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Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

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Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It came to a close a long time ago. Amazon refuses to sell many legal products, eg caffeine powder and anything with the confederate flag.

Just in case anyone is interested in caffeine powder (interesting because it sublimates) do yourself a favor and don't order it. The smallest orders available online are enough to kill an elephant, and you need a $500+ scale to dose it accurately enough to keep a human from overdosing. And while most human overdoses will be uniquely unpleasant but not lethal, there is definitely the potential for a lethal dose if som…

Doesn't seem that crazy to me. One site I looked at sells 300 capsules for $15 and the whole page is littered with clear warnings about overdose. The lethal dose of caffeine seems to be around 5 to 10 grams so you'd have to eat 25 200mg capsules in a short period to get into danger. That doesn't seem any more dangerous than something like tylenol which they do sell.

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It came to a close a long time ago. Amazon refuses to sell many legal products, eg caffeine powder and anything with the confederate flag.

Just in case anyone is interested in caffeine powder (interesting because it sublimates) do yourself a favor and don't order it. The smallest orders available online are enough to kill an elephant, and you need a $500+ scale to dose it accurately enough to keep a human from overdosing. And while most human overdoses will be uniquely unpleasant but not lethal, there is definitely the potential for a lethal dose if som…

Funny story, I use to work for a pharma company, and we had all that kind of stuff in a secure drug lock up area. You had to log stuff out, it was all very organized. We did a lot of contract manufacturing and we'd get large orders and bring in temp workers. We had a guy one day who ended up getting into the pure caffeine powder, the chemist in the lab figured he'd ingested 800 cola's worth of caffeine. Like you said, not going to kill you but we sent him to the hospital any ways. And we decided to only allow regular employees to get into that area :)

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#73
post #20
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They're going to get sued.

The Apple Store doesn't sell Amazon devices, does that make the Apple Store anti-competitive?

Probably not. Apple Stores are in business to sell Apple products, always have been. Amazon sells everything, always has. So that's one point. Also, we don't know that Apple would not carry FireTV if Amazon solicited for space in Apple's retail store the same as any other 3rd party vendor.

I don't necessarily think this is anticompetitive on the part of Amazon, either. I DO think it's a cheap shot, and alienates me as a decade-long customer of Amazon.

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#74
post #63

I don't think this move is in Amazon's best interests long term. Their competitive edge with Prime is that I go to them first because I assume they'll have what I want, at a fair price and the highest level of convenience. If they are no longer the "Everything Store" then they won't be where I go to for everything...

Within 3 minutes of reading this, I canceled my Amazon Prime account. The fact they require sideloading APKs for streaming video on Android devices, and even then only support SD quality was annoying. This just tells me they have no intention whatsoever of improving the situation. I guess I'll use Google Express now.

Yes - they had an excellent brand for quantity of product and quality of service. Their whole competition with Google and lack of support of its products has been undermining that.

It seems a particularly bad move given the quick delivery space has many competitors now and Wal-mart, Target, Jet.com... have began competing with online orders. Reputation will be extremely important.

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#75
post #28

There should be laws that force anyone who owns a platform without any perfect replacements (which includes all two-sided markets) to allow any legal and non-fraudulent content, products, businesses or people on it at non-discriminatory costs. Amazon should be forced allow selling anything legal, Apple should be forced to allow any legal apps, Facebook should not be allowed to ban people, Paypal should not be allowed…

As some have said above, things get awkward with gray areas. Would reddit be prevented from banning the many unethical but legal subreddits? I will bite that bullet, but many will not.

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#76
post #21

Surely it's Amazon's fault that Prime Video doesn't work on Chromecast. Amazon would get a lot more of my digital goods dollars if they took a "Kindle" approach to streaming video -- make it available everywhere.

Of course it's their fault, it's their own product?

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#77
post #28

There should be laws that force anyone who owns a platform without any perfect replacements (which includes all two-sided markets) to allow any legal and non-fraudulent content, products, businesses or people on it at non-discriminatory costs. Amazon should be forced allow selling anything legal, Apple should be forced to allow any legal apps, Facebook should not be allowed to ban people, Paypal should not be allowed…

This is not a good idea.

Should Amazon be forced to sell Confederate flags if they find them immoral? Curated app stores are a good thing for users. Should Apple be forced to compromise the quality of their user experience because of random laws? And Airbnb being forced to allow anyone to list properties seems like a major safety issue.

There will always be competitors to Amazon, and it's ridiculous to suggest that them not selling something means you're freedom is being compromised. Neither Google nor Apple will suffer from this move, and people can buy those products from other reputable vendors.

Besides, one of the barriers to competing with Amazon was a good payments system, and that has largely been solved in recent years.

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#78
post #68
post #27

>"Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime," Amazon said in the e-mail. "It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion." Google and Apple now both have open SDK's for creating streaming apps for their devices. Isn't the the fact these devices don't "interact well with Prime Video" entirely Amazon's fault?

I guess the question is whether those SDKs provide everything Amazon needs. And, are there no legal restrictions that affect Amazon either. Overall the article just says Prime "doesn't work well" on those devices, but does work well on others. It doesn't say why. At this point it's hard to say who's to blame. It would have been nice if the article had investigated the issue.

The biggest streaming competitor to iTunes in the video space has got to be Netflix. And Netflix as well as HBO, Showtime, and many networks have had apps on iOS for many years, and AppleTV for a couple years (and presumably with the bar limiting the number of AppleTV Apps going away this fall, there will be an explosion of such Apps.)

I don't think you can say Apple is to blame (or Google, though the google situation I can't speak as clearly to because I don't know the technical details there.)

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#79

This reminded me that I'm using Amazon too much lately. Time to give some juice to the competition, for my own future good.

Ah, to live in a universe where Sears remembered it was a catalog store in the 90's and realized it could be again because of the web.

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#80

So there goes my hopes of a Amazon Instant Video app for the new Apple TV. Not that my hopes were too high, but it would've simplified my cable cutting to reduce down to a single device. With native apps and AirPlay mirroring, the new Apple TV was set to be my family's single set top box, but we have a number of kid movies and shows on Amazon Instant Video, and last I checked, there's no support for AirPlay there, so…

Off topic: Can we use the word 'Apple' instead of the logo? It creates a visual distraction.
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