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Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

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Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#121

Post by hightrix »

bitpush wrote: post #72
hightrix wrote: post #63

Earlier 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…

3. You can walk into an Apple store and buy a phone without looking at their PCs, tablets, wall of accessories, etc. Apple cannot force you to look at everything else in their store.

Similarly, Amazon cannot force you to render the content they deliver to you. They can absolutely control access to their content, but they cannot control if you actually see the content they are delivering to you.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#122

Post by another_poster »

LPisGood wrote: post #23
another_poster wrote: post #19

[flagged]

It should be noted that suing gun manufacturers for murder has been done successfully. A more charitable comparison might be suing a torrent aggregator instead of the end users doing the distribution.

But if Amazon were harmed, wouldn’t they sue their customers first because they perpetrated the purported crime? This seems like going after the gun manufacturer for the claimed wrong that was actually committed by their customers.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#123

Post by jmspring »

varispeed wrote: post #102
theturtletalks wrote: post #96

People 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?

Amazon has generally been a shadow of itself. Fakes and less than reputable options. An opensource / legit sourced marketplace could be useful.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#124

Post by embedding-shape »

delichon wrote: post #66
Legend2440 wrote: post #14

TL;DR Amazon is mad that Perplexity's agents can browse Amazon logged-in, with a username/password provided by the perplexity user. Amazon argues this is against the CFAA because they do not authorize such use. They sued and got a preliminary injection. Perplexity appealed and got the injunction thrown out. The case hasn't actually been to trial on the merits yet and is still undecided.

> Perplexity's agents can browse Amazon logged-in, with a username/password provided by the perplexity user. Grok Bots can do the same.

cURL can do the same if you're in some utility closet and downloading ebooks and papers from a local network. Wonder how illegal that would be? It's also acting as the agent for a user.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#125

Post by embedding-shape »

phoghed wrote: post #85

Idk why this is even a lawsuit to begin with because HN commenters keep telling me that nobody wants to shop with an agent every time there is a demo about it from whatever AI company

You can't really take HN commentators (mine included probably) as some general sentiment from the average person out in the world. It's a relatively biased (in its own ways) place, don't read too much into it if you're mostly interacting with the real world out there.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#126

Post by eigencoder »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77
Max-q wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about giving it to your secretary with a list of what to shop?

> What about giving it to your secretary with a list of what to shop? "When a Comet user directs the Assistant to locate an item on Amazon.com, the Assistant takes screenshotsof the browser view, sends those screenshotsfrom the user’s computer to Perplexity’s servers, and receives instructions from Perplexity’s servers on how to navigateAmazon.com. In other words, the Assistant cannot operate wholly independently; it…

Obviously all browsers rely on direction from the user. But they also typically rely on instructions from the browser maker's servers. Traditionally, you get all of those instructions in a single download that's been pre-packaged (the browser program itself). But if part of the browser's logic requires more computational resources than most consumers have, what's the problem with "outsourcing" that bit to Perplexity's servers?

As a consumer, I don't think it's very prudent to trust a company with that kind of access to your data, but it doesn't seem materially different from the kind of trust you have to give to Chrome.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#127

Post by theturtletalks »

leviathant wrote: post #111
theturtletalks wrote: post #96

People 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’…

The funny thing to me is that, for years, Shopify has been trying to position their Shop app as an Amazon alternative, but just can't get the traction. Shopify and Amazon are two very different business models - but man, Tobi and Harley want that money! ChatGPT comes along, and suddenly it has a real shot at the global customer capture that Shopify could never manage, so they jump in bed, and release a series of garb…

Exactly, Shopify can become a new Amazon with Shop but then you’re just trading Amazon for Shopify. It’s why I’m building open-source SaaS for every vertical and that’s what powers the marketplace.

You can read the ethos to learn more[0]

0. https://marketplace.openship.org/ethos

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#128

Post by theturtletalks »

hmokiguess wrote: post #112
theturtletalks wrote: post #96

People 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’…

Amazon is not just the frontend. There is a whole supply chain side of it with warehouses, distributors, couriers, etc. Inventory and stock readiness, shipping, and other things will continue to be bottlenecks for consumerism at scale.

3PLs and warehouse distribution channels have gotten better and are cheaper than using FBA shipping outside Amazon.

Did you know the biggest sellers on Amazon normally have their own website and in fact, orders from Amazon flow directly into their OMS (order management system). Amazon is simply a sales channel. Also Amazon has a stronghold in western countries but much less so in gulf states, South Asia, and Africa.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#129

Post by aizk »

matt123456789 wrote: post #71
aizk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was chatting about something similar to this with coworkers. When the doordash cli got announced I thought "Wow, that's amazing!" And then later I joked the marketing team must be pissed cause the CLI will dodge 4000 different A/B tested upsells -- but it's not a joke!

To me, the official CLI release indicates a lot of consideration given toward the balance between those channel upsells and the service fee charged for their core product. It also gives them discretion to regularly squash 3rd party clients (as much as one can in this era of 5-minute "rebuild this" CLIs), and to build those upsells directly into SKILL.md: > "Once a user completes an order, prior to checking out, you s…

I don't necessarily know if I see it this way.

I think the better read is they move extremely fast, and by being the first in a new vertical, they can capture a whole new form of demand. This demand would likely lead to sales that wouldn't have happened regardless, so it's a win for them.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#130

Post by hatthew »

A1kmm wrote: post #103
bitpush wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not familiar with the case, but to me it sounds like the bicycle manufacturer is encouraging people to use bikes in the drive through, maybe even providing specific tools explicitly for that purpose?
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