Obscure internet boutique Amazon sues EU for calling it a Very Large Online Platform Unhappy with its inclusion in what the EU calls a list of Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), Amazon has sued to have the designation under the bloc's Digital Services Act (DSA) stripped. Amazon was among the first 17 companies to be designated a VLOP in late April, defined under the DSA as being large enough to reach 10 …
Why would those obligations be so onerous if Amazon isn't flinging ads ?
Let's say that one of the rules is : ensure that all 3rd-party ads conform to regulation.
Check ads in company : no 3rd-party ads.
Rule is met. End of story.
So where's the onerous ?
If Amazon is adamant that it is not a VLOP, then it shouldn't have much trouble ticking off the list in the same manner. Its management is creative enough, it can surely manage. Okay, they'll have to actually work a bit instead of yelling at the peons, but hey, consider it a welcome change of pace.
It will apply to all AWS customers, unless EU citizens are barred from creating stuff outside of EU region.
And the NSA is against it... (not that it prevents them from accessing EU region content, but the latency is more than 1 picosecond, compared to the North Virginia datacenter)
When two boxes collide they turn into an expanding cloud of different boxes that in turn can turn into other boxes. By carefully analysing the resulting shower of boxes we can learn things about the makeup of the original boxes and even figure out the contents of them. with enough box collisions we may even find new heretofore unknown boxes and deduce the underlying principles of all boxes and possibly finding new delivery methods that will extend the standard modes of delivery! There are models that predict an entire new family of delivery methods similar to the normal ones but transposed to higher altitudes. Propositions of an even larger box flinger to probe these possibilities have so far met with resistance from the community.
I though you generated a box/anti-box pair when two boxes collided with sufficient energy. These are fairly short lived, and then fall apart into sub-box particles (such as contents, foam-lets, etc). This allows the scientists to better understand the underlying structure of the delivery universe.
A sufficiently large box can collapse into a Black Box, where many of the characteristics of normal boxes go away. Some have speculated that if the Black Box is spinning there will be a thoroidal Shipping Horizon, that potentially could be used for Faster Than Label transport: most scientists point out that this is quite unlikely. At beast you will get some interesting Hawkers radiation.
Who else would that be? I'd wager Amazon is the biggest retailer by some margin, then the Chinese platforms, likely followed by Zalando (also on the list, as mentioned by another commenter). I wonder why ebay is not on the list, though.
(but then I do not do most of my shopping online, so... I definitely do not have an overview of which companies are actually active (and above a certain size) )
IIRC eBay had marginally less EU customers than the threshold. That's understandable since a lot of European countries have their own local 'tat-for-auction / resale' sites.
Regarding MS, I'm not surprised they aren't listed, a majority of it's cloud / platform customers are corporate, most of it's direct end-user clients are on windows and maybe office 365, neither of which are platforms where users can provide content in any meaningful way. Apple and Google are included because of their respective App Stores. MS's own app store is basically a shack with tumbleweed blowing outside
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act-package says "The rules specified in the DSA primarily concern online intermediaries and platforms. For example, online marketplaces,"
So Amazon is saying it's not an online marketplace? Or is it saying the EU is wrong about what the DSA is?
And what would be the real reason? Too much work? Or keep it a secret? Or they know they are things that are illegal under EU law?
A Platform has 3rd party sellers, a Shop does not.
Tesco, Carrefour, John Lewis, Boots are examples of how a modern Large Shop operates (both larger than Amazon U.K.), as an alternate operating model. None of them actually own they goods they sell. They all do “Sale or Return” from the wholesale supplier POV which means: if the potatoes or trousers don’t sell, they are left to rot and supplier don’t get paid; the Large Shop completely determines where and how your goods are displayed, and so whether they sell; the wholesaler doesn’t even have a guaranteed price - if Shop runs a 50% off promotion, the wholesaler gets a 50% price cut after the fact. This is why suppliers *hate* the Retail Shop model, and far prefer the Platform model, which is why they went onto Amazon in the first place.
