We could and should replace these types of technopolies with advanced decentralized technologies.
Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
131–140 of 151 posts
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#132Isn't "make it shittier to rake in more profit" a core value of capitalism?
I'm glad something (for now it looks a bit like a token action) is being done about monopolies and funky business structures, though. Google, Apple and Microsoft could be next, with their "using our product also forces you to use our service" practice.
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t follow your reasoning. Amazon stands acccused of “pay to play” market behavior. If you want to participate as a seller in the Amazon monopsony marketplace, you have to pay. That’s the behavior of a monopolist. Edit: changed “monopoly” to “monopsony”
Grocery stores sell shelf space, particularly prime positioning, and that’s a practice that predates the internet. Add to that the fact that most websites sell ad space as a primary or secondary revenue generator. Yes, Amazon is a middleman and they take as big a cut as they can. Is that abusing a monopoly or simply the nature of being the most successful marketplace? That’s for the courts to decide, I guess. (Or not…
I find Amazon's search to be worthless. Frequently, I search for a book with author's name. Frequently, that book does not show up. On more than a few occasions, it would be on the 2nd page of search "results" (most of page 1 are "sponsored" = adverts). Now, I just use Google and that results in the book I'm looking for. On other things, I find Google returning less than useful results when searching for things.
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wasn't so much offering a browser for free as compelling PC vendors to not bundle their competitor's browser. You might of course argue that a PC should have zero browsers bundled...
Microsoft also bundled a text editor (EDLIN). It didn't impair anybody else from writing and selling editors. They also included a programming language (BASIC) for free. Didn't impair other language creators.
Nobody did word processing in edlin.
The version of basic included with most computers didn't allow you to compile your program.
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It was added by conservative jurists mostly to make it difficult to successfully bring antitrust cases. Other than harm to consumers, what do you say is the harm from a trust? After all, aren't high prices an indicator of a monopoly? > And hey, it worked! And maybe it should. Imagine the hellfire and damnation stemming from having a free browser! I suppose I'll be damned forever for providing a free implementation…
(sigh) I think you're a lost cause, but maybe someone else will read this. Monopolies tend to keep growing until they are broken up. Monopolies don't have to charge high prices to consumers if they can increase their profits at the expense of sellers. In the case of Amazon, sellers may be authors or publishers who get squeezed. They may be small businesses. They may be big businesses. There is additional harm to the…
> (sigh) I think you're a lost cause, but maybe someone else will read this.
In my experience he will confidently state his existing beliefs as the absolute truth, refuse to provide any supporting evidence, and ignore any evidence to the contrary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#136Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#137[deleted]
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Questionable about their practices? I remember the effort it used to take to get netscape to be the browser your machine used. It was comically difficult to do, at times. So much so that I was never comfortable going for the paid Opera, as I just didn't think it would stick to my machine. It is frustrating, because I think it is largely fair to say that netscape was the worse option at the time. Navigator was largely…
> jscript and activex controls were both obvious land grabs on the internet Jscript was developed originally for Netscape in 1995 and was standardized in 1997. Not sure how that is a questionable land grab by Microsoft. P.S. I wrote a jscript interpreter back in 1999 or so. It was used as a drop in replacement for Microsoft's implementation. It did not require heroic efforts to make.
I remember jscript being mainly a way for them to not have to use the name javascript. Which, fair that that entire history is nonsense. I have weaker memories of doing things that would work in jscript that would not work in javascript. But, I also consider that in my concession that navigator was not a good browser.
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe that’s your preference, but it certainly isn’t against the law to offer advertising.
Remember SEO. Is it ads? No. Does it bring money? Yes. Expensive? Probably, simar to ads: both will eat the whole budget until empty and ask for more. But SEO is quite hidden and hard to define. Ads are there, see a banner. SEO? No obvious 100% criteria for it.
SEO is hidden? SEO is the sea that the entire internet has drowned in, unless you know where to go diving through it to find underwater caves that still have some air left.
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their actions were taken to stop Netscape, and succeeded. Keeping Linux and Be off the desktop succeeded well enough also.
> Their actions were taken to stop Netscape, and succeeded Making a much better product often does that. You'd know what I mean if you were a Netscape user :-/
They did lots shady things also, belt and suspenders style. Which is the subject here.
I started on gopher and Mosaic and Netscape was far ahead and good enough for a long while. Only until IE4 did MS pull away. Of course by IE6 the damage was done and they left the entire industry broken with a moribund dominant browser that took a decade to recover from. Rot in hell.