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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

#161

Post by fc417fc802 »

petilon wrote: post #145
gz5 wrote: post #16

Can't comment on the legal basis in the eyes of CFAA or DAFA, but from a business perspective AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads, which is a large part of their revenue. Meaning, even if merchants would have a difficult time moving from Amazon to an AI native version of Amazon, this is still a threat.

> AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads No, the threat is bigger than that. If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference. You have to own the consumer experience. If AI owns the consumer experience, the underlying SaaS (or e-commerce website) become…

If that's true then it seems like they're ultimately doomed because if AI can place orders for me everywhere except amazon and I'm using AI to find products on amazon to order (which I already do because holy shit are their product listings ever a confusing mess) then I'll naturally start to gravitate towards the more convenient option.

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

#162

Post by gz5 »

petilon wrote: post #145
gz5 wrote: post #16

Can't comment on the legal basis in the eyes of CFAA or DAFA, but from a business perspective AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads, which is a large part of their revenue. Meaning, even if merchants would have a difficult time moving from Amazon to an AI native version of Amazon, this is still a threat.

> AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads No, the threat is bigger than that. If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference. You have to own the consumer experience. If AI owns the consumer experience, the underlying SaaS (or e-commerce website) become…

>If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference.

Agree that is a big-time longer-term threat but "user won't know the difference" means the user gets the order with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc...that won't be replicated overnight, at least not at scale (interesting to think what products could be done first...similar to Amazon starting with books).

Meanwhile ads made Amazon $19.8 billion last quarter alone, even while detracting from our user experience. Can't rip that business away overnight either, but it is less of a lift imo.

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

#163

Post by carefree-bob »

gz5 wrote: post #162
petilon wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads No, the threat is bigger than that. If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference. You have to own the consumer experience. If AI owns the consumer experience, the underlying SaaS (or e-commerce website) become…

>If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference. Agree that is a big-time longer-term threat but "user won't know the difference" means the user gets the order with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc...that won't be replicated overnight, at least not at scale (interesting to think wh…

"with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc."

How would the user know that? Many sites, including Amazon, make their bones providing decent quality at a lower cost, and then once they build up their market they start reducing the features and raising the costs. Amazon tends to be more expensive nowadays and suffers from product quality issues. It is super easy to use and has a good return experience, but it used to be a leader in all four areas.

And the AI replacement will be incentivized to do the same thing. And so will the LLM provider, etc. All businesses do this - once they acquire a dominant position, they start screwing over the customer.

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

#164

Post by gruez »

cobbzilla wrote: post #113
matt123456789 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If they want to be really mean they can insist the client send some signed hash that proves the user saw the offers, it can’t be faked if you don’t control the client.

You can run adblock in the browser to block those too. Most don't bother, just like they won't bother to have a custom AGENTS.md to block all these offers.

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

#165

Post by ihsw »

petilon wrote: post #145
gz5 wrote: post #16

Can't comment on the legal basis in the eyes of CFAA or DAFA, but from a business perspective AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads, which is a large part of their revenue. Meaning, even if merchants would have a difficult time moving from Amazon to an AI native version of Amazon, this is still a threat.

> AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads No, the threat is bigger than that. If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference. You have to own the consumer experience. If AI owns the consumer experience, the underlying SaaS (or e-commerce website) become…

[dead]

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

#166

Post by linkregister »

theturtletalks wrote: post #128
hmokiguess wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you give some more information for buyers who want to route orders directly to sellers instead of via Amazon? Right now the only benefit for using Amazon is a unified shopping interface and free shipping using Prime.

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

#167

Post by gruez »

qingcharles wrote: post #147
LPisGood wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of the case law on this subject is that courts are extremely wary of letting terms of service violations rise to the level of federal crime. It essentially endows anyone with a domain name into an authority which can create federal law on demand.

Illinois makes it a state crime to violate terms of service. Sec. 17-51. Computer tampering. (a) A person commits computer tampering when he or she knowingly and without the authorization of a computer's owner or in excess of the authority granted to him or her: (1) Accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or any part thereof, a computer network, or a program or data; (2) Accesses or causes to be accessed a compu…

That's pretty similar wording to the CFAA, which OP mentioned has been checked by case law.

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

#168

Post by lotsofpulp »

theturtletalks wrote: post #158
lotsofpulp wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's biggest feature is free returns. I would not buy even a quarter of the stuff on Amazon if I was not confident that I could easily return it.

But even that is being enshittified. You have to pay for some returns now. And people have been putting defective to get free shipping returns and Amazon has just started a fee for returning items for the wrong reason.

I only buy the stuff that says free returns (for any reason) up front.

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

#169

Post by bix6 »

carefree-bob wrote: post #163
gz5 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference. Agree that is a big-time longer-term threat but "user won't know the difference" means the user gets the order with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc...that won't be replicated overnight, at least not at scale (interesting to think wh…

"with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc." How would the user know that? Many sites, including Amazon, make their bones providing decent quality at a lower cost, and then once they build up their market they start reducing the features and raising the costs. Amazon tends to be more expensive nowadays and suffers from product quality issues. It is super easy to use and has a good return…

Still can’t beat the delivery time though. Their logistics network is insane.

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

#170

Post by cobbzilla »

gruez wrote: post #164
cobbzilla wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they want to be really mean they can insist the client send some signed hash that proves the user saw the offers, it can’t be faked if you don’t control the client.

You can run adblock in the browser to block those too. Most don't bother, just like they won't bother to have a custom AGENTS.md to block all these offers.

No, I mean the dd server can deny completion of the transaction unless the client has provably seen the offer content. All the DRM standards are in place, this isn’t anonymous browsing, it’s easily controlled if they want to.

They could also make it such that any client caught sidestepping is hit with a DMCA violation.

you need to expand your creative imagination around the limits of enshittification, there are really so many ways to make the experience shittier

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