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Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

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Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#81

Post by sfifs »

nova22033 wrote: post #74
mk89 wrote: post #21

Well, it's something that is slowly backfiring. It's under the eyes of everyone, and not enforcing such policy will only make it even worse for Amazon itself that eventually will end up selling only non-branded products. Finally it will be only another e-commerce like "ebay" used to be, and something else will replace it. Just enjoy the ride until you can. PS: speaking out of experience, I had one time a talk to a di…

chose to use MS Azure instead of AWS The article says someone used data from Amazon(the online store), not AWS. You should absolutely use Azure(or GCP) if it makes more economic sense for you but migrating from AWS to Azure because of this may be an overreaction.

It's standard practice for any retailer to not use AWS.

Part of it is why would you want to give any competitive knowledge to Amazon with your data or even metadata assuming you encrypt data with your own keys (eg. # of users derivable from # of distinct home/mobile IP address connections to your servers, # of transactions from connections your servers make to payment processors etc).

The other part of it is why add to Amazon's profit margin when it's well known AWS likely subsidizes retail to a large extent.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#82

Post by sharklazer »

anotha1 wrote: post #70
mk89 wrote: post #21

Well, it's something that is slowly backfiring. It's under the eyes of everyone, and not enforcing such policy will only make it even worse for Amazon itself that eventually will end up selling only non-branded products. Finally it will be only another e-commerce like "ebay" used to be, and something else will replace it. Just enjoy the ride until you can. PS: speaking out of experience, I had one time a talk to a di…

Upvoted, but I disagree that it's backfiring. Backfiring would imply things are changing or getting worse for them. And I'm certain that we're not at "peak Amazon." Worse, Americans especially are becoming numb to top down abuses. Not only am I worrying that this is not backfiring, but I'm also worried about the precedent we're setting by being so tolerant to it.

“Money talks and BS walks”

Consumers may not be fed up with Amazon, but if this is SOP then the sellers WILL leave and a competitor with better SOP will come in.

Getting f’ed in the arse as a consumer is one thing. Getting f’ed in the arse by Jeffy B as a business is another.

It is trust which makes this world go ‘round.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#83

Post by fighterpilot »

ceejayoz wrote: post #78
fighterpilot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but there's a self-correction here, which is that Accenture gets fired if they do a bad job. The govt has a monopoly and so there's little self-correction - too many layers of indirection between the everyday voter and Amazon's outcome.

Governments get fired fairly regularly.

Through multiple layers of indirection and obfuscation. A democratic vote every 4 years is noisy when it pertains to one specific outcome (say, Amazon's performance right now) since that vote also contains information for numerous unrelated things. Private ownership means a very tight feedback loop between performance and governance.

It's basically why collective ownership of complicated things has never worked. Except for perhaps the army, which costs an absolute fortune.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#84

Post by whoknew1122 »

mk89 wrote: post #21

Well, it's something that is slowly backfiring. It's under the eyes of everyone, and not enforcing such policy will only make it even worse for Amazon itself that eventually will end up selling only non-branded products. Finally it will be only another e-commerce like "ebay" used to be, and something else will replace it. Just enjoy the ride until you can. PS: speaking out of experience, I had one time a talk to a di…

Amazon != AWS. As someone who has access to customer data in AWS, I'm very limited in what information I can access (to the point where it actively makes my job in Premium Support harder than it would be otherwise). I also have to provide a legitimate business reason for access to data.

Not only is there an audit trail for what I do internally, but any calls I make to review customer data is published in the customer's CloudTrail trail. So the customer can audit when their information is accessed.

This report has 0 to do with AWS.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#85

Post by smhost »

andrepd wrote: post #71
smhost wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Innovation" refers to practices like staying in the red for a decade and bypassing antitrust laws by owning (rather than monopolizing) markets. It has little to do with technological innovation.

Precisely. Much of the "innovations" and "efficiencies" touted (by Amazon and by many other players) are actually not any material/physical/technical improvements, but financial games, buying competitors, operating at a loss, regulatory evasion, monopolisation, etc.

