Amazon Seeks Divorce, $750M from Toys R Us

theodp writes "Responding to a Toys R Us lawsuit accusing Amazon of breaching exclusivity provisions of its $50M-a- year tenancy agreement, Amazon has countersued the giant toy retailer, asking the Court to terminate its Toysrus.com partnership and award it damages of more than $750M, arguing that Toysrus.com's failure to effectively choose top toys and baby products and to keep products in stock leaves Amazon with no other choice but to enable more sellers to sell these products."

Comments

Anyone wanna bet

[proverbialcow]

...that the "other" company is Target? It makes sense; T'r'U can't keep high-demand toys in stock, so Amazon lets Target sells toys in violation of its exclusivity agreement.

Hell, with the $3.6 BILLION Target's getting for marshall Fields, I wouldn't be surprised if Target bought Amazon.

Not sure who to root for

[mgkimsal2]

I'm not a big Amazon fan, but it seems that if they had an agreement to allow Toysrus to sell certain items exclusively, then violate that agreement, they're in the wrong.

If Amazon's charges are true, then ToysRUs.com can't seem to operate ANYTHING. Back in 99/2000 (or 2000/2001?) they failed miserably at xmas two years consecutively. Both times relying on rather crappy ColdFusion (I had a friend with inside contacts to the web dev team at that time, and they just did not know how to scale a site - relying on CF wasn't a big help either).

So, they get rid of their net headaches, and can focus just on the business of management and fulfillment, and couldn't seem to do that right either (again, if Amaazon's charges are true).

Who do you root for here?

Re:No fun being on a sinking ship

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"There is a winner: the consumer. The breakup of such an anticompetitive relationship is an example of the "invisible hand" of the marketplace restoring free-market capitalism to where it belongs."

I somewhat disagree, amazons anticompetitive behavior is great for the consumer. I was searching for a movie (Waking Life) and due to a deal with borders, I was able to reserve a copy of the movie at any of the local borders stores (with addresses listed, along with how far away it is).

These kind of features are what makes amazon successful, sure we'd be better off with an open system so prices stay competitive, but until someone (pricewatch? pricegrabber? froogle?) steps up and opens up a system that actually has the whole process bundled in one easy to use page, don't expect amazon to stop dominating any time soon.