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The Anti-Amazon Alliance

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Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#221

Post by scarface74 »

zbobet2012 wrote: post #192
scarface74 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

I didn’t say I could do it cheaper. I’m not an expert, I’m sure that BAMTech could.

Also, “the others” that pointed out TCO - was me.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#222

Post by noizejoy »

macintux wrote: post #210
bluntfang wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For generations people have bought books they hope to read but never do.

Or guitars they hope to play regularly :-)

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#223

Post by nerfhammer »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #215
schnevets wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts on declining industries have changed a lot since listening to the Spectacular Failures podcast episode about Toys R Us and learning more about the vampiric practice of Private Equity, where firms like Bain acquire struggling businesses and win regardless of the output. Here's a similar story from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/toys-r-... I'm tired of people lamenting th…

Sears just confuses the heck out of me. They had everything they needed to basically be what Amazon is now, before Amazon even existed. Heck they were basically Amazon before the web existed.

They were the Amazon of 1905

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#224

Post by Reedx »

koboll wrote: post #14

>as John Gruber put it on Daring Fireball, “Amazon isn’t hurting for revenue (especially now), but they are hurting for trust.” This is empirically false. Amazon is the second most-trusted brand in America . https://morningconsult.com/most-trusted-brands/ It's wild how easily SV types will tweet things like "No one trusts Amazon!" when the reality outside the Bay Area is so radically and demonstrably opposite.

Also, according to the 2020 Tech survey via Vox Media, who is highly critical of tech:

91% have a favorable view of Amazon

73% trust Amazon with their information

70% say Amazon has a positive effect on society

81% would be disappointed if Amazon disappeared

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey...

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#225

Post by thr0w__4w4y »

Way way back, when Amazon got bigger than just books, my motivation for using them was a) very good selection (in one order, I can order bagel chips, wiper blades and a router?) and b) price. Implicit in this was authenticity and good customer service -- for me, if the product isn't the real thing, or the company is a nightmare to deal with, it's a non-starter.

Well now here we are. Fake reviews, counterfeit products, most things (IME) are actually FBA or just outright 3rd party sellers (not automatically bad, but more opportunities for problems), their prices aren't competitive anymore...

So, they've still got a lot of selection, although it's really more like shopping at a bazaar, since really their website is almost nothing more than Ebay in some sense, and I will say their customer service has almost w/o exception been stellar. But that's not enough anymore.

We'll see. Nothing lasts forever. Either Amazon will get the wakeup call and tighten its ship, or it will become the next Ebay/Myspace/Craigslist (I'm deliberately just throwing the kitchen sink here).

One last footnote -- just within the last week or so, 2 Amazon tech products that I've praised -- the Ring Doorbell and the Eero router(s) -- had firmware problems. Ring bricked itself (firmware update gone wrong) and had to be RMA'ed (they did it w/o any problem, and this was almost 2 years after purchase). The Eeros went into a cycle of resets and couldn't update their firmware.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#226

Post by qppo »

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…

Google is unusable for product search. It's too heavily gamed and optimized not to show you things you want to buy, but things Google is paid to show you. It makes it too difficult to get the information you want to make the purchases you want. Try shopping for a car or hotel room sometime on Google. None of the information is reliable, and none if it is for what you want to see or ordered in a reasonable way to navigate. They're paying too much money to try and get your eyeballs at this point, and I wound up not making purchases because of it.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#227

Post by noizejoy »

BoysenberryPi wrote: post #59

People in tech vastly overestimate the amount of people who dislike Amazon. Your Average Joe could not be happier with Amazon and does not give a second thought to their business practices or worker treatment.

Less than 40% of Average Joes apparently [0]

[0] https://morningconsult.com/most-trusted-brands/

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#228

Post by scarface74 »

spaced-out wrote: post #217
uoaei wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what qualifies as a "monopoly" to you?

Would you consider a company that controls 1/3rd of the market share a monopoly? Because that's how much of the cloud market AWS controls. https://www.statista.com/chart/18819/worldwide-market-share-...

So now we are calling “33%” a monopoly?

But even AWS admits that only 5% of Enterprise workloads are using any cloud provider.

Also that includes IAAS and PAAS and private cloud services not companies like Linode that offer just a VPS nor places like Rackspace.

If you want a simple group of VPS’s to setup your own website to sell goods and you’re hosting on AWS (outside of Lightsail), you’re doing it wrong.

I’m a cloud true believer, know the ins and outs of AWS well, etc and I wouldn’t use AWS - besides Lightsail maybe - if I just wanted a VPS.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#229

Post by adadahdjej »

nxc18 wrote: post #13
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.

I’m not sure what’s going on with Amazon recently, but they’ve on multiple occasions told me that an item won’t ship or arrive until well into May, only for it to turn up next day. (edit: this is over the last 3 weeks for context) I wonder how much of their slow delivery is them under promising and how much is them actually not being able to get things out in a day or two. None of the other vendors I’ve worked with,…

I wonder what major global event could have caused that in the last two months.

Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance

#230

Post by ses1984 »

Loughla wrote: post #164
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…

>That is a strategy only available to... monopolies. Wait. And this is 100% not meant to be snide, it's a real question. Isn't that the actual strategy for tech startups? Work with investor capital long enough to get established and own the market by selling at negative margins, then increase the price once you own the market?

I think most tech startups would aspire not to increase prices, but increase market share such that selling a high volume at the original price is enough to cover the investment and start to turn a profit.

Of course you might price your product less, but from a certain point of view it's less predatory than it is just fair market price. When you are a startup with no customers, your first customer is taking a chance on you. They have no idea what the quality of your product is. They have no idea if you're going to be around to support it in 6 months. All that uncertainty should be factored into the price. If you are a more established startup then the fair market price for the exact same product all other things held equal, should be higher.

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