I mean, business/financial innovation is a legitimate kind of innovation. I'm not harping on Amazon for that. I just think that discussions about "loss of innovation" smuggle in some irrational fears about loss of technology when there are no real reasons to.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#86

Post by batch12 »

spaceribs wrote: post #2

Amazon should be nationalized. All these 3rd party companies want is a "farmers market", a stall to sell their wares. Give them the municipal software infrastructure they need to do so and maintain it as a public good.

Why should the federal government steal Amazon? Surely, it is possible for the government to build another service. I will admit that this is a clever way to kill Amazon. I find the idea of a government running my compute infrastructure to be a terrifyingly bad idea and would seek out someone else.

Edit: Replaced AWS with Amazon

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#87

Post by alias_neo »

sfifs wrote: post #81
nova22033 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chose to use MS Azure instead of AWS The article says someone used data from Amazon(the online store), not AWS. You should absolutely use Azure(or GCP) if it makes more economic sense for you but migrating from AWS to Azure because of this may be an overreaction.

It's standard practice for any retailer to not use AWS. Part of it is why would you want to give any competitive knowledge to Amazon with your data or even metadata assuming you encrypt data with your own keys (eg. # of users derivable from # of distinct home/mobile IP address connections to your servers, # of transactions from connections your servers make to payment processors etc). The other part of it is why add…

I'm curious what kind of access Amazon would have to your data as a retailer running on AWS.

Not in a technical sense, I'm a software engineer, I understand what data _is_ there, but more to the extent of, do they go out of their way to identify you, an AWS customer as a retail business and use that _retail_ data in ways such as described by the original complaint here?

If the answer is anything other than "they definitely don't", I'm concerned.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#88

Post by ch4s3 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #36
rualca wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should not allow a company to have a share over around 10% of any market. If a company was already at said 10% limit and you wanted to buy something out of them because to you their offer is by far so much better than any of the alternatives, in your opinion what should happen?

There should be an investigation into why they can make a far better offer than their competition. Most answers are likely exploitative in some way.

> Most answers are likely exploitative in some way

On what basis are you making a claim like that? Toyota sells roughly as may vehicles in the US a Ford and more than the other manufacturers. Their cars are in many ways better than their competitors qualitatively and often cheaper. Do you think they are exploiting people?

I could keep listing examples of market leaders that offer better products that are more aligned with consumer preferences, but I'm not sure that's going to convince you.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#89

Post by pydry »

nerbert wrote: post #52
LightG wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a catch-22 ... would Amazon be this innovative had it been nationalised? At what point do you nationalise? Is there a next technology which will be stifled if it was nationalise? Does nationalisation sttifle innovation? I've been wrestling with these questions as I actually don't like Amazon for all the reasons that have been well publicised ... but their customer service is excellent. Which sets me against a st…

Amazon the marketplace isn’t terribly innovative. It’s a marketplace supported by fantastic logistics, and most of it is backed by USPS anyways. There’s only so much you can do to remove the pains from buyers, sounds like we’re there.

It's pretty amazing to me how unsophisticated the filters and search criteria are. There are so many products where I'd like to filter or sort on weight (for instance) and it simply isn't possible.

Nonetheless as a semi-monopoly you are rarely compelled to innovate like a smaller company is.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#90

Post by tremon »

suprfsat wrote: post #44
LightG wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a catch-22 ... would Amazon be this innovative had it been nationalised? At what point do you nationalise? Is there a next technology which will be stifled if it was nationalise? Does nationalisation sttifle innovation? I've been wrestling with these questions as I actually don't like Amazon for all the reasons that have been well publicised ... but their customer service is excellent. Which sets me against a st…

Jeff Bezos will testify in front of congress that he will cease to be innovative if required to pay taxes.

Does this imply he sees his ability to evade taxes as his only worthwhile innovation?
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