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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

#431

Post by jaywalk »

fma wrote: post #335
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…

Wonder if they are on Microsoft's Azure now?

Just did a tracert to their website. After hitting b-h-photo-v.ear1.newark1.level3.net it goes through a couple routers on an IP block they own before hitting their IP.

Safe to say they are not on Azure.

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

#432

Post by dfsegoat »

qaq wrote: post #404
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…

This amazes me it's so much easier at that scale to deal with 6-10 boxes vs all the crap that comes with AWS. Don't want to deal with managing them there are companies that will do it for you and you will have an actual on call people that are accountable to you. Unless you are doing 6+ figures a month in AWS spend have fun trying to have same level of service.

I genuinely want to understand the point you are presumably making here, but I’m honestly having a tough time with understanding what it is.

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

#433

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #283
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 -- fundin…

[deleted]

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

#434

Post by arrosenberg »

bofadeez wrote: post #214
wpietri wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your evidence that we get better outcomes for consumers?

Giving consumers the same basket of goods at a lower cost just increases their real income, purchasing power, and overall standard of living. Amazon is effectively distributing billions of dollars of charity to those who need it the most. They lose $2 billion a quarter on retail. That's $2 billion per quarter in subsidies to consumers.

...which is classic anti-competitive behavior. That isn't a free and fair market - it's one that's in the process of being captured by a few large incumbents.

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

#435

Post by deliriouspuppet »

TimSchumann wrote: post #281
motoboi wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

This is true, but it doesn't have to be this way [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption

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

#436

Post by snowwrestler »

entee wrote: post #324
CodeCube wrote: post #290

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…

The major question I don’t have a good answer to is, “Why is this different than brick and mortar store brands like Safeway signature?” Surely a part of is is placement, but Safeway could put own brand ketchup at the same level (and I think sometimes does) as Heinz and still wouldn’t sell the same volume. Amazon is clearly getting a big advantage here, I’m just curious about what the underlying dynamics are that allo…

The difference is that Safeway does not have any other sellers on their shelves. Safeway buys inventory at wholesale and sells it at retail. Everything that is sold in Safeway was intentionally selected by Safeway to be there.

If you see a product on a Safeway shelf, the company that makes that product already got paid--by Safeway. If Safeway puts a generic ibuprofen bottle next to a bottle of Advil, that's fine with Advil because Advil already got paid! Safeway is assuming the risk that those bottles of Advil might not sell because everyone buys the generic.

Amazon is different--they sell things themselves, but they also offer to run a logistics platform for other folks selling things. Folks who use this platform believe (are led to believe) that they are going to direct to consumers, NOT selling wholesale to Amazon. Amazon purports to be a neutral infrastructure provider, like UPS or Verizon.

Now, you can say that these folks are naive for believing Amazon about their neutrality, but it is what Amazon said! Many of these companies would never have used Amazon for logistics in the first place if Amazon had said "we are going to use all your data to copy your products and go direct-to-consumer ourselves with our copies, including placing them above yours in search results." Who would take that deal?

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

#437

Post by pvarangot »

deliriouspuppet wrote: post #435
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…

> 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. This is true, but it doesn't have to be this way [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption

That would increase their computation costs by a fair bit, it would be more expensive to run the same amount of computation on their cloud using fully homomorphic encryption, even without taking the engineering costs on your side into account.

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

#438

Post by AmericanChopper »

qaq wrote: post #404
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…

This amazes me it's so much easier at that scale to deal with 6-10 boxes vs all the crap that comes with AWS. Don't want to deal with managing them there are companies that will do it for you and you will have an actual on call people that are accountable to you. Unless you are doing 6+ figures a month in AWS spend have fun trying to have same level of service.

I’m a big believer in use cases that fit on-prem solutions like that. But you’re dreaming if you think a 6-10 box operation is going to come close to the same service levels as AWS, and if you want to replicate the developer experiences that you can achieve on AWS, you’re going to have to devote a lot of resource to it. Whether scaling works well on-prem depends entirely on your scaling requirements. If you have bursty loads, or sudden increases in utilization, then scaling is going to be painful, because it will require hardware procurement, which is a slow process. There’s situations where it makes sense, but there’s way more factors than you’re considering in this comment, and you’ve completely misrepresented what the trade offs are.

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

#439

Post by SkyBelow »

ceejayoz wrote: post #429
kube-system wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure about that. AWS terms do not assign their customers any rights to any physical computer. And the AWS customer agreement gives Amazon the authority to access your data for certain purposes. I'm not sure I've ever heard of anyone prosecuted under the CFAA for accessing a computer that they physically own and physically control. AWS is a service, not a computer rental.

https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/ > We will not access or use Your Content except as necessary to maintain or provide the Service Offerings, or as necessary to comply with the law or a binding order of a governmental body. The CFAA uses wording like "exceeds authorized access", which Amazon would absolutely be guilty of if they went into your database to spy on your product listings. If they could go after Aaron Swar…

"One reason we could charge the price we did for the service is that we were treating the data we had access to as an investment. Thus the data we accessed was done so to ensure the service could be maintained."

Would a judge accept that argument? From me? No. From the lawyers Amazon can afford? I wouldn't be comfortable betting either way.

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

#440

Post by saadalem »

Those were the dirtiest business tactics of Amazon Nobody can beat Amazon’s margin. Amazon “invites” you to sell on their marketplace. You hustle. You innovate. You test the market. You risk your time and money. Until FINALLY you nail it! After weeks or months of hard work you finally find the right product at the right price… SUCCESS! You start making money! Everything is amazing…

But “someone” has been watching you! The “owner” of YOUR customers has been collecting ALL your data. Watching your progress, your growth, your competitors, your margins, your shipping costs, etc. THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING! Amazon will copy your product. Add their private label “Amazon Basics” to it. Sell it at an unbeatable price. Attach FREE Amazon Prime shipping to it. Position the exposure of their product on their website better than yours. In a matter of days, you will be OUT of business! THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING IN AMAZON MARKETPLACE!

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