CompanyGraph
When a platform's control of access, data, and infrastructure can put the intermediary it serves into competition with the platform itself.
The dependency can change direction
A marketplace, app store, travel agency, payment network, or logistics platform can help an intermediary reach customers that would be expensive to reach directly. The intermediary supplies products, service, curation, or specialist execution. The platform supplies discovery, payment, trust, data, or delivery.
The relationship becomes vulnerable when the platform can perform the intermediary's remaining work itself. The platform may know which categories have demand, control the ranking and checkout, own the customer account, and possess the systems needed to scale a substitute. These facts create an option to compete; they do not prove that the platform will use it or that it can match the intermediary's quality.
Data is useful but not automatically usable
Transaction records can reveal demand, prices, returns, service failures, and the kinds of products customers compare. But the platform's legal and contractual rights may limit how the data can be used. Data can also be aggregated, incomplete, or insufficient to reproduce manufacturing, quality, advice, or relationships.
The Amazon marketplace case shows why the boundary must be checked rather than assumed. In 2022, the European Commission recorded commitments that Amazon would not use non-public third-party seller data unavailable to those sellers for its own retail operations in competition with them in the EEA. The commitment is evidence about a defined legal and geographic rule. It does not show that all platform data is inaccessible, that other platforms have the same obligation, or that commercial competition disappears.
Which intermediaries are easiest to replace?
An intermediary is more exposed when its work is standardized, visible in the platform's data, and easy to perform with existing infrastructure. A private-label product can replace a generic item more readily than a customized engineering service. A platform can often automate search and payment before it can reproduce local relationships, judgment, regulatory qualification, or after-sales responsibility.
The intermediary's value must therefore be decomposed. Does it carry inventory, finance returns, provide installation, certify quality, aggregate fragmented supply, or solve exceptions? A claim that “the platform owns the customer” is incomplete if the customer still depends on the intermediary for a function the platform cannot reliably provide.
Infrastructure creates bargaining asymmetry
An intermediary may have invested in integrations, staff, packaging, inventory, or advertising that work mainly inside one platform. Leaving can mean losing search visibility, payment access, data history, or fulfilment capacity. The platform can often replace one intermediary with another, while the intermediary cannot replace the platform quickly.
This asymmetry can appear before direct competition. Fee changes, ranking rules, eligibility requirements, preferred fulfilment, or data access can change the intermediary's economics without the platform selling a substitute. Contracts and regulation may provide remedies, but they do not automatically restore a lost customer relationship or rebuild an independent channel.
Disintermediation is selective
A platform may enter high-volume, homogeneous categories while leaving specialized or low-volume work to intermediaries. This can improve platform economics and reduce the intermediary's most profitable demand at the same time. The long tail may remain, but a business that relied on a few attractive categories can be damaged even if total marketplace volume keeps rising.
Disintermediation can also occur in services. A travel platform can turn from a booking channel into a source of customer loyalty and advertising power. An app store can provide distribution while competing with applications through operating-system features. These are possibilities to test against actual product launches, terms, ranking changes, and customer retention—not assumptions about every platform.
How to reduce exposure
- Own a direct relationship: build customer service, brand, repeat purchase, or expertise that remains reachable outside the platform.
- Use multiple routes: compare the cost of multi-platform distribution with the risk of relying on one channel.
- Protect unique capability: invest in customization, qualification, local service, or trust that is difficult to copy from transaction data.
- Read the contract: check data rights, ranking, termination, fees, exclusivity, fulfilment, and dispute procedures.
- Watch platform investment: track private labels, acquisitions, logistics, software features, and customer-facing products that overlap the intermediary's work.
- Stress the exit: estimate the time, money, and inventory needed to move customers and operations to another channel.
For investors, the key is not whether a platform has data. It is whether the platform can convert that data and control into a reliable substitute, while the intermediary retains enough direct value and alternative access to negotiate or survive.