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Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

businessinsider.com

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Re: Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

#131

Post by yazaddaruvala »

lapcat wrote: post #57
qgin wrote: post #9

How is this any different than Apple having its own wood-and-steel display area in Best Buy?

Amazon has more than a third of all online retail and is close to surpassing Walmart as the largest retailer in the world, online or physical. Best Buy is not in the same league. Also, Apple appears to be the only company in the world that can get this deal from Amazon. Apple's competitors can't get it. So this seems to be an artificial restriction on competition.

This is not true.

Sure, Apple is sometimes a beta customer of new features in Brand Registry. But in general is not the only company that gets this treatment from Amazon and Apple’s competitors can sign up and use almost all the same services through Brand Registry.

Source: Its been a few years but I built many of these counterfeit detecting systems from greenfield.

The biggest problem really has been brands not wanting to engage with Amazon or Brands not being anywhere close to organized enough to help. In many cases simple questions like “Please give us a CSV of all your products. We will not add them to Amazon’s catalog” was met with “we don’t have such a CSV or database”, “ok we pulled together many products into a CSV by searching years of emails and Dropbox files but if you want the products from our European and Asian divisions please message them separately”.

I can tell you, Apple does not have these same organizational issues. They know every product they have ever made, they are happy to share, and they are happy to leverage experimental features.

Re: Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

#132

Post by QwertyPi »

CSMastermind wrote: post #3

It sounds like Apple was upset about the counterfeit products being sold on Amazon and, after issuing hundreds of thousands of takedown notices threatened to sue Amazon themselves and reached an agreement where Amazon took measures to eliminate the counterfeits. The knock seems to be that they only did this for Apple products, not counterfeits of say Samsung phones because they were not pressured in similar ways by S…

Ok, there are two issues here:

1. Amazon refuses to hold themselves accountable for the products they sell—they advertise one thing but sell you another, clearly indicating they have no idea what they're actually selling.

2. Apple relies on legal protections to artificially inflate the pricing of their products. AirPods aren't much better than bluetooth headphones sold for a tenth the price, and they are straight-up inferior to the products of competitors with a third their price. If the superiority of their own products were so obvious the branding wouldn't be an issue at all. And don't even get me started on how they force consumers to buy their hardware to get access to their software, which should be forced to be sold on the open market along side their competitors.

Now of course we need to fix the first issue to fix the second one, but the second issue has far more destructive consequences.

Re: Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

#133

Post by yazaddaruvala »

Disclaimer: I used to work for Amazon for many years.

Context: It’s been a few years but I built many of these counterfeit detecting systems from greenfield. Including the early architecture integrations with the ads teams.

AMA (I can’t always say everything, but I’ll answer to my best ability in the morning)

Re: Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

#134

Post by b112 »

vkou wrote: post #124
addicted wrote: post #75

I returned my unopened Apple Watch to Amazon. Getting my money back has been a massive pain. Usually Amazon literally returns the money when the delivery person picks up the item from my doorstep. But with this Amazon required a scheduled pickup with UPS, did not acknowledge receiving the item even though UPS showed it as received and a few weeks later they are still asking me to wait for 1 month before contacting th…

It's surprising that your account wasn't banned for initiating a chargeback. A chargeback is a nuclear solution, where you make it clear that you're going to have a third party dictate terms to the merchant. Most merchants respond to that sort of behaviour by dictating to you that they will no longer do business with you.

While you may be accurately depicting the situation, as viewed by some merchants, it's not the reality.

A merchant enters into the world of credit card payments knowing full well chargebacks are a thing. And most people won't go there, unless the merchant won't act appropriately.

For example, Amazon. A black hole of information. It's very hard to even find a 'contact' button that doesn't lead to a chatbot with relentlessly circular menus.

They funnel you into multiple choice hell, and the wrong choice gives a lame answer, with no way to chat a person. You have to restart the whole menu process to try a different tact.

Amazon actively, aggressively tries to ignore you. They do not provide customer service except under duress.

Note that they keep doubling down on this! Year after year, it is harder and harder to get resolution for outside the box issues they cause.

I know so many people that have no idea how to ever contact amazon, if something bad has happened. That have tried, and get lost in menu hell.

And even if you manage to get past this, and finally start chatting with an actual person, they have a very hard time helping you if the problem is outside the box.

You'll have your chat session "transferred" to someone else, and have to explain all over again. Yup, they can read the log but often don't. I've had a chat session with 4 or 5 transfers, and then had it die.

Leaving me to start all over again.

Amazon is the worst for customer support. The worst. They deserve chargebacks.

And the post you're replying to was right to do so. If the merchant cannot give clear, concise answers, and explain what is happening in your specific case, it's on them. And amazon chat personnel will just cite company policy.

We all need to say that we don't care, Mr Merchant, if you're trying to scale. If you're doing so as "cost saving measures". Screw you, Merchant, provide customer support!

And it's getting to the point that we should legislate this, specifically for large corps.

