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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

#431

Post by bopbeepboop »

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…

Amazon is a customer of AWS, and leases most of their infrastructure from their subsidiary.

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

#432

Post by notyourwork »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #242
notyourwork wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rephrase this: "only seems worse because amazon is so big, and so monopolistic" as: "only seems worse because amazon is so big, and so dominant" I don't think monopolistic is a fair adjective because it has an implied legal connotation. Is Amazon a monopoly or just the largest e-commerce retailer today?

Monopoly does NOT mean being the only seller. According to US law, having 50% of the market can be enough.

I DIDN'T claim Amazon is or isn't one.

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

#433

Post by pitaj »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #331
fighterpilot wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Exce…

>"It's basically why collective ownership of complicated things has never worked" Except also the roads, railroads, airports, ports, oil pipelines, nuclear weapons and reactors, GPS and weather satellites, chunks of the energy grid, NASA, a national postal service, social security numbers, and so on

> roads

Heavily subsidize car use, incentivizing urban sprawl and carbon emissions. Repairs take too long. Design is convoluted.

> railroads

Usually privately owned

> Airports

TSA

> Ports

Jones Act

> Oil pipelines

Usually privately owned

> nuclear weapons

Oh yeah, what a great thing to have around. Really provide a service to citizens.

> nuclear reactors

Often privatized

> national postal service

Junk mail. Also, have you heard of the American Letter Mail Company? They competed so well, the government essentially banned competition in the letter delivery space.

> social security numbers

Insecure, easy abusable. Not meant for identification, but used for that anyways.

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

#434

Post by rtkwe »

cowpig wrote: post #343
dehrmann wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Amazon is also a marketplace Meanwhile, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24174276 "Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court" It seems both regulators and Amazon want whether or not it's a marketplace to go both ways whenever it's convenient.

In an ideal world regulators want to define Amazon as whatever best fits with the public's best interest (as opposed to what is convenient)

It's hard to make new laws to address specific problems with Amazon and at times it acts like both; sometimes it's mostly a marketplace and other times it does things like mixing inventory that make it more like a retailer (in the sense that they're presenting a unified front for multiple suppliers).

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

#436

Post by ctvo »

anotha1 wrote: post #171
ctvo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we think they need to risk the lost of business of breaking into your data on AWS to get this information? They somehow have no other way to infer this? How much business is this thriving Amazon-made products line? It's a fraction of AWS's profits considering retail's overall profits.

> They somehow have no other way to infer this? That's actually the point. So what if they're using "anonymous" or other indirect data? If "Amazon.com" might be benefiting from AWS data of any kind then it needs to be investigated as potentially anti-competitive.

When I say infer I mean from analysis of retail trends, pricing, and supply data. They don’t need to raid your AWS account to know that USB cables are profitable.

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

#437

Post by spaceribs »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #423
spaceribs wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree, as these companies already calculate how much they need to spend to prevent having to pay taxes.

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

#438

Post by spaceribs »

Nasrudith wrote: post #422
londons_explore wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 N…

The goal is to democratically own ostensibly public infrastructure, do you have a better way instead of whining about communists?

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

#439

Post by Black101 »

gok wrote: post #336
Black101 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Walmart and Costco do not have a little flea market of third party sellers inside their stores walmart.com does

That is true, I picked a bad example, although Walmart Marketplace is a very high touch service which is expressly targeting sellers that they don't want to cover themselves.

I have some good native Indian aromatherapy products... what category do you think it would fall under?

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

#440

Post by smithza »

Closi wrote: post #246
Manuel_D wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not understanding the distinction here. Costco and Amazon both sell company-brand products, alongside non-company products. Costco and Amazon collect and analyze sales data from the sale of both company and non-company products.

> Costco and Amazon collect and analyze sales data from the sale of both company and non-company products. It's similar, although personally I think the relationship between the companies is meaningfully different: Costco purchases product from manufacturers, and may choose to source product from other manufacturers (including under its own brand name). It uses it's own sales data to make this decision. Amazon acts a…

To be competitive, Amazon would be able to say everyone has access to the same information to rent out the online marketplace's booths. This is the issue at hand--Amazon has all of the information and is breaking its own rules in using it to give them advantage in the marketplace. Greedy greedy capitalistic cheesey.
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