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Price fixing and price setting are two different things. Amazon needed to generate sales for its $400 reading device and did so by selling the complete NYT best sellers at below wholesale prices. Publishers didn't like the value of their hard back books being destroyed but were powerless to go war individually against Amazon. We saw Amazon refuse to sell any books by a publisher in any form over these disagreements.
"We need price competition" the chattering classes here demanded.
Well, you don't have it. Nobody is allowed to compete on price with Amazon. And if you aren't careful, you will lose money selling books on Amazon if one of your other distributors puts a book of yours on sale.
So not only has Amazon eliminated price competition, they are putting a barrier on other stores. People would rather not list books with Google than deal with the possibility Google will cause them to lose money with Amazon.
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