Winner Takes All: Case Studies in how online marketplaces are creating modern monopolies

by Shirish Nadkarni

To grow quickly, Airbnb deployed two innovative growth hacks with respect to Craigslist, which at that time was still being utilized by consumers to post rooms for rent. First, it offered hosts the ability to automatically post their room rental on Craigslist, which would drive Craigslist users back to their site. Second, it would track new Craigslist postings for available rooms and contact those hosts to encourage them to post on Airbnb as well.

Existing marketplaces like Craigslist are prime marketplaces for picking off providers. In fact, as mentioned earlier, Airbnb used this strategy to build out its supplier base. It emailed all the people who listed their homes on Craigslist to get them to also list on Airbnb.

It would track new Craigslist postings for available rooms and email those hosts to encourage them to post on Airbnb as well.

Amazon had asked Ecobee to share “proactive state” data that would tell Amazon about the device’s status at all times, even when the device wasn’t using an Alexa command, according to Ecobee executives and other Alexa-enabled device companies.

In 2018, Apple introduced the Screen Time app, a new feature that allowed parents to track and control how much time their children were spending on their iPhones. Soon thereafter, Apple removed a number of parental-control apps from the App Store.

2018, Apple introduced a Screen Time app, a new feature that allowed parents to track and control how much time their children were spending on their iPhones. Soon thereafter, Apple removed a number of parental-control apps from its App Store.

Allegedly, Amazon told the company that if Ecobee didn’t share the data, that would affect its ability to sell its devices through the Amazon marketplace.

For example, Amazon threatened Ecobee that it would not certify its product for sale through its marketplace unless the company shared data about its usage with Amazon.