GoodReads losing readers over Amazon rules

[Ray McCarthy]

Meanwhile, Price Comparison is only one MANY services Google-zilla is using to track you (and force others out of the Internet)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/16/google_on_google_carefully_collated_anti_trust_truth/
Google lies with statistics are exposed.

Amazon famously doesn't make profits (they seem use them to crush any competition).

 

[Vertigo]

That's the thing about price dumping. So long as your pocket is deep enough you will eventually end up on top.

And don't get me started on Google...

However I would say that any business is always going to be in there to make money. That's what businesses do. Now, sure, you are going to get ethical and unethical businesses but I have a strong suspicion that most 'ethical' businesses are just the ones that haven't figured out an angle to make huge amounts of money or didn't figure out in time, before Google/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft/etc. got in there first. The point is businesses are always trying to identify ways doing better than their competition, that is how a successful business operates. It is up to governments to ensure they do so in fair ways.

It feels like that last bit has been abandoned of late.

 

[Ursa major]

However I would say that any business is always going to be in there to make money.

Eventually, but businesses on a mission, or with a low-term plan -- and with dedicated investors (or ones who see that the increase in the value of the shares, justified or not, trumps the absence of dividends) -- can survive on breaking even. All the money that would go into its profits (which would be taxed, and some of the residue then, perhaps, given out in dividends), is invested: in growth; in buying up the competition it can; in undercutting the competition it can't.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Is there no end to Amazon acquisition of competition?

More to the point, why is everyone just sat on their hands, whining about it? When was the last time Waterstones, or a Big 6 Publisher, bought a major online property, to help increase their reach and branding?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Or launched a sensible one.

There is Authonomy which is a spamfest.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

any business is always going to be in there to make money.

There is a theory that above a certain size, while making a profit (or staying in business) is important, that mega corps start acting more like nation states and are more interested in empire building:
Microsoft and Phones.
Microsoft and XBOX
Intel losing money on Mobile / Tablet / Setbox / TV space and refusal to deploy ARM in them rather than x86-64 (they have an ARM licence and didn't sell all of them to Marvell)
Samsung. Phones is a tiny segment of their diverse empire.
Hutchinson Whampoa (Three Mobile): Never has made money in Ireland, very little in UK. yet bought out Telefonica in UK & Ireland (O2)

Murdoch Empire.

 

[Vertigo]

I think that's true and all the more reason to maintain close control of them as they begin to exhibit those behaviours, which will ultimately demand of them that they follow the Highlander meme - "there can be only one."