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The Anti-Amazon Alliance

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Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#191

Post by partyboat1586 »

bsanr2 wrote: post #139
partyboat1586 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why then in other markets are there multiple premium brands? Say for example cars, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Porsche... There is no Apple in that market. Or take watches as another example, so much choice. Apple is the only company that has nailed the premium computer. Why?

I don't agree that there aren't multiple premium brands within the phone, computer, and media player spaces, but humoring you, I would say that platform lock-in is a factor. If I sell my Ferrari to buy a Lambo, I don't have to find new gas stations and roads to use.

First of all the media player space is dead. Secondly just because Samsung Andriod phones or Dell XPS laptops are nominally premium doesn't mean they are on par with Apple in terms of how they are perceived by consumers. They are also certainly not status symbols. A Lambo or a Ferrari are pretty much on par in the eyes of the consumer for how premium they are and how much of a status symbol they are. Not so with X premium android vs iPhone or X premium windows laptop vs a Macbook.

I think you're right that platform lock-in is one factor. I think the other factor is that Apple uses their own proprietary operating system. They have control all the way down to the hardware level and that gives them an advantage. When I close a MacBook it goes to sleep. When I close a premium Windows laptop there is a fairly high chance it's going to overheat in my bag. This is of course an issue that can be fixed but its only one of many smaller things that make up the whole product. Because Apple consistently gets enough of them right people look past the smaller flaws and see a polished product in a way that is not often seen in consumer electronics.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#192

Post by zbobet2012 »

scarface74 wrote: post #103
zbobet2012 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your points, but I've also found another one that is far more common: They sell products at a loss to gain income in other places. For example, if you are a content producer you are competing with a company that sells "ad-free" video (Prime Video) attached to a low-cost service (Prime) so that they can sell more goods online. Amazon is killing content producers by running a negative margin content busine…

Video encoding is definitely more expensive with AWS if you know how to do it yourself and you spend the money up front on hardware.

Your home built video compression software does _not_ achieve the compression ratios of commercial software. Differences can be between 20-50% pretty easily. It also does _not_ have the reliability.

x264 is good but not the benchmark. x265 is simply mediocre.

That aside, as others have pointed out, there is the whole "in the cloud" thing which has to do with global TCO.

Also the pricing you can get of the AWS site doesn't look a thing like what an actual content distributor with 100 of thousands of hours of content gets.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#193

Post by ars »

thaeli wrote: post #75
ardy42 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is Google really all in on product search? Their product search is pretty bad at the moment and it's a very challenging search space, esp when you work with tens of thousands of retailers. Honestly, Amazon's own product search is pretty terrible too, unless you're searching for a specific name-brand product. Google might not even have to be very good to be competitive. The best product search I've actually found is…

There are other specific sectors with great product search - RockAuto for car parts, for example. It's a striking example because the big auto parts stores (AutoZone, Advance Auto, Pep Boys, etc) all try to have an "Amazon style" search and it doesn't work. Heck, it doesn't work well on Amazon either. In the specific sector of car parts, search is based on the year, manufacturer, model, and trim line/options of the v…

The shipping is why I don't buy from RockAuto anymore.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#194

Post by elamje »

alkonaut wrote: post #187

These days when Sweden is often touted as “the experiment”, you can actually go there to see what e-commerce looks like in 2020 without Amazon. It might sound crazy but there is... no Amazon. If I go to amazon.se I end up at amazon.de There is no same day delivery of household products (like toilet paper). If I want a book I need to go to an online bookstore. Why this is I’m not sure. But it’s interesting.

It’s significantly harder to shop there, especially as an American. I found the same products I would get on Amazon to be 2 or 3x the price when I would shop in stores or online there excluding VAT and exchange rates. Maybe it allows more competition? But it surely isn’t an easier, cheaper experience in general. And as far as not being a Swedish speaker(which many people in Sweden are not), online shopping is even harder because the e-commerce options there tend to primarily work in Swedish, and have limited or no English support

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#195

Post by lucb1e »

ozkan wrote: post #114

Most companies are not customer obsessed , that's why they fail. Let me give you an example; I've bought a sofa set from Coleman, and supposedly I needed to measure the door, if the sofa can fix or not. Because of the shape of the hallway and entrance, the sleeper did not fix from door. And carrier guys did not want to push further. Luckily, my patio's door was large enough to fit. I've called Coleman and explained t…

Not that I, too, find it ridiculous that the delivery person doesn't take a minute to try and get it into your house another way instead of bringing it all the way back, but do note that restocking and delivery fees are real. Amazon does free shipping not because it makes them more money but because they know the competition doesn't have such deep pockets.

