Wish, the San Francisco-based e-tail up-and-comer that beat out Amazon as the most-downloaded e-commerce app last year, just raised $300m.
It’s a win for Wish that values the company at $11.2B. But, as Axios notes, Wish’s massive funding round is also good news for Amazon.
Why? Because it helps Amazon deny that it’s a monopoly
With Amazon under increased scrutiny from antitrust regulators, Big Bad Bezos and his boys are going to great lengths to argue their business is not a monopoly.
Last month, Amazon’s associate general counsel of competition, Nate Sutton, insisted in testimony to Congress that Amazon’s share of retail, just 4% in the US, was appropriately small.
Now, Wish’s continued growth helps support Amazon’s claim.
Other Big Tech companies will also need to call out ‘competitors’
Facebook, Google, and Apple are also angsty about their increased antitrust scrutiny. So, like Amazon, they have a vested interest in the survival of some competitors — even if they’re small and unthreatening.
All 4 of these companies are so sprawling that it’s hard to pin their businesses down to single industries.
But still, these tech giants will need to be specific about which markets they operate in — and what competitors they’re up against — to escape monopoly mania unscathed…
And here are some industry ‘competitors’ they’ll likely lean on:
- Amazon (e-commerce): Wish, eBay, Alibaba, 3rd party sellers
- Facebook (social, messaging): TikTok, YouTube, Telegram
- Google (search, ads): Bing, DuckDuckGo, Amazon search, FB ads
- Apple (app store): Google Play, Amazon
But it’s a tangled web of “competition.” As you probably noticed, many of these massive tech giants’ only real competitors are… other tech giants that are also under antitrust review.
