Top all-time · #2805
Marketplace Pulse
Company blog · marketplacepulse.com/articlesbusinesseconomicsdata
Marketplace Pulse is the company blog at marketplacepulse.com, writing about business, economics and data. Since 2017, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 92 times, most often “Amazon Is a Monopoly”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-09, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite this site's articles and statistics on Amazon's seller base, retail sales, profitability, and private-label products, and on US e-commerce growth, as sources for their points.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Data for marketplace operators, brands, service providers, and software firms. Power market research, seller outreach, and customer base growth.
Most-linked posts?
- Amazon Is a Monopoly2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-08-05
- Amazon Private Label Brands Analysis2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-03-19
- Number of AmazonBasics Best-Sellers Up Fifty Percent in a Year2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-07-12
- American Sellers Lost Amazon to China2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-16
- Everything on Amazon Is an Ad2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-02
What Hacker News says?
More than half of the products sold on Amazon are not sold by Amazon.com. ( https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/amazons-retail-bus... ) And a portion of the products that can be purchased from "Amazon.com" (the seller) are JIT orders that Amazon places with the supplier. This is why some products on Amazon are perpetually never "in stock" until a future date on the store listing page; Amazon has made the decis…
Comment linking /articles/amazons-retail-business-is-now-just-50-of-the-companys-revenue
on “FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization”Submitted Amazon Is a Monopoly as a story · 524 points
HN discussionAmazon is a monopolist in several categories. Different rules apply to monopolists than other organizations. A basic constraint is that a monopolist may not use their position of monopoly in one area to give them an advantage in another. https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/amazon-is-a-monopo...
Comment linking /articles/amazon-is-a-monopoly-an-interview-with-sally-hubbard
on “Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products”Submitted 40% of the top sellers on Amazon are based in China, according to research as a story · 309 points
HN discussionAmazon will promote sellers who use their fulfilment service over those who DIY. https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/fulfillment-by-ama...
Comment linking /articles/fulfillment-by-amazon-chokehold
on “Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad”Submitted Shein forces Amazon to lower seller fees as a story · 145 points
HN discussionI would assume the number includes all unique seller accounts as it doesn’t specify a constraint on seller activity or similar. In fact, (less reputable) data from marketplace research claims a far higher number in 2021 of over 6 million. https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/amazon-reaches-six...
Comment linking /articles/amazon-reaches-six-million-third-party-sellers
on “Washington state shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide”Submitted Everything on Amazon Is an Ad as a story · 66 points
HN discussionSince this is a Jeff Bezos' washingtonpost.com hit job, it's worth pointing out that Amazon Basics does the same as well, https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/number-of-amazonba...
Comment linking /articles/number-of-amazonbasics-best-sellers-up-fifty-percent-in-a-year
on “Apple has copied some of the most popular apps in the App Store”Submitted Amazon Suspends Amazon-Native Brands Mpow and Aukey as a story · 47 points
HN discussion> we also ensured that 99.9% of all pages viewed by our customers were to products that had never received a counterfeit notice of infringement While this initially seems impressive (i.e. 1 in 1,000 products are fake), Amazon has a power-law distribution to its sales, and thus likely to its views [1] [2]. This means that, as long as the products on the left side of the power-law aren't counterfeit, this claim can be…
Comment linking /articles/marketplaces-power-law
on “Amazon Dodges Responsibility for Unsafe Products”Submitted Amazon Takes a 50% Cut of Seller's Revenue as a story · 19 points
HN discussionWe checked seller growth on competing marketplaces like eBay, Walmart, Google Shopping, etc. and found it to be the opposite - none are seeing accelerated seller growth. Report here https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/sellers-are-not-di...
Comment linking /articles/sellers-are-not-diversifying-as-amazon-struggles
on “Amazon sellers are moving to alternative ecommerce platforms during Covid-19”Submitted Amazon’s Crackdown on Chinese Sellers as a story · 12 points
HN discussionOr more likely it’ll look like the e-commerce adoption plots with a giant pop in the late 90s and then a 20 year slog of consistent growth [1] Pretty much exactly what the S-curve looks like. [1]: https://www.marketplacepulse.com/stats/us-e-commerce-growth-...
Comment linking /stats/us-e-commerce-growth-rate
on “AI Adoption Rate Trending Down for Large Companies”Submitted American Sellers Lost Amazon to China as a story · 8 points
HN discussionLooks like as of 2017 they now fulfil to US via Amazon :) https://www.marketplacepulse.com/amazon/usa/crumpler https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0118QTUKU?psc=1
Comment linking /amazon/usa/crumpler
on “Ask HN: Good hacker backpack?”Submitted Amazon-Native Brand Anker Goes Public as a story · 5 points
HN discussionWalmart's last quarter sales were about 115 Billion [1] There are about 4700 stores in the US [2] That means Walmart has per-store-daily-sales in excess of 200k. According to [3] I'm actually down an order of magnitude (3 million in sales a day for the "average" store) That would have to be a hell of a lot of theft. [1] https://www.marketplacepulse.com/stats/walmart-us-retail-sal... [2] https://www.statista.com/stat…
Comment linking /stats/walmart-us-retail-sales
on “Walmart Set to Close All Stores in Portland Amid Record-Breaking Retail Theft”Submitted Only 22% of searches on Amazon include a brand name as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIt's not just the graph. Their revenues were growing rapidly at the same time they were basically breaking even: https://www.marketplacepulse.com/stats/amazon-net-sales-94 So their profitability as a percentage of revenue was actually drastically declining. All during a period where investors were grumbling that they should start giving the money back to investors. But Amazon was intentionally keeping their profits…
Comment linking /stats/amazon-net-sales-94
on “Revenue is easy, profit is harder”Submitted Everything on Amazon Is an Ad as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAre we looking at the same numbers? I think Amazon was basically breakeven for 20 years, from 1997 to 2017: https://www.marketplacepulse.com/stats/amazon-net-income-112 And it looks like that recent profitability is more about AWS than their traditional core business: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/aws-powering-the-internet-a...
Comment linking /stats/amazon-net-income-112
on “Revenue is easy, profit is harder”Submitted US E-Commerce Sales Surpass $1 Trillion as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Shopify Tries to Fight Buy with Prime as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Marketplaces Year in Review 2021 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Amazon Is Never Going Back to Normal as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sellers on Amazon can no longer access their customer info like the full name as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Amazon and Meta bringing stripped down Amazon detail pages to Facebook/Instagram as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Amazon (and the USPTO) are drowning in Trademarks as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
