Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#281

Post by TimSchumann » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

motoboi wrote: post #276

nateburke wrote: post #266

About 10 years ago I met the head of IT for B&H cameras in NYC. Among many things, he was in charge of the hosting for their online store. After he complained about dealing with physical servers, I asked him if he had ever considered using AWS ec2 for the website, and he replied that his boss refused because he believed that Amazon would pull data on B&H products and use it to compete more effectively. I'm not sure t…

There is absolutely no veil between the hypervisor and the guest virtual machines. Not in the EBS either. If they say they won't read your data, better trust them. If you don't, stay away from their datacenters. EDIT: fix typo.

> The is absolutely no veil between the hypervisor and the guest virtual machines. Not in the EBS either.

This is 100% true. To do any useful computation on your data (read, what you're using all AWS for) they have to have 100% visibility into your data.

> If they say they won't read your data, better trust them. If you don't, stay away from their datacenters.

That's it, right there. All of this is based on Trust in Amazon, not some technology that provides any assurances, much less proof, they're not looking at your data.

They can pull the curtain off anything you're running in their cloud, at any time they feel like it. It has to work this way for AWS to be of any use, and by using AWS you're implicitly trusting Amazon with your data.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#282

Post by rightbyte » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

TimSchumann wrote: post #272

sacks2k wrote: post #171

I saw this happening a decade ago, but I had no real proof. I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010. I found niche products that Amazon didn't sell. As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks. I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product. W…

> It taught me a valuable lesson not to build my entire business on someone else's platform. This sounds eerily similar to what happened to a close friend of mine, and that's 100% the right takeaway from the situation. > My wife runs a small business on Etsy and it's just as bad. They make random code changes, which bumps listings up or down and you suddenly have no orders for weeks at a time. Same as above, differen…

The 'I got nothing to hide' is when discussing law enforcement surveilence? It is funny how fear of the "police state" is more or less irrelevant now vs early 2000s and private companies are the main problem. It is hard to predict the future.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#283

Post by crazygringo » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

sh1ps wrote: post #160

Up front disclaimer: this is my own personal conspiracy theory with no objective proof. I have quite a few pieces of anecdotal evidence to support this, but anecdotal is anecdotal. Looking through the comments, everyone is talking about Amazon.com purchases, but the much quieter, arguably more valuable move on Amazon's part would be to do this via AWS. If you're running your entire system on AWS, Amazon immediately k…

This doesn't pass the smell test for me at all.

First, Amazon has no idea whether you run your whole business on AWS or only 5% of it. Second, different businesses have such vastly different computing requirements, which make up drastically different percentages of budgets, that there is virtually no signal here to figure out profits.

You're going to be far better off just looking at publicly available data -- funding, employees, pricing on the website -- and having a business analyst put them together.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#284

Post by TallGuyShort » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

TimSchumann wrote: post #272

sacks2k wrote: post #171

I saw this happening a decade ago, but I had no real proof. I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010. I found niche products that Amazon didn't sell. As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks. I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product. W…

> It taught me a valuable lesson not to build my entire business on someone else's platform. This sounds eerily similar to what happened to a close friend of mine, and that's 100% the right takeaway from the situation. > My wife runs a small business on Etsy and it's just as bad. They make random code changes, which bumps listings up or down and you suddenly have no orders for weeks at a time. Same as above, differen…

>> I'm in favor of strong individual privacy laws

I support such laws too, but I wouldn't expect them to really change this. I think what we're seeing is more of a monopoly problem than anything else, even if violating privacy is a part of how they pull it off.

It's very hard to prove that a company that does, in theory, have access to data is not storing it or looking at it. Even accidentally. I just finished explaining all this to someone who freaked out about a Facebook post they saw about how Facebook was starting to collect information about everything you do off-Facebook. I had them show me what they meant, and it appears to just be every app that integrates with Facebook comments or allows Facebook sign-in as an option, etc.

The problem is one Facebook naturally got because of it's success: everyone has good reasons to want to work within their ecosystem. So they get tons of data on everyone. You can inconvenience yourself and refuse to ever visit a service that might share data with Facebook. But honestly: who's going to find that practical and do it? And if Facebook ignores the setting and "accidentally" captures all this data, and I suspect they're misusing it, how do I really get an investigation and more than a slap on the wrist for them?

