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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

#441

Post by nieve »

darkerside wrote: post #424
nwallin wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a bank were to seize your money, you'd notice, because you wouldn't have that money anymore. And it would be very well documented, leaving a clear paper trail to a criminal conviction and a civil suit. If your bodyguard did you physical harm, you'd notice, because your knees would hurt. And there would be ample evidence for a criminal case. If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly nev…

You're right that they are different, but maybe not as different as you think they are. > If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly never notice, no criminal law would apply, and you'd have a hell of a time proving it in a civil suit. If Amazon were doing this and profiting from it, that would essentially be a criminal conspiracy that reaches to the leadership of the company. Is it possib…

Criminal conspiracies by corporate execs are not all uncommon in the history of business and presuming that you can't possibly run into one because you personally haven't is taking an unnecessary risk. One thing due diligence is supposed to look for is criminal behavior. This is not because they never find it.

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

#442

Post by namelessoracle »

tegansnyder wrote: post #301
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…

Its my understanding a some of the large bricks and mortar retailers also stray away from hosting on AWS for these same reasons.

Home Depot refuses to use AWS and partners with Azure for this reason.

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

#443

Post by ethbro »

nwallin wrote: post #408
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.

If a bank were to seize your money, you'd notice, because you wouldn't have that money anymore. And it would be very well documented, leaving a clear paper trail to a criminal conviction and a civil suit. If your bodyguard did you physical harm, you'd notice, because your knees would hurt. And there would be ample evidence for a criminal case. If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly nev…

> If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly never notice, no criminal law would apply, and you'd have a hell of a time proving it in a civil suit.

For a thought exercise, let's play this out.

Amazon copies data running through VMs (or grabs it from storage).

Let's assume it isn't on hardware certified for capital-letter processing [1], most of which require regular third party audits.

So they have your illegally-obtained data [2], which presumably they want to use to make money.

Except they can't leave any record of its source, in any documented form. This includes server logs, data transfers, emails about data, meeting minutes about data.

So they create some isolated network, run by a third party contractor, that transfers encrypted data from the taps to a store, then decrypts. All of which brings us to the most difficult part.

Who does... what with it?

The source data itself is radioactive. Who knows when "pricing strategy for company X" or obvious equivalent might pop up in the stream?

So you... what? Exclusively touch it via algorithm that outputs only aggregate information? How do you possibly code and maintain that pipeline, sight unseen?

All while risking an incredibly profitable business.

Or, you know, you just operate as an honest IaaS provider and make $10B in revenue / quarter with a 25% growth rate...

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/programs/

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511 (?)

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

#444

Post by vkaku »

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.

It is things like this that will make people lose trust on Amazon. If they start reading data, it is bye-bye AWS for Amazon.

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

#445

Post by noizejoy »

darkerside wrote: post #424
nwallin wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a bank were to seize your money, you'd notice, because you wouldn't have that money anymore. And it would be very well documented, leaving a clear paper trail to a criminal conviction and a civil suit. If your bodyguard did you physical harm, you'd notice, because your knees would hurt. And there would be ample evidence for a criminal case. If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly nev…

You're right that they are different, but maybe not as different as you think they are. > If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly never notice, no criminal law would apply, and you'd have a hell of a time proving it in a civil suit. If Amazon were doing this and profiting from it, that would essentially be a criminal conspiracy that reaches to the leadership of the company. Is it possib…

I used to think a lot more like you and then Dieselgate[0] happened.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

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

#446

Post by Tostino »

saadalem wrote: post #440

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…

It's almost like there should probably be some oversight on one of the most powerful entities on the planet to stop these anti-competitive practices.

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

#447

Post by choward »

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…

App stores are the same thing since most companies with app stores have their own apps. They can decide when the right time is to build their own version of something that's popular and promote it in their app store.

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

#448

Post by taurath »

Tostino wrote: post #446
saadalem wrote: post #440

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…

It's almost like there should probably be some oversight on one of the most powerful entities on the planet to stop these anti-competitive practices.

And now they can threaten what, the losses of 400k jobs if forced to not utilize their nation-state scale to screw competitors?

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

#450

Post by werber »

milesvp wrote: post #409
werber wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been chastised for not locking my desk for this exact concern. It does happen

Don’t let anyone chastise you for this. Most desk locks are easy to pick. Also, there are like 3 keys to have on your keychain to open like 80% of all manufactured locks like the ones in furniture. Deviant Ulam, a pen tester, gives a lot of talks on this topic.

I pick my battles, I’m not going to complain about a policy unless I think it could really hurt people. If I complained about everything i think is dumb, I’d never be able to keep a job, because most of it seems dumb to me.
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