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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

#421

Post by [deleted] »

vishnugupta wrote: post #187
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…

AWS and Amazon Retail are two different entities altogether. Even their infrastructure are at least logically siloed and my educated guess is even physically siloed in some places. AWS is certified to comply with a bunch of cloud/data standards/regulations such as HIPPA, PCI DSS and so on. Even if a single evidence is found that AWS is breaching them the consequences will be severe. Also for Amazon as a whole it make…

[deleted]

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

#422

Post by Nasrudith »

londons_explore wrote: post #47
guerrilla wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but there's one practical problem with this: other markets (e.g. the EU) need to nationalize or reproduce it too or else the US is getting significant geopolitical leverage.

If the US nationalized Amazon, I think you can be pretty sure that other countries would also nationalize their local Amazon divisions (ie. Amazon FR would become property of the french government)

Why would they repeat the US's mistakes immediately after watching it blow up on the US? People have agency and the response to a sudden theft by the government for being too successful would be to get the hell out of there as the US is no longer stable. The other subsidiaries wouldn't surrender ownership to a distant bandit government just like all of the other times it happened.

Everybody but communists know that Nationalization is a goddamned terrible idea doomed to failure - you can see it by not being in their political platforms at all. Only those with dogmas to consider the action a goal in itself advocate for it.

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

#423

Post by tick_tock_tick »

spaceribs wrote: post #368
robertlagrant wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's how lotteries work in the US. Companies don't have to be behemoths to pay no tax on income. They just have to post no profits by spending all the money they make on opex and capex.

I understand the system, I just want to be clear how broken this is. Both are windfalls, one gets taxed immediately, the other gets taxed if they don't use up all their profits reinvesting in themselves by the end of the year.

I don't see how you can think this is broken. Think about the implications if it wasn't like this. Bankruptcy would be rampant and R&D investment would be impossible for everyone but the largest companies.

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

#424

Post by Nasrudith »

spaceribs wrote: post #368
robertlagrant wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's how lotteries work in the US. Companies don't have to be behemoths to pay no tax on income. They just have to post no profits by spending all the money they make on opex and capex.

I understand the system, I just want to be clear how broken this is. Both are windfalls, one gets taxed immediately, the other gets taxed if they don't use up all their profits reinvesting in themselves by the end of the year.

Well yes, governments tend to like their industrial bases growing and are willing to wait for bigger gains over a longer time period. That isn't broken it is by design.

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

#426

Post by munk-a »

jollybean wrote: post #137
no_wizard wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the only difference is that AWS biggest client base has the money and expertise to go after Amazon in protracted legal battles while simultaneously scrubbing AWS from their companies. Most retailers, even big ones, don’t have the money or expertise to do this like that. Of the few who do (Apple for instance) Amazon is keen in making sure that those companies are heard and has direct relationships with them, but…

I think there are enough retailers with at least some money, I think this is mostly an issue of business expectations. If AWS were caught sharing your data, with anyone, for any reason, it would be a gigantic mess of a problem. Forget 'competing with Amazon on Amazon' - we're talking about sensitive data of all kinds in every single line of business. It would destroy them. Selling on Amazon, and then having sneaky Am…

An interesting thing to note is also that AWS sells pre-rolled HIPAA compatible services in a lot of their offerings. If AWS accidentally peaked into one of these services in an unauthorized manner it'd be a huge legal event and, I suspect that part of them working out that their services are HIPAA compliant involved being extremely transparent on how a number of things around those services operate with some department in the government.

Those servers, at least, should be free from any of the snooping concerns folks have.

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

#427

Post by hansoolo »

judge2020 wrote: post #410
fredophile wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analyzing their own sales and analyzing other people's sales on their platform are two different things. Saying that Walmart may also try to do this in the future does not make it right or excusable.

How is it different? The same outcomes and potential power abuse happens in both situations.

I really think you don't get the point of how Amazon marketplace works

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

#428

Post by citrusybread »

gok wrote: post #231

Lots of comments here of the format "every store does this." No, no other store operates this way. Walmart and Costco do not have a little flea market of third party sellers inside their stores who run their own logistics. This would be more like Amazon being both an anchor tenant and owner of a mall, and requiring that every other store within the mall provide all their sales information, then rapidly evicting all t…

isn't this effectively how home depot and lowes are run? basically everything is on consignment, and they occasionally spin up private-label versions of tools to sell?

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

#429

Post by agogdog »

Gasparila wrote: post #175

Thought exercise because I legitimately struggle with this. Is this fundamentally different than Costco using sales data to choose which Kirkland products to launch/sell? If so, how? If not, then why do we not pursue Costco with the same gusto as Amazon? To me this behavior by Amazon seems worse, but I can't figure out why.

Lots of good points here, but it's also worth mentioning that Amazon accounts for a much larger percentage of overall ecommerce sales (almost 50%). No other online marketplace comes remotely close.

Individual physical retailers own much less of the market... even Walmart is only ~10% or so of retail in the US.

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

#430

Post by tacker2000 »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #160
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…

> "this sort of things" was exactly the reason why they chose to use MS Azure instead of AWS. Unless I've grossly misread these articles, Amazon were using third-party seller data from sales on the Amazon.* websites. The data was on their (Amazon.com) sales database (who sold how much of what, for how much). They weren't accessing (hacking) data hosted on AWS (a database hosted for an online shop not related to AWS)…

I dont have the source anymore, but ive heard of precisely this happening: Amazon employees snooping around the AWS setup of some other ecommerce competitors... so yea, its not just limited to the amazon seller account data
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