Re: Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

#135

Post by lapcat »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #131
lapcat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has more than a third of all online retail and is close to surpassing Walmart as the largest retailer in the world, online or physical. Best Buy is not in the same league. Also, Apple appears to be the only company in the world that can get this deal from Amazon. Apple's competitors can't get it. So this seems to be an artificial restriction on competition.

This is not true. Sure, Apple is sometimes a beta customer of new features in Brand Registry. But in general is not the only company that gets this treatment from Amazon and Apple’s competitors can sign up and use almost all the same services through Brand Registry. Source: Its been a few years but I built many of these counterfeit detecting systems from greenfield. The biggest problem really has been brands not want…

> But in general is not the only company that gets this treatment from Amazon and Apple’s competitors can sign up and use almost all the same services through Brand Registry.

This is not true. From the article:

"I'm surprised — that's strange," a former senior Amazon advertising manager told Insider, referring to Apple's clean product and search result pages. "I wouldn't have the discretion to offer something like that."

At least half a dozen salespeople on Amazon's advertising team told Insider that they were not able to extend this Apple-style special treatment to their clients. Large advertisers on Amazon constantly ask for this type of exclusivity, but the company usually denies those requests because it wants a diverse set of search results and ads, one of the people said. To create Apple's clean product and search pages, multiple teams at the most senior levels at Amazon would have had to get involved, this person added.

"We balk at companies that want to buy all the ad slots," this person said. "I have never seen, nor do I have the control to give, that type of right."

Re: Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

#136

Post by pbhjpbhj »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #133

Disclaimer: I used to work for Amazon for many years. Context: It’s been a few years but I built many of these counterfeit detecting systems from greenfield. Including the early architecture integrations with the ads teams. AMA (I can’t always say everything, but I’ll answer to my best ability in the morning)

What proportion of counterfeits could you detect?

Was there any concern on liability as presumably Amazon can detect lots of counterfeits but choose not to?

Was there any effort to prevent sellers they know are selling junk, or going to sell junk, from using the site?

Re: Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

#137

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Supermancho wrote: post #89
karaterobot wrote: post #23

If it's true they colluded to remove ads from Apple pages on Amazon, both companies deserve what they get. Why do it sneakily? Why not have a page somewhere on Amazon that says "hey, if you want us to remove ads from your product listings, pay us [10x the total lifetime amount we expect to get in ad revenue from running ads on the page] per product page". Most companies wouldn't do it, so it wouldn't change Amazon's…

> If it's true they colluded to remove ads from Apple pages on Amazon Amazon is not the only company to do this. Not sure how reducing ads is problematic. Amazon doesn't have to show ads it doesn't want to.

Reducing ads isn't a problem, but showing ads that are for counterfeits alongside most companies is, especially when you could remove the ads counterfeits but only over that as a service for Apple Computers.

At that point they're choosing to profit off counterfeits. Which we know they do, but here they're effectively admitting it.

Re: Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

#138

Post by pbhjpbhj »

kube-system wrote: post #55
ren_engineer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my question is why hasn't the FBI seized every Amazon warehouse for knowingly selling counterfeit goods? They do this routinely for smaller businesses selling fake stuff

Because they don't "knowingly sell counterfeit goods". Amazon employees don't create these listings, other people do. Someone that "knowingly sells counterfeit goods" is humanly aware that a specific item they are selling is counterfeit, and decide to sell it anyway, which is not the case here. These listings are taken down whack-a-mole style as Amazon is made humanly aware of their existence.

Fwiw, in the UK it didn't matter if you know goods are counterfeit or not, if they are trademark infringing then they get seized.

Things are not working if consumers don't know what they're buying and government departments devoted to enforcing correct information in the market are doing nothing about it.

Re: Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

#139

Post by DueDilligence »

QwertyPi wrote: post #132
CSMastermind wrote: post #3

It sounds like Apple was upset about the counterfeit products being sold on Amazon and, after issuing hundreds of thousands of takedown notices threatened to sue Amazon themselves and reached an agreement where Amazon took measures to eliminate the counterfeits. The knock seems to be that they only did this for Apple products, not counterfeits of say Samsung phones because they were not pressured in similar ways by S…

Ok, there are two issues here: 1. Amazon refuses to hold themselves accountable for the products they sell—they advertise one thing but sell you another, clearly indicating they have no idea what they're actually selling. 2. Apple relies on legal protections to artificially inflate the pricing of their products. AirPods aren't much better than bluetooth headphones sold for a tenth the price, and they are straight-up…

[dead]

Re: Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads

#140

Post by pbhjpbhj »

StopHammoTime wrote: post #87
bmitc wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like using scale as an excuse.

The law is the problem. The law requires explicit knowledge, so Amazon can get away with it. I don’t agree with it, but lawmakers should be making these changes.

AFAIK, trademark law does not require explicit knowledge, if you sell an item with a trademark and just don't care whether it came from the mark owner then you're still infringing if it didn't.

So, all those dodgy USB drives that are branded are infringing.

In the UK these are "counterfeit" and illegal to sell (not just tortuous, criminal).

I'm surprised if the USA code doesn't make these actions criminal and leaves them only as civil matters given how much the state choose to consider copyright as a criminal action?

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