Pieces like this are so poor I wonder if they are planted to make anti-amazon etc arguments look dumb.<p>>Amazon has been accused of being “no friend of the small business” after a report discovered evidence that the online marketplace has ramped up fees and advertising costs for sellers.<p>I mean, Amazon is a huge mega corp, it's purpose is to "maximise shareholder value" or whatever, it is not a friend of anyone, nor is it meant to be.<p>>It found that between 2017 and 2022 Amazon had tripled the amount it earned from fees for independent sellers in Europe, including for listings, deliveries and digital support. That growth far outstripped the rise in sales, which doubled over the same period.<p>So hold on, the amount earned tripled, not the fee rate. And even if fees were constant rate, you would expect the amount to double since the volumes doubled. So fee rates, aggregate, went up by 50% in 5 years. That's only 8.5% per year. It's higher than inflation, but the years they picked include Covid when amazon became insanely busy as most businesses found it was the easiest, cheapest, best route to customers.<p>So the story here is actually "logistics/advertising provider increases fees by single digit percentage during huge spike in demand for it's services"<p>The guardian is a privately funded, non-profit. They can afford to do long term investigative journalism, they can risk offending their readers, they can take on actual commercial and political vested interests. Instead they make the left wing equivalent of FOX.