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.
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.)