Big tech companies are going to court! Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple. So many questions! Some are about the questions around, why are you expanding into these business areas? Why not just stick with what you originally do? Your business is already successful why dominate selling markets that can affect small businesses? But for this article, we are going to ask 1 question, and it’s to Amazon.
Side Note:
For those people that are too busy reading my article, you can download a Chrome extension that will read the article for you. It’s a universal reader so be prepared to read little shit you don’t care about like hashtags or URLs but it’s free and you can go through more articles. It’s called Read Aloud
Why are you a retailer and a merchant?
Originally they are a merchant based business. Other companies will start their online business through Amazon. Amazon asks for 1% – 3% of the profits you make using their services. But now we are seeing more and more “Amazon basics” products being advertised over the other businesses.
How did I come up with this thought?
I came up with this article because, if you don’t know I’m a graphic design, printer, artist, blogger, gamer, comic book nerd, yes… I’m that type of fucked up!!! I’ve been working so hard to expand my business through my computer to touch on all of my business workloads so I can complete projects quickly and efficiently to move on to other works. I’ve written other articles about my PC buildup and Surface Book 3 experiences so far and the Surface pen, Surface Mouse that I purchase using the money from my business and personal income (my money or holiday gift-giving from my sexy girlfriend). One of my last peace to buy for my PC, which I will write about soon, is the Wacom Citriq 24″ Display. Keep it short, it’s an artist’s digital artboard. But if you want to know about it fully click here!
I’m bringing up my PC again cause the Wacom display is a touch screen with its own stylus pen but again as I talked about this on the Surface Book 3 article, or the How to draw articles I need to have a full range of my wrist to draw properly. Digital screens, there are 2 ways of doing that. 1) I can digitally move the digital artboard in Adobe Photoshop with the a two-finger press. 2) I can move the device around itself freely. I prefer the device, I’m so used to doing that on pencil and paper for now that I do it as well with the device. If I want to do that I’ll need Wacom Ergo Stand for Cintiq Pro 24. But instead, I got the Wacom VESA Mount for Cintiq Pro 24 & 32 and the “Amazon basics” of the Wacom Flex Arm for Cintiq Pro 24 and 32.
The “Amazon basics” version along with the VESA Mount was more affordable than the Wacom Flex Arm for Cintiq Pro 24 and 32. It’s bad enough that I would of spend $450 to $600 just for a stand for a $2,500 screen. My point into 2 paragraphs of advertising about my other articles is that it didn’t have to be Amazon that sold that arm that I bought for my display. It could have been another business that saw an opportunity to make a more affordable arm for artists to buy. Then that business would of grown from there but instead, Amazon used our purchase algorithms that they collected, selected the top 10 most purchased, and went out to go make their own version for a more affordable price.
What’s Happening Now About This?
Amazon is being questioned by the European Union about their actions and they have filed antitrust charges against Amazon, on November 3rd 2020 I think it was. Saying the online retail giant broke competition laws by unfairly using its size and access to data to harm smaller merchants that rely on the company to reach customers.
Don’t get me wrong, all businesses have asked me to help them collect some data off their websites when their customers come to purchase their products or services. It is fundamentally important that you analyze customers no matter what they do. But it’s all about how much money a business is willing to put into there website and like this pandemic we are in… mostly all businesses except mine, Drawlines Branding and Marketing and my brothers Drawlines Studio and a few other businesses I have worked with making or updating their websites adapted to use this data to benefit them in advertising, target marketing, print ads and so on. Whereas most other businesses don’t believe in data and tracking and are only looking for their profit not knowing that the real profit is in the long run and data analyses.
Side Note:
For anyone interest in this data and is interested in updating their websites visually or on the back end contact Drawlines Branding & Marketing at www.drawlines.net or on Facebook messenger. For anyone interested in product photography and data input for your eCommerce store we offer adaptable prices to help your website grow correctly without breaking your wallet. Our email is sales@drawlines.net if you have any questions or is looking for an estimate.
Now, what is Amazon doing with their data? They are taking their data and they are creating their own algorithms to see which product is doing better and creating similar products over the businesses that Amazon has approved to sell on the Amazon website. Man, this is getting confusing to type! It’s basically Amazon helping the little guy then stabbing them in the back!
Amazon is saying “No company cares more about small businesses or has done more to support them over the past two decades than Amazon”
What’s Going Happen?
Nothing! Nothing will happen for probably another decade! The investigation into this isn’t even complete yet. That means months or years will pass with the European Union watching Amazon closely. Europen Union might just ask for a settlement. But if they agree that Amazon did break their law then Amazon will get fined up to 10% of their global sales, GLOBAL! which can be roughly $37 billion dollars.
What’s To Come?
Ya, it’s not over. Sometime in December and January of 2021. The European Union will start passing laws that will mainly affect how tech companies do business. Some idea of the rules so far is, prohibiting the self-preferencing of products and requiring the biggest companies to share data with smaller rivals.
I don’t mind that at all, big-time companies are already set for life, it will not hurt them much if they share their data with the small guys.
Last month here in America, courts are looking into Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple for monopolizing online in their own ways killing the small businesses that need to adapt to online services or products. Amazon is monopolizing every aspect of business. Just recently I just finished writing about how Amazon is now getting their hands on the Pharmaceutical business so now you can get your prescription through Amazon. Amazon, Google, Uber, Facebook, Tmobile are all trying to open up some type of banking in their own ways even though Walmark has already tried and the courts stopped them from doing so.
This isn’t just Amazon, Google is also getting hit by India on the antitrust laws cause Google is also in their own way monopolizing on search engine capabilities regulating what people can see on their searches. I will have an article up soon for that.
Big-time companies have a lot of resources that they can use at any time. They are settled financially as well. For them to keep expanding into other career fields is the exact definition of monopoly. Also a good game not so good in the workplace. What do you guys think? Leave a comment if you’d like. This is our new networking, meetup, blog, form website.
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