Amazon, Google, and Monopolist Tendencies

1. Amazon, Google, and Monopolist
Tendencies
By: Scott Cleland

2. Amazon, Google, and Monopolist Tendencies
As the president of Precursor, LLC, Scott Cleland is a proven thought leader and internetization
strategist who leads a company that offers guidance in industry change, capital markets, and
public policy. The co-author of the book Search & Destroy: Why You Can't Trust Google, Inc.,
Scott Cleland has also written an article called “Why Amazon and Google Are Two Peas from the
Same Monopolist Pod.”

3. Amazon, Google, and Monopolist Tendencies
As Mr. Cleland explains, both Amazon and Google have similar strategies and ambitions, with
illegal anti-competitive behavior driving their respective success in Internet marketing and search.
One aspect of this behavior is the way that the Amazon Prime Membership contract undermines
the brick-and-mortar store model. This corresponds to the way that Google employs manufacturer
and carrier contracts for Android devices as a way of shoring up its monopoly power in the world of
smartphones and apps.

4. Amazon, Google, and Monopolist Tendencies
Shortly after Amazon announced its acquisition of Whole Foods, which represents a strategy to
undermine traditional physical supermarkets, the EU ruled that Google constituted a search
monopoly. These unrelated events seem to present a “public inflection point” in which the
companies’ goal of monopolizing multiple markets became more apparent to the public. A major
question is whether Amazon and Google’s anti-competitive behavior can continue to hide behind
“consumer-benefiting justification.”