When was the last time you bought just a book on Amazon.com Inc.?
Amazon is far from the online book store it was when it was founded in 1994. In its 23 years, Amazon has acquired Whole Foods Market, Zappos, Audible, Twitch Interactive – just to name a few.
But Amazon has largely circumvented regulators even as it grew from a $438 million company to a more than $700 billion company. If you think evasion will work long-term for Amazon, you might be one of the dumbest on Wall Street.
See, part of Amazon’s strategy to avoid regulatory backlash is rooted in its low prices. Because anti-trust regulators favor an efficient market hypothesis, consumer well being is all that really matters to them. Amazon has subsequently gobbled up the competition, masking its monopoly with low, consumer-friendly prices.
But we’re now several decades into the Internet Age — it’s high time antitrust gets a makeover. And it seems regulators have started to take notice. In the past few years, they’ve been more willing to block deals based on what they refer to as the “competitive implications of data.” Translation? The tech giants and internet titans won’t be immune to antitrust law forever.
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