[saltymug76]

I dont think anyone's arguing against generic alternatives of name brand items. The issue here is Amazon using up-and-coming and popular products as fodder for them to generic-ize and push to the top of results, essentially knee capping the original seller.

[lovethevoid]

All retailers do that. It's called private labels. None of the products are made by the retailer either. As unfortunate to those who might genuinely believe Trader Joes products are unique to them, or that Great Value was Walmart using its massive distribution systems to quickly scale core products like Milk out. It's all private labelling.

[tpxl]

Amazon is not a traditional retails, it's a marketplace. Walmart buys stock, puts it on sale, gets data and makes decisions upon that. Amazon just skips the expensive first 2 steps by taking data from other retailers on their platform.

[wvenable]

Is there a business with a "house brand" that doesn't do this?

[tomschlick]

Does Walmart/CostCo/BestBuy/Kroger/etc not do this exact thing?

[johnnyanmac]

I think the algorithms make the difference here. You can't really make a cereal box stand out on a physical shelf in any unique way (or you can, but it'll be a cost expense. Ruining the point of undercutting). IME with online storefronts for traditional brick and mortar their own brands never seem to come on top.

Meanwhle I will almost always get an AmazonBasics if it exists as a first result.

[tbrownaw]

Yes, how dare they use their scale to make more cost-effective versions of popular things.

[consteval]

It doesn't really count when they:

1. Have access to immense amounts of data about these products that the manufacturers don't. Because they own the marketplace.

2. Can freely advertise, push, or even force their own products as much as possible. Because they own the marketplace.

[johnnyanmac]

how dare they use their algorithms to make sure all their cost effective versions will show up first.

That's probably the more pressing issue.

[megaman821]

Those original sellers mainly just look like drop-shippers to me. So Amazon just going straight to the source and selling at lower margin is better for me as a buyer.