It's messy to be a platform that provides a service and a consumer of that service that competes with your other consumers. At a previous job of mine we made a conscious decision not to do that for fear it would hurt our core business to ruin relationships with our customers. The problem here is Amazon just doesn't fear that. And I can't say they should. But the root problem seems to me to be more of a monopoly problem than a privacy problem.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#285

Post by deanCommie » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

nateburke wrote: post #266

About 10 years ago I met the head of IT for B&H cameras in NYC. Among many things, he was in charge of the hosting for their online store. After he complained about dealing with physical servers, I asked him if he had ever considered using AWS ec2 for the website, and he replied that his boss refused because he believed that Amazon would pull data on B&H products and use it to compete more effectively. I'm not sure t…

Sounds like this head of IT isn't very good at his job if he can't explain the difference between EC2 access, databases, and web requests over TLS

There are ways that you can use AWS that Amazon would have no way to access any of your data even if they wanted to.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#286

Post by bluntfang » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #271

jhall1468 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely not the same thing lol. What Amazon did is unethical. What you are describing is illegal.

I'm honesty curious what crime this would be. If I rent time on someone else's server, and they look at what I'm doing on that server, what illegal thing has happened?

This could fall under Unlawful Access to Computers.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#287

Post by marcosdumay » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

sacks2k wrote: post #171

I saw this happening a decade ago, but I had no real proof. I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010. I found niche products that Amazon didn't sell. As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks. I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product. W…

You know, at some point people will discover that "online market" is something important enough for governments to regulate.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#288

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:03 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #211

stcredzero wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. So again here's the heart of my point: Even with the OBD-2 port, the data available to these apps is nothing compared to the data available to Tesla. Tesla can figure out how often you get close to bumping into something, exactly how far, how fast you were going, and what the lighting/weather conditions were like at the time. That data is orders of magnitude better than the stuff coming out of the app.

Sure, but what's stopping any other car manufacturer from buying and using the same sensor kits? Look, I get that you can't get the same data with a 3rd-party kit but if you're an insurance company you're gonna be working with car manufacturers anyway.

Sure, but what's stopping any other car manufacturer from buying and using the same sensor kits?

Nothing, though I'm guessing they will be far behind for a year or so even after they deploy. (Unless that team is super competent, and they have absolute management backing.)

Look, I get that you can't get the same data with a 3rd-party kit but if you're an insurance company you're gonna be working with car manufacturers anyway.

It completely changes the dynamic of the business. One won't be able to compete, except as a manufacturer partner, and not all manufacturers will be equal. It will limit choices to consumers, and very strongly drive consolidation. I'm not saying only Tesla will be able to do it. What I'm saying, is that the nature of the business will change massively, in a way where customers will wind up with fewer coices.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#289

Post by MiroF » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:03 PM UTC

toohotatopic wrote: post #268

munificent wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vertical monopolies are anti-competitive. It works like this: 1. Amazon clones independent manufacturer's product. 2. Amazon strangles manufacturer because they can promote their own product more and have lower overhead because they control the entire chain. 3. Competitor dies. 4. Amazon has no competition on this product. 5. They raise prices and/or lower quality. 6. Consumers pay more for a shittier product.

You forget the other big competitors. Sun pushed OpenOffice to cut MS's profits from Office Google and MS are pushing into the Cloud to reduce Amazon's influence Amazon is creating its own ad network and offering Twitch to reign in Google Walmart is slowly creating its own global online shopping platform to compete with Amazon Should Amazon ever have no competitor, monopoly regulations would kick in. But usually, all…

Price's law is of questionable empirical validity, it's more like a useful guideline/urban legend. On the other hand, there is substantial economic research demonstrating the harms of monopolies, including vertical ones.

I'm a bit confused. Are you claiming that because of Price's law, Amazon doesn't actually benefit from it's monopoly position?

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#290

Post by CodeCube » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:03 PM UTC

So many comments about, "doesn't everyone know they do this?", and "everyone does this!"

I say there should be an explicit difference between "running a platform", and "selling on a platform", and never should the two meet. By "platform" here, and in the context of selling stuff online or IRL, I mainly mean that the store should never compete with their suppliers ... it's madness and unethical. If everyone can get a piece of the pie, it makes for a healthier ecosystem. We should want the rising tide to lift more than one boat.

And yes, I believe this should be regulated at the policy level.

This of course has implications for other forms of "platforms", such as operating systems, APIs, and clouds; but I'll leave those discussions for another time ;)