Sources detail how Amazon uses its power across markets to compel vendors in one market to accept its terms in others, including threatening punitive action
A heavyweight in retail, cloud computing, digital advertising, streaming and smart speakers, the tech giant compels vendors in one market to engage with it in others Tweets: @jbflint , @danamattioli , and @danamattioli Tweets: Joe Flint / @jbflint : “Most businesses can't afford to say no.” How Amazon leverages dominance in one business to compel partners to accept terms from another by @DanaMattioli with some help from me. https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ Dana Mattioli / @danamattioli : When WarnerMedia launched HBO Max is was told it couldn't be on Amazon's streaming device w/out also being on Prime Video. Smart thermostat maker Ecobee was told it needed to share more data or risk its ability to sell on Amazon. Read my story w/ @JBFlint https://www.wsj.com/... Dana Mattioli / @danamattioli : Few companies dominate as many sectors as Amazon— from ecommerce to cloud computing to voice-enabled speakers. The company uses leverage in disparate areas to force terms on partners in others, our newest story found https://www.wsj.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This report extends Dana Mattioli's running investigation of Amazon's conduct: last December's account of campaigns to steamroll rivals and partners and the earlier finding that Amazon suppresses items priced lower elsewhere now get their connecting logic — leverage in one business deployed as a bargaining chip in another.
The named cases show how it works in practice: WarnerMedia was told HBO Max could not appear on Amazon's streaming device without also being on Prime Video, and smart thermostat maker Ecobee faced pressure to share more user data or risk losing marketplace access.
First-order effects
- Vendors like WarnerMedia and Ecobee face an all-or-nothing choice — accept terms in businesses they never contracted for (Prime Video carriage, user-data sharing) or forfeit distribution on Amazon's devices and marketplace entirely.
- As Joe Flint notes, most suppliers can't afford to say no, which means Amazon sets effective terms across streaming, devices, retail, and data simultaneously rather than market by market.
Second-order effects
- Rivals already alleging that Amazon restricts advertising of competing smart speakers and video doorbells gain documentary evidence that device-side advantage flows from cross-market coercion, strengthening their case against Amazon's retail and hardware arms.
- AWS partners have lived this pattern since at least 2018, when Andy Jassy's strategy included building services that compete with its own platform partners; expect cloud customers to price that conflict-of-interest risk into vendor decisions.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, antitrust enforcement will have to assess Amazon as a portfolio rather than by individual markets — dominance in retail, cloud, devices, and advertising compounds because access to one is the ransom demanded in the others.
- For multi-category suppliers, the structural lesson is to diversify gatekeepers before signing: any platform powerful enough to bundle your distribution across its own businesses can renegotiate every relationship you have with it at once.
The trend: Platform gatekeepers are converting single-market dominance into cross-market contract terms, pushing antitrust scrutiny from per-market share toward conglomerate leverage.