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So I used to work with someone from Amazon retail. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that Amazon mined their seller data to undercut them. We sold on Amazon and he constantly told us that we were fools to do so. He even mentioned that prior to accepting a position he had looked up our seller performance to make sure he was going to a good company. Maybe policies have since changed. At the time I was also told the mo…
So I used to work with someone from Amazon retail. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that Amazon mined their seller data to undercut them. We sold on Amazon and he constantly told us that we were fools to do so. He even mentioned that prior to accepting a position he had looked up our seller performance to make sure he was going to a good company. Maybe policies have since changed. At the time I was also told the mo…
I worked at Amazon and heard stories from other people(who worked there, but didn't know I worked there since I just describe myself as a programmer if people ask and not an amazonian) about things I knew to be untrue
First of all, people like to complain about Amazon owned brands. But this is just retailing 101, nothing new here. Walk around a Costco and try and find a non Costco branded product in a variety of categories. People seem to love Costco's Kirkland brand and (personally) I also enjoy the AmazonBasics brand. Why have I never heard a peep about Costco? You can make an argument that Amazon's market power has enabled it t…
The argument I’m familiar with goes as follows: Stores choose all their goods, bazaars provide stalls for merchants. People don’t like when one tries to masquerade as the other, or, be both. Costco, being a store, can choose foods or goods that have been rebranded or independently sourced and no one really cares — they are still fully autonomous. They have always taken ownership of the product, so a change in supply…
Costco does similar things—both my ladder and my blender were things I purchased at Costco under the influence from third-party sellers demonstrating products there. Sure, the stocking and checkout were via Costco, but the same is true for Amazon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're right that Amazon has come to dominate a lot of markets on merit. But it's still the case that having overly dominant players in a market is bad for... well everyone except the dominant player. It doesn't matter why or how it came to be.
This is not universally true. It's bad if the dominant player uses their dominance to deliver sub-par quality at high prices. But so far Amazon doesn't seem to be doing that, at least in my user experience of it. It is bad that they might one day be able to parlay their dominance into harming consumers, but the dominance itself is not necessarily a bad thing, IMO.
"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.
don't make third party sales data available to Amazon at all? Can't exploit data you don't keep. The same way Signal prevents data problems: https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1280166087577997312?s=2...
The method is so good, it would even save Amazon storage space!
Any mention if the same non-guarantee applies to third party intellectual property on AWS? There doesn't seem to be much to stop them from "borrowing" code from AWS customers without anyone being the wiser.
"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.
Does anyone believe Bezos?
Question. What would a system capable of proving “this didn’t happen” look like?
So I used to work with someone from Amazon retail. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that Amazon mined their seller data to undercut them. We sold on Amazon and he constantly told us that we were fools to do so. He even mentioned that prior to accepting a position he had looked up our seller performance to make sure he was going to a good company. Maybe policies have since changed. At the time I was also told the mo…
Be wary of stories you hear. People like to embellish to make themselves sound interesting or as if they have some embargoed knowledge. I worked at Amazon and heard stories from other people(who worked there, but didn't know I worked there since I just describe myself as a programmer if people ask and not an amazonian) about things I knew to be untrue