Quantity Over Quality?

Since the advent of modern corporations, a company with a market cap in the billions and even trillions is not a thing of the past anymore. Large corporations have been pushing the boundaries of capitalism to make every last penny in profits. Not surprisingly, the top five companies with the largest market cap are in the technology sector and together value over five trillion dollars. Hence, these companies’ sheer size plague them of many unfair or problematic business practices. Amazon is one such company and has been recently brought in the spotlight for unjustly firing a warehouse worker for violating social distancing rules after he helped organize a push for greater protection measures for workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, Amazon and these other companies are currently under investigation for antitrust matters by Congress. Amazon has previously denied harvesting seller data on its online marketplace platform for the purposes of direct competition, however, several former and even current employees have come out saying they do just the opposite. These employees describe using private seller data to price and launch their own AmazonBasics brand of products, despite it being counter to Amazon’s own internal policies. Anticompetitive practices are not just unique to Amazon. Microsoft was under fire for unfairly promoting its Internet Explorer browser on its Windows operating system and Google, more recently, unfairly promoting articles who use its AMP service and promoting its own shopping tool on its ad platform. Epic Games recently too spoke out against Google’s anticompetitive behavior of displaying security alerts on Android for apps downloaded outside the Play Store and thus hindering the experience of Fortnite for their players.

Consequently, alternatives to such monopolistic platforms of Amazon and others will see a rise in demand over time. Epic Games has tried making Fortnite available off of Google’s Play Store due to the high cut they receive for every in-app purchase. Shopify’s success is one example that can be attributed to sellers’ desire to take matters in their own hands by selling directly to their customers. The power these top five companies wield is immense but change will slowly and surely come if its clients find another product that protects its interests.

• “Amazon Scooped Up Data From Its Own Sellers to Launch Competing Products”
• “Stock Market Capitalization of the 50 Largest American Companies”
• “Fired Amazon Warehouse Workers Accuse Company of Retaliation, Which It Denies”
• “‘Fortnite’ is finally available through the Google Play Store”