A podcast from "the university of Flanders" (which is more than one university, but alas) talked about this and that free shipping offers are ways to bind customers but that it's typically not actually viable with current profit margins and just an attempt to squeeze others out of the market.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#196

Post by zbobet2012 »

poxrud wrote: post #67
zbobet2012 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your points, but I've also found another one that is far more common: They sell products at a loss to gain income in other places. For example, if you are a content producer you are competing with a company that sells "ad-free" video (Prime Video) attached to a low-cost service (Prime) so that they can sell more goods online. Amazon is killing content producers by running a negative margin content busine…

>>Amazon is killing video encoding business by selling a negative margin video encoder to sell through AWS compute. What product are you referring to? I'm in this industry and based on my experience their video encoding+storage+streaming offerings are actually higher priced than their competitors. The reason their services are popular is the integration with the rest of AWS (which is true for most of their offerings)…

List price... somewhat. But they don't do cross sell ops on video for anyone who is paying anything near list price.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#197

Post by chrischen »

tinyhouse wrote: post #3

Good article. There are a few unknowns still. 1. Is Google really all in on product search? Their product search is pretty bad at the moment and it's a very challenging search space, esp when you work with tens of thousands of retailers. Going directly to retailer/niche-platform sites usually works better for me. For example, for music related I go to reverb.com, for outdoor to rei.com, etc. I then to Google and Amaz…

1. The problem for me is that for any given product category, I don’t know who the online retailers are. For electronics there is microcenter.com, frys.com, tigerdirect.com, circuitcity.com, and many many more.

2. I think this is something that is burned into people’s heads but not actually true. Most retailers do offer pretty fast shipping. Even with prime you’re paying for fast shipping (in the membership fee).

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#198

Post by asdff »

three_seagrass wrote: post #91
wpietri wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree, but 3 is in abeyance right now; I'm getting faster delivery times from other places. And regarding 2, Amazon has been training me for a while (via slow-ship discounts and the Amazon Day thing) that I don't need everything right away. I don't know about everybody else, but that has definitely made it easier for me to try out other vendors.

Precisely. I don't know when the switch happened but Amazon seems to be using their own drivers to deliver and not Fedex. The delivery quality is worse than bad, and has lead to us getting boxes stolen because Amazon drivers dump them at the quickest most convenient place for them - like Amazon drivers are incentivized to maximize time efficiency and every second counts. It's super painful. We're now using other webs…

Quality of service can never be high if employees need to piss in bottles

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#199

Post by bluntfang »

MattGaiser wrote: post #162
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still waiting for Chapters (a bookstore in Canada) to start sending me reading good reading recommendations. Why do you need the store to recommend to you what to buy from them next? Obviously the store is only going to recommend content which maximally increases its profits, regardless of whether that content is worth your time or really in tune with your most passionate interests. Buying the book from a shop is a…

I view it like browsing in a store. Sure I can go to the Django community and find books on that there (and I do), but Amazon recently recommended me a book on Microservices. They had been off my radar for a while, but I purchased it for later. It is about uncovering things that are of value, but that I might not think of immediately.

so you literally bought something you didn't know existed, want, or need and might not ever get to reading?

This just reads like people who buy humble bundle games or steam sale games.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#200

Post by asdff »

thoraway1010 wrote: post #53
wpietri wrote: post #5

I know Google's doing this for their own reasons, but I'll take the help. I've been an Amazon customer since 1997, but their recent anti-worker actions [1] were the straw [2] that broke the camel's back. I canceled my Prime account, and have decided to start my product search elsewhere. Google's product search has been long neglected, so it's great they're giving it some love. [1] E.g. from many: https://www.nbcnews.…

Where are you starting your product search? For everyone claiming they have found the better amazon, the more ethical amazon they never seem to be actually willing to NAME these great places so others can use them - if you are going legitimately would be great to get the name of these product search starting points. And I've tried google's shopping - blah. If that's your starting point we are going to be with amazon…

For me, it's leaning away from large online marketplaces entirely. I'll try to order a product directly from the manufacturer or a specialized website, or just see an example at a local store. 5 star reviews are worthless compared to holding the thing in your hand, and 2 (usually 5 for me) day shipping is a lot longer than taking 10 minutes to run to the store. I figure my biking is greener than sending out a delivery van.
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