I was thinking what Amazon, Uber, Spotify, YouTube, Booking.com, Airbnb, App Stores, Delivery apps, etc. have in common and I realized they all follow the same recipe:
1. Index Supply –
2. Pair with Demand –
3. Monetize Discovery –
So, at its core, they all are search engines with review capability. And I noticed that whenever this ecosystem develops, the leverage from the side controlling demand is huge. There does not seem to be a lot of balance at the moment to put a limit to the monetization for discovery. Take for example booking.com: it went from the 2-5% commision when they started to 18-25% commision today. And they demand parity (you can’t sell cheaper in your own website or you risk delisting and some hotels have 50-60% of reservations via booking.com). Some countries in Europe passed legislation to ban parity clauses in booking.com contracts, but it seems weird that the market is unable to come up with some more organic counterbalance. There are other honorable examples, for instance the battle between epic games and app stores.
Why do you think the market is unable to offer some counterbalance to this leverage?
