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

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

#381

Post by hammock »

darkerside wrote: post #345
TimSchumann wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is a similar level of trust that you give to banks not to seize your money, or to your bodyguard not to do you physical harm. Stealing data from a customer paying for hosting would be _very_ different, and much more scandalous, than identifying trends on a competitive marketplace and taking advantage of them by launching competing products.

Banks mightn't seize your money. They certainly take the data from your bank accounts and monetize/resell it. This is a dirty secret, and pervasive.

How else do you think "closed-loop" measurement of marketing effectiveness, and retargeting based on purchase behavior are done? How else do you think suppliers can pull a D&B report on your company showing your bank account balances?

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

#382

Post by alexis_fr »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #284
TimSchumann wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 explai…

The American idea used to include anti-monopoly rules. Granted Amazon is not a monopoly, but the idea was to keep businesses small (and govt small) so no single superior entity would reign abusively on individuals. And that would make the federation stronger.

Maybe it’s time to revive it. Google, Apple, Amazon, all cause issues because they are too big and haven’t been broken up (or menaces of) for way too long.

We’ve scratched antitrust laws in 9/11, when Microsoft was recognized guilty but never sanctioned, because the domination of USA after 9/11 was important. But maybe that led to two decades of really huge corporations, and a bit more liquidity in the market (choice of platforms, etc) could be nice.

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

#383

Post by calimac »

adrianmonk wrote: post #367
darkerside wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a similar level of trust that you give to banks not to seize your money, or to your bodyguard not to do you physical harm. Stealing data from a customer paying for hosting would be _very_ different, and much more scandalous, than identifying trends on a competitive marketplace and taking advantage of them by launching competing products.

Or your commercial landlord to not send the cleaning staff to rummage around in your filing cabinets. Which, while it could happen, is something that people don't really seem to get concerned about.

Exactly!!

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

#384

Post by minikites »

darkerside wrote: post #345
TimSchumann wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is a similar level of trust that you give to banks not to seize your money, or to your bodyguard not to do you physical harm. Stealing data from a customer paying for hosting would be _very_ different, and much more scandalous, than identifying trends on a competitive marketplace and taking advantage of them by launching competing products.

>This is a similar level of trust that you give to banks not to seize your money

How many PayPal horror stories have there been?

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

#385

Post by gamblor956 »

TimSchumann wrote: post #218
thoraway1010 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done consulting for small business distributing into major stories. Other stores are very very UPFRONT on what they will do. Many make the small mfg sign an agreement that not only will the store have all the data, but the mfg will need to pay the STORE if they want the data. The difference here is that a) it is all upfront and b) the mfg can make an informed decision - is this worth it. If you need store / day…

> The difference here is that a) it is all upfront and b) the mfg can make an informed decision - is this worth it. You sign the same deal when you sell on Amazon, probably even signing away more rights. I'm not sure I haven't read the full EULA when you sign up to sell. > Amazon as a seller you can't plan as well - their alog or someone else paying for promo could cut your demand in half overnight. This is about the…

Amazon drives way WAY more discoverability than any retailer.

This is completely false. Amazon provides significantly less discoverability than a retailer. With a retailer, you get a product that actually shows up in front of people's eyeballs, and the ability to provide in-store promotions to attract customers, and, most crucially, the store lets you know how the promotions perform. A small minority of retailers make you pay for this data, but most don't because they want products to sell through. Many stores will even work with new brands to promote their products, such as (temporary) eye-level product placement, end-of-aisle placement, special displays, etc.

Source: Before going in-house I used to rep manufacturers of all sizes from startups to billion-dollar behemoths selling to major, regional, and local retail chains. Grocery stores are the best at working with brands (but also the fastest to drop products that don't sell), Target is about average, and Walmart was the worst at the time though I hear they've gotten better.

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

#387

Post by ngneer »

TimSchumann wrote: post #378
darkerside wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a similar level of trust that you give to banks not to seize your money, or to your bodyguard not to do you physical harm. Stealing data from a customer paying for hosting would be _very_ different, and much more scandalous, than identifying trends on a competitive marketplace and taking advantage of them by launching competing products.

I don't disagree with any of what you've said. I just think that many people are ignorant of that being the case with Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc because they assume 'Well Technology must have solved that'. Then again, compared to the average bear, maybe I'm unusually circumspect when it comes to all of those things.

Technology alone cannot solve the use of technology to promote interests of parties in a zero sum game.

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

#388

Post by storf45 »

munificent wrote: post #155
chairmanwow1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really is the issue? That Amazon is leveraging its success to be successful? It's unfair that Amazon is able to see that a product category is doing well so it invests its own money into manufacturing a product to sell through its site? Do you really think that if Amazon couldn't use the data from its own site that it wouldn't procure it elsewhere? Before any product is developed there is extensive market resear…

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.

We run a DTC automotive retail website that has both white-label products and vendor products and have product development and manufacturing capability in house. We also sell through multiple channels like wholesale customers, marketplaces, (including Amazon when it makes sense), and a 2 retail stores. Are you saying that we need to dramatically change our business model and can only either be a manufacturer or sell other peoples products because this model is unethical?

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

#389

Post by toasterlovin »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #351
econcon wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Amazon know margin? Amazon know volume, Amazon goes to suppliers on alibaba and gives them the quantity they require and then Amazon figures out what margin they'll be making if they sell it at the same or lower price than the original seller.

If you can't see volume, you can't estimate profit, and you can't differentiate which products are worth considering as a primary seller. Start with volume as a suggestion of which products to investigate for purchase price with sellers. If you can get the "right" price with the "appropriate" volume, start selling the product direct. Also, at Amazon scale, you can estimate margin by looking at price variation over ti…

> Also, at Amazon scale, you can estimate margin by looking at price variation over time and throwing in some well tested assumptions.

You really can't. You have to do research and modeling to figure out margins. There are probably half a dozen factors that determine a product's margin.

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

#390

Post by dmalik »

econcon wrote: post #331
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…

Same happens to us but we split sales to Shopify. Any idea if Shopify does same? It seems their ambitions keeps growing, they started charging percentage of revenue instead of flat subscription.

No Shopify does not. Amazon and Shopify are very different 1

1) https://stratechery.com/2019/shopify-and-the-power-of-platfo...

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