The alternative to Amazon VLOP, isn’t that the EU gets to screw over Amazon. Amazon’s response will quite simply be - stop 3rd party sellers and become a Shop. They have warehouses, suppliers will be forced to simply do Sale or Return instead. The only difference is that customer will in future go on Amazon website and buy their Nike Air “from Amazon” rather than “from ZADGHT on Amazon”. Amazon will fulfil the order directly from the goods that their suppliers have given on Sale or Return, selecting dynamically at the lowest price. This will eat into supplier margin far worse than the cost of ads today. This is bad for suppliers. Some 3rd party sellers bring their own warehousing to the deal, so it’s not a totally free ride for Amazon. But back in the real world, Amazon just has cheaper logistics anyway.
"Amazon’s response will quite simply be - stop 3rd party sellers and become a Shop."
There is really zero incentive for Amazon to do so. The profits it makes from allowing 3rd party resellers are far, far greater than the cost it would take to properly police them. From Amazon's point of view, their platform is there already, the cost of them to have a supplier list some goods on Amazon is the marginal cost of data storage + compute that it takes (ie probably a few cents per-supplier or even less per-item). They get IIRC 10-15% of any sale depending on the goods, and an additional cut if the supplier uses Amazon's warehouses / shipping for storage and order fulfillment.
Having to police their suppliers even closely is in any case a cost that they could pass on to those same suppliers by increasing sale and fulfillment fees. If that is going to end up removing suppliers from the market who are only profitable because they're cutting corners or selling dodgy / not-as-described goods, then good, that's the whole purpose of the whole thing!
“[Amazon] get IIRC 10-15% of any sale depending on the goods”. Yes, it’s about that, and as you say another 5-10% for Amazon warehousing. Total maybe 20%.
Whereas conventional shop economics on low-end commodities, is usually assumed to be 25-30% margin for the retail shop. Back-of-the-envelope, the wholesaler hands over 5-10% more of the final price to Shop than Platform. There are other considerations, which is why both Amazon and supplier prefer Platform. But if you add policing costs for 2.5million third party sellers on Amazon, none of which Amazon *control*, no I’m afraid Amazon would be *forced* to go Shop, and take a larger slice of the value-chain pie with it.
“the cost of them to have a supplier list some goods on Amazon is the marginal cost of data storage + compute that it takes”
Absolutely not, that’s not the economics of this. When you go on Amazon and search for “mens Nike Revolution trainers” you are almost certainly going to buy them from some seller. But there are 78 sellers, Amazon don’t care which one you buy from. The marginal cost per supplier in that situation is near zero - Amazon lose nothing by letting any seller list them, neither is there an advantage other than letting the Suppliers cut each other’s throats to put money in Amazons pocket.
But if Amazon has to spend $10k per 3rd party to send somebody to another warehouse to inspect the goods…..There are over 2 million sellers!.No. One selected supplier only, like Shops do.
The “middle way” is to require all stock in Amazons warehouse *like they do already* per the existing Fulfilled by Amazon contract, which does heavy compliance checking. Who do you think pays for that compliance checking when a supplier applies to be FBA? Amazon? No. The Supplier has to pay to dig their own grave. It can easily cost you tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands to become an Amazon FBA supplier, and six months or more.
But when you think about it, an Amazon where everything is FBA with only a few suppliers per item…..it’s really so close to “Sale or Return Shop”, which is a fully validated business model known to work, why would Amazon waste time trying anything “internetty”. Just be online Tesco with massive logistics and infinite buying power to mash down its suppliers. 100%, that’s what they will do.
They could break up into smaller units such as one that sells things and another that runs a video service. If the units fall below 45million users then they have no problem and the rest of us don't have to negotiate round attempts to trap us into Prime subscriptions. But while they're a VLOP I hope that last bit puts them on the naughty step.
Given the continual stories of sellers hoodwinking people with dodgy goods, I'm aware on the "tech" items side (as those stories tend to crop up on sites I visit) of common problems people have had be such as someone selling small SD cards as being of larger size through to more potentially nasty issues such as high fire risk USB-C cables being sold.
.. I'm sure Amazon are probably OK at replacing dodgy goods, just treating it as a cost of doing business, but the point of DSA would be to make them do more to stop such things being sold.
The Thought Emporium on YouTube has found multitudes of pseudo-science wellness products that fall outside of legal amounts of radiation. There's definitely massive issues with illegal products on Amazon, let alone scams. I usually don't buy products on Amazon unless i got there from a reputable brand's own website and the brand itself is marked as the seller.
