office monopoly is the prime reason Azure is where it is today.
It is not a clear cut 50%, but it is about options. There are plenty of alternative for books, ebooks etc.
In a monopoly, a single seller controls or dominates the supply of goods and services.
The term you may be looking for is monopsony.
In a monopsony, a single buyer controls or dominates the demand for goods and services.
But isn't all dependent on the frame?
Amazon owns the monopoly of the ebooks for the KPF (Kindle Package Format), but it's not the monopoly of ebooks market.
Google has the monopoly of search, but doesn't have the monopoly of advertising.
One issue is they run a marketplace platform where they also sell and push their own products on that platform. People sell products on the platform, Amazon gathers data, and eventually undercuts them out. They can exploit their 50% market share on top of control of the platform to make it almost impossible to compete in many product areas. Not a monopoly perhaps in the definition, but extremely suffocating.
It is only in Silicon Valley and tech circle this manage to blow up as a big deal. When literally every single Retailer has been acting the same with their private labels for decades.
The game has been exactly the same whether it is online or offline. You are simply swapping form Nationwide Stores to Nationwide Logistics.
So like every other big retailer? Like Walmart, Costco and many others?
The problem for these people seems to be that Amazon does it far more effectively than other retailers, which isn't really a "break them up now!" kind of argument lol.
Read the parent tweet.
Is amazon the only way to pubish an ebook?
Surely he could just post a PDF for paid download and have readers send the PDF to kindle if they really need to read it there.
Calling a book "unreported truths..." while things are rapidly changing is misleading at best
Well he's absolutely right, but in 20 years when SpaceX owns the only Mars-Colony/City i vote also to breakup SpaceX
If there's a viable Mars colony care of SpaceX in 20 years, I'll happily call for their breakup and sing their praises at the same time.
Your are probably disappointed about a corporate owned planet..just saying ;)
If he makes there I’m sure that colony would seek independence and have its own constitution and laws... maybe he’d incorporate SpaceX in Mars too.
Yes your probably right, but then i will not choose mars or earth but the belter's...oh damn again the amazon connection ;)
I don’t really know what anyone in this situation wanted to happen here? Amazon and Apple and Google have been trying to stem the tide of a massive wave of low-quality books and apps hitting their stores trying to make a quick buck off people’s ignorance and fear.
Refusing to publish content related to COVID because nobody has the time and resources to go through them all is the best you can do. If they just let people publish the story would be “Amazon doing nothing about COVID misinformation spreading through their store.”
Yeah, his point are not are not good, but if you think about the Bell-Story (the us allowed just one company to take over the phones-lines the other can make the computers), if you look at amazon and google today, that's definitely a mono-pol.
In what sector is Amazon a monopoly?
Shopping, Data-centers, Live-Streaming, Audio-book's and E-books maybe even logistics.
Edit: Hey Jeff please stop down-voting me, you know it's the truth ;)
Quoting a comment from upstream in response to this:
> In what sector is Amazon a monopoly. Retail? Walmart is much larger and Amazon's share of the market is too small to be a monopoly. Ecommerce? Even in ecommerce, Amazon's share is <50%.
So let's summarize: Amazon isn't a monopoly in "shopping" in any sense; there are other companies that run datacenters; since when does Amazon do live streaming? (and even if it does there are a million other apps/websites more people use for that); they don't have a monopoly in audiobooks; and they CERTAINLY don't have a monopoly in ebooks.
Just because they're a big noticeable name doesn't make them a monopoly. I'd downvote you if you could, and my name isn't Jeff.
1: Waltmart is just us, amazon is global (try to think about that the world is bigger then just the us please)
2: Livestreaming - Twitch, with you're arguments google is not a monopoly (there are other search-engines) and no, livestreaming to millions is not something 1000 other apps can do...know why...datacenters
3: Audible probably 90% market-share
4: Ebooks of course they are the biggest seller of ebooks in combination with kindle's
5: Yes there are other's but the only competitor is Azure and google..that's maybe the only point where you are right
1. Walmart operates in many countries, plus their US only revenue might be larger than Amazon's all retail revenue. Plus Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook operate in nearly all countries, a much bigger number than Amazon.
