I find her ideas (that Amazon is anti-competitive by being big) interesting, but I find her reasoning unconvincing. Her point is that breaking up large companies, merely because they are big, into smaller companies would improve the economy. She says:
"the economics of platform markets create incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits, a strategy that investors have rewarded. "
She is upset because companies pursue growth over profits. I'm not sure I see this as a bad thing. Even if it were a bad thing, it's not something that only large companies pursue, it is probably more common among small companies.
Small companies can't lose billions in order to destroy a single competitor, and then recover it by jacking up prices when they're gone. Read the diapers.com story and tell me there's not a problem with Amazon.
Yes, they can run at a loss for a long while. However, as soon as they adjust the prices, the competition comes back.
This even happened to Amazon. They had the greatest return and price match policies. However then they changed those, I started going back to Best Buy. Being able to return stuff for free at the counter beats paying $7 postage for a small item.
There are many cases now where amazon does not have the best prices on items. In fact half the shit on there is from people buying hard to find items in stores and marking the price up a few bucks. Its a flea market.
Her paper (Score:3, Insightful)
I find her ideas (that Amazon is anti-competitive by being big) interesting, but I find her reasoning unconvincing. Her point is that breaking up large companies, merely because they are big, into smaller companies would improve the economy. She says:
"the economics of platform markets create incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits, a strategy that investors have rewarded. "
She is upset because companies pursue growth over profits. I'm not sure I see this as a bad thing. Even if it were a bad thing, it's not something that only large companies pursue, it is probably more common among small companies.
Her second argument addresses A
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
In practice this almost never works.
Yes, they can run at a loss for a long while. However, as soon as they adjust the prices, the competition comes back.
This even happened to Amazon. They had the greatest return and price match policies. However then they changed those, I started going back to Best Buy. Being able to return stuff for free at the counter beats paying $7 postage for a small item.
Re:Her paper (Score:2)
There are many cases now where amazon does not have the best prices on items. In fact half the shit on there is from people buying hard to find items in stores and marking the price up a few bucks. Its a flea market.