Big Clive has basically built his YouTube channel by dissecting electrical tat bought on Amazon. He also has quite a few items bought from bargain shops such as Poundland, but being physical shops with conventional stock buying their items are actually quite good from safety and standards compliance perspectives.
If “safety and standards compliance” is important to you, being absolutely serious, you need to buy *from* Amazon, not *on* Amazon.
First choice “Amazon essentials”. They don’t sell anything non-standards safe, on Amazon brand. They’re shit hot on that.
Second choice, 3rd party seller “Fulfilled by Amazon”. Then, Amazon have physically got it in their warehouse. In turn, that means they’ve actually *verified* all the standards and compliance data that the 3rd party has provided. Amazons checklist runs to hundreds of pages. Again, they’re pretty strong on that - as strong as high-street stores. Otherwise, assume it’s dodgy 3rd party seller - the goods aren’t verified by Amazon, they physically can’t be, they don’t have them in their warehouse.
As long as you bother understanding what is verified by who, Amazon are rather *strong* on their safety/compliance. Truth is,many people DGAF about safety and compliance, they just buy the cheapest even when Amazon clearly sell a higher quality higher safety item literally right next to it on the webpage, and then complain afterwards, so Amazon cater to them too.
" they just buy the cheapest even when Amazon clearly sell a higher quality higher safety item literally right next to it on the webpage, "
That's rather the point. All the items *have* to meet legal safety standards in the EU (and in the UK, but we're not included in this new law... I've no idea about US consumer law...)
It's not unreasonable to assume that an item sold on the amazon website meets the safety standards of the region or country it is being sold in, and the seller is legally obliged to make sure that is the case. The problem comes because the regulator simply can't afford to inspect every item sold and has to react to complaints, getting items removed from sale *after* someone has either had a near miss or a nasty accident, and by the time that happens, the seller has likely sold their stock of the items, set up a new account in a different name and is selling different dodgy tat.
So, the EU is trying make amazon responsible for dodgy product adverts, products, and dodgy reviews, which sounds pretty reasonable to me, because it will level the playing field for online shops who source products directly and do their due diligence, rather than selling cheap dangerous tat marketed as something it isn't.
Which of their goals do you find busywork:
Better protect consumers and their fundamental rights online
Establish a powerful transparency and a clear accountability framework for online platforms
Foster innovation, growth and competitiveness within the single market
I think it's right they tweak the rules until these intentions are being achieved.
The alternative is selling our data to the handful of internet giants for their marketing algorithms to manipulate us on behalf of unknown advertisers.
All they're really asking is are limits on monopolies and transparency about use of data, with a right to audit to validate those.
@jmch
"The major issues with regulators isn't that they aren't 'benevolent' ."
Pretty much my point. Either busybodies over-regulating because it gets them off, regulation made toothless (as you mention) or regulation made to stop the competition. We do need some regulation but trying to keep them from corruption or exuberance isnt something I have seen achieved
I'm trying to think of a single consumer regulator I'm currently impressed with...
Ofgem - so pro consumer that they have removed all competition whatsoever from the energy market, and left the taxpayer to foot the bill
FAA - so safety conscious they allowed a fully loaded 737-MAX to crash. not once but twice. and have still re-certified it with no fundamental change to the fail-dangerous CoG position on the airframe.
FCA - still supporting financial innovation by denying crypto-currencies are used by anyone other than criminals. Successfully prosecuted 1 banking individual for the whole of the 2008 crisis, libor interest rate fixing etc
Ofqual - guaranteeing opportunities for young people by just making up covid exam grades for everyone.
Ofwat - year on year %+ improvements in recorded sewage releases from their industry and they've really stuck it to Thames water this time, leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill
@desht
"Came to see what ridiculous anti-EU bollox choadmonkey had to offer about this article."
Hope you enjoyed yourself for the moment before I burst your bubble. What anti-EU bollox? Sorry if it hurts your feewings that the EU isnt special here but I was talking about regulators and regulations. We have them here too.
"Wasn't disappointed!"
Remember to clean your keyboard before your mother visits the basement and looks at you in disgust
“Amazon would be unfairly singled out and forced to meet onerous administrative obligations that don't benefit EU consumers,"
Onerous obligations like not allowing the sale of obviously dangerous goods (most of which seem to originate in China), for example?
An “onerous obligation” that Amazon (at least the UK one) demonstrably fails to meet many many many times on a daily basis
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