• Comcast and AT&T, both telecom powers, are now the owners of members of the Motion Picture Association of America.
• Netflix recently left the Internet Association and joined the powerful MPAA — showing that it see itself more as a media company than a tech company these days.
• The MPAA admitted Netflix, the first streaming-first studio to join the group, after it left the Internet Association as its own membership shrinks thanks to the proposed Disney-Fox merger.
• Salesforce has also left the Internet Association, reflecting the way large enterprise companies have looked to differentiate themselves from online ad powerhouses Google and Facebook. So did Pandora after it was bought by Sirius XM.

As the game keeps shifting, here's a handy primer to keep the players straight:

Web giants and the upstarts:

• The Internet Association: Represents some of the biggest web platforms — like Facebook, Google and Amazon — as well as startups like Handy and Thumbtack.
• Computer & Communications Industry Association: Lobbies on behalf of many of the same companies, and defends tech giants against charges that they act monopolistically. (Google, Facebook and Amazon are all members.)
• INCOMPAS: Traditionally has represented "competitor" companies, now including companies like Netflix and Google as well as smaller telecom firms.
• Engine: A group that lobbies on behalf of startups.

Big tent tech:

• The Information Technology Industry Council: Includes both internet companies and broader tech players including automaker Toyota, paying particular attention to fighting protectionist trade policies in recent years.
• Consumer Technology Association: Has a broad membership, including both hardware and software makers, and hosts the sprawling Consumer Electronics Show every year.
• BSA-The Software Alliance: Lobbies for enterprise software companies like IBM, Salesforce, Adobe and Siemens.

The telcos:

• USTelecom: The trade group that advocates for big telecom companies like AT&T and CenturyLink on issues like net neutrality, where the industry successfully pushed for deregulation.
• NCTA: Represents the cable industry.
• CTIA: Lobbies on behalf of the wireless industry on issues like spectrum access and 5G deployment.

Media:

• The Motion Picture Association of America: Represents the big Hollywood studios including its newest member, Netflix, as one of the most storied lobbying groups in Washington.
• Digital Content Next: Represents publishers and is a consistent antagonist of Facebook and Google.

Be smart: Technology has seeped into every industry, so more players are being drawn into tech debates. The rush to regulate data privacy has roped in companies from healthcare to retail.

• Yes, but: More factions and alliances make it even harder to drive any sort of consensus on complicated policy issues.

Driving the news: In Bezos' annual letter to stockholders Thursday, the Amazon CEO countered two lines of criticism: that his company is strong-arming third-party sellers on its platform, and that it has monopolistic power over the market.

• “Third-party sellers are kicking our first party butt. Badly,” Bezos' letter said. It pointed to Amazon's investment in Fulfillment by Amazon and the Prime program as "the very best selling tools we could imagine and build" for its third-party merchants.
• “Amazon today remains a small player in global retail," the letter said in another section. "We represent a low single-digit percentage of the retail market, and there are much larger retailers in every country where we operate. And that’s largely because nearly 90% of retail remains offline."
• “It certainly looks like they’re concerned about the growing scrutiny on their market power,” said Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a longtime critic of the company, who also argued Bezos was downplaying Amazon's power over its marketplace.

Background: Amazon’s critics have ramped up their pressure in recent years, saying the company uses its scale to muscle out competitors in a growing array of businesses.

• In a 2017 law review article, a then-law student named Lina Khan traced how the company had become a dominant player without running afoul of current antitrust legal standards in the United States.
• Last year, European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager announced she was probing the company's dual role running a marketplace for third-party sellers and competing against them with its own private label products. (Amazon maintains its private labels constitute a tiny percentage of sales.)
• Now, Amazon is a regular target for progressives. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) told Axios in January, around the time she launched her presidential campaign, that "Amazon should be subject to oversight that protects the dignity of workers and ensures fair competition."
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a plan in March to break up Amazon and other tech giants and ban marketplace platforms from selling products on their own service.

Amazon has also pulled back on some practices that have put the firm in the crosshairs of regulators.

• In March, Amazon stopped banning third-party merchants in the United States from offering lower prices on other sales platforms, after Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) raised concerns about this practice, which was discontinued in Europe under regulatory scrutiny in 2013.
• It has also stopped a series of special promotions for the private-label products business Warren has criticized on the campaign trail, according to CNBC, although it told the outlet they had been experimental.

"I'm glad Amazon pulled back on some anti-competitive behaviors after I raised concerns about their business model, but I'm still deeply concerned that their own private-label sales on their platform are projected to hit $25 billion by 2022," said Warren in a statement.

• "That's why we need to separate the Amazon platform from their retail operations."