Hearing on Perplexity's Motion to Dismiss rescheduled; new date is November 20, 2026
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.45...
Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
101–110 of 197 posts
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#102People don’t realize how big of a threat LLMs are to marketplaces like Amazon, because down the line people will just be talking to AI agents to help them find products, check out, do all of these things. So you’re probably like, why can’t I just use ChatGPT to do that? And you can, but ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you’…
Why it would be a threat? Unless Amazon is manipulating the marketplace for the customer to buy a product different from what they want. In that case such practice surely should attract a look from regulators?
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Access, yes. Display the content delivered from amazon.com, no absolutely not.
I'm trying to make sense of this and the best analogy I can find is using an example of physical products. 1. I can walk into Apple Store and buy Apple device (this is similar to me opening the browser and accessing amazon.com 2. If I'm busy, I can hire a person to go stand in line and buy the device (me asking Comet to shop on my behalf) The core question is does Apple (Amazon in this case) can block the hired help…
Maybe a better analogy: They can ban you from going through their drive through on a bicycle, but can they sue bicycle manufacturers because bike riders are going through their drive through?
In this analogy, it seems the originating court said yes, they can sue the bicycle manufacturer (in the analogy), but on appeal the answer was no, they cannot. That seems like the appeals court got it right to me.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean?
Amazon is a party to interactions with their website. That gives them standing to sue over those interactions. Whether they can sue Perplexity specifically is what was being debated in these motions.
I think I get it. Like they'd have standing to sue if I tried to hack their website, or change the price of items or something.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#105People don’t realize how big of a threat LLMs are to marketplaces like Amazon, because down the line people will just be talking to AI agents to help them find products, check out, do all of these things. So you’re probably like, why can’t I just use ChatGPT to do that? And you can, but ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you’…
I don't want "vetted" stores. I don't care if it's open-source or decentralized or interoperable (though, fine I guess if it is). What I actually want is stores that are scraped, preferably adversarially. When Amazon, Walmart et. al. try to shut you down, I will know you have something worth using.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#106People don’t realize how big of a threat LLMs are to marketplaces like Amazon, because down the line people will just be talking to AI agents to help them find products, check out, do all of these things. So you’re probably like, why can’t I just use ChatGPT to do that? And you can, but ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you’…
Why it would be a threat? Unless Amazon is manipulating the marketplace for the customer to buy a product different from what they want. In that case such practice surely should attract a look from regulators?
Tricking customers into buying things they otherwise wouldn't is the core concept of adtech.
If you insulate humans from the manipulative dark patterns (though agent intermediaries), it's possible for them to spend less, spend more efficiently, optimize out information-asymmetries that are profit centers for entities like Amazon. Of course Amazon will fight this.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#107People don’t realize how big of a threat LLMs are to marketplaces like Amazon, because down the line people will just be talking to AI agents to help them find products, check out, do all of these things. So you’re probably like, why can’t I just use ChatGPT to do that? And you can, but ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you’…
I've mixed opinions on that. For example, there are products like Google Shopping or Google Travel etc. They show up bunch of stores where you can buy a flight ticket or a particular product from.
However, in the end most people just end up buying it from top 2-3 marketplaces anyway, not because its cheaper, but also because they can trust it, it arrives in 2 days, and you can easily return it if you don't want. So if I'm going to most likely buy something from Amazon anyway, why not just use Amazon web page. They've had one click buy button for ages.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#108Amazon cares about this because it’s a huge threat to its profitability as an enterprise. It makes almost no money from selling and shipping stuff to you. It makes a ton of money selling advertising to influence what you buy on the site. If other tools or agents take that over, Amazon is left holding the bag on a very useful but ultimately boring logistics business that makes no money.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#109People don’t realize how big of a threat LLMs are to marketplaces like Amazon, because down the line people will just be talking to AI agents to help them find products, check out, do all of these things. So you’re probably like, why can’t I just use ChatGPT to do that? And you can, but ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you’…
This was Google's big announcement at their last I/O conference: That Google would become the agent handling all forms of commerce on behalf of the average person worldwide.
Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
#110People don’t realize how big of a threat LLMs are to marketplaces like Amazon, because down the line people will just be talking to AI agents to help them find products, check out, do all of these things. So you’re probably like, why can’t I just use ChatGPT to do that? And you can, but ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you’…
Nice, have a github repo? This is something I've thought about trying to build, seems like the future.