2. Twitch is restricted to a niche. Facebook video, YouTube, and even TikTok all have more users.
3. This might be correct but this is a very small market. Microsoft has similar market share in Office Suits.
4. Biggest seller doesn't make a monopoly. If it did, every industry will bave a monopoly.
5. How is AWS a monopoly there, when so many competitors exist, and the likes of Google have humongous internal data centres which might be on the same scale as all of AWS.
>Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook
Not shopping/ecommerce..oh and i never said that google is not a monopoly
>Twitch is restricted to a niche
Facbook, ~youtube, TikTok ist NOT Livestreaming...also not Zoom or Skype
>Biggest seller doesn't make a monopoly
When you (Amazon) can make the price because everything other is a loss for you (the producer)..yes then it is a monopoly
>How is AWS a monopoly there
Yes i wrote thats maybe the only point you are right
Oh and here a interesting link for your Walmart-theory: https://www.supermarketnews.com/retail-financial/amazon-pred...
TikTok is not primarily livestreaming, but it does have live streams (with live chat overlay on top of video, looking very similar to live streaming interface of Instagram or Periscope)
So apparently TikTok Live is mostly a competitor to those two (and maybe YouNow) but not to widescreen/desktop-oriented streams of Twitch
YouTube Live on the other hand is very much a competitor to Twitch (livestreaming to millions and NOT auto-expiring/deleting past broadcasts by default is something only YouTube can do for now)
A couple of days ago he tweeted - "off twitter for a while". I knew he'll be back soon. So, there he is. His "while" is very short :-).
There's a pattern here. He wants to be in the news actively. So, he picks up one thing or another. If you are not paying for marketing then you have to do it yourself.
He's right though. As far as the first amendment goes, books are the most robust medium we have. You can go to Amazon right now and buy a copy of Mein Kampf, hardcover, paperback, or Kindle. Surely Berenson's book is not worse than Mein Kampf?
Here's a though experiment, reductio ad absurdum, if you will.
Say you like Bezos' politics and agree with the stuff he wants to censor. Say tomorrow Bezos is run over by a bus and, through a weirdest twist of fate in history (bear with me on this one) Richard Spencer takes his place, complete with his own, very different editorial preferences.
Would you still agree that Amazon, as a company, has an unimpeded right to censor speech then? And if not, you need to think very carefully why you're _not_ against giving them this power now.
> You can go to Amazon right now and buy a copy of Mein Kampf
Not in Germany.
I sell books worldwide on Amazon, and the number of titles that are banned in countries (not just Germany, BTW) is pretty astounding.
And it's mostly not Hitler stuff, either.
The vast majority of countries do not have freedom of speech. Germany is one of those countries. You will say and do whatever Merkel tells you to say and do. The United States is not like that.
So do you think bookstores are compelled to sell books? How is that free speech? That is compelled speech. And Amazon is not a monopoly in any reasonable definition. You can sell books on 100 different stores and via so many other publishers.
Amazon is a monopoly on Kindle, which is what the author has issues with. It's sort of like if there was only one manufacturer of a printing press and they forbade you from printing anything they don't like on it.
Also, every time a rebuttal starts with "so", the rest is an attempt at mind reading. Those are always unsuccessful.
> Amazon is a monopoly on Kindle, which is what the author has issues with.
This makes no sense. Companies all have monopolies on their own products. Apple has monopoly on the iPad, which is a similar competing reading device. Sony has monopoly on the PlayStation. Microsoft has monopoly on Office and Xbox. Are you suggesting that all companies should give up the ownership of all of their products?
There are several competing products to Kindle, like Nook and even iPad (which funnily enough, tried to monopolistically engage in price fixing)
Plus, Amazon actually doesn't have a monopoly on Kindle. All an author needs to do is render their book to a MOBI and then put it on their website for a paid download and have the downloaders use "send to kindle" through their phone or email. It's that simple, I do it all the time for free ebooks not published on Amazon.
No, Kindle can load ebooks from your PC or Mac with the included USB cable.
First amendment protects you from the government, not corporations
Filed away for when Amazon inevitably decides to censor the speech you like.
CNBC article with more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/04/elon-musk-calls-for-amazon-s...
Elon is right it is insane. We do not want monopolies. And especially monopolies on information, books. I am not convinced that splitting a company by a government is the best solution, however in this case I do not see any other quick way to restore a balance, well maybe Amazon choosing to immediately stop its censorship policy.
It seems that Blue Origin must be making good progress.
Maybe some day they'll actually reach orbit, instead of just the edge of space.