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Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

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Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#21

Post by arprocter »

throwaway_aws wrote: post #12

"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…

Interesting

Previous discussion of Amazon releasing a Basics version of an item at half the price:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11533973

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#22

Post by throwaway_aws »

bobbychairs wrote: post #16
throwaway_aws wrote: post #12

"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…

Not trying to come across as judgemental. But if I may ask, did you at the time feel like that was an ethical thing to do?

I joined after the team had gotten traction already. Both the GM and senior most product person on the team told me about their tactics independently.

To be honest, I didn't think of it as anything sinister at that time. AWS had such high octane culture to move fast and innovate that I actually felt what they had done was quite smart. It was a super competitive culture and people did whatever was needed to build new things. On a day to day basis the only pressure was to build... I don't remember instances where ethical guidelines were brought up. So, in a way, the outcomes were a result of what people were rewarded on.

Only after I left AWS I started thinking it was ethically iffy. I still believe Amazon is an amazing company and my time at AWS was one of the best learning experiences.

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#23

Post by rckoepke »

former-aws wrote: post #20
throwaway_aws wrote: post #12

"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…

Cannot up vote this enough. During my time both at Retail and AWS it was perfectly normal to trawl production customer data and come up with ideas to launch competing products. Prices were always set lower or free offering justified as data-driven and customer obsession. I hated the gas lighting their customers and left in disgust of the company and its leadership which encourages that behavior.

What types of AWS data would be trawled? Are we talking about data inside S3 buckets, database schemas, particular architecure styles, the fact that a product is consuming {x, y, z} amounts of cloud resources, or simply "spending $m / year" in gross?

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#24

Post by kbenson »

throwaway_aws wrote: post #22
bobbychairs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to come across as judgemental. But if I may ask, did you at the time feel like that was an ethical thing to do?

I joined after the team had gotten traction already. Both the GM and senior most product person on the team told me about their tactics independently. To be honest, I didn't think of it as anything sinister at that time. AWS had such high octane culture to move fast and innovate that I actually felt what they had done was quite smart. It was a super competitive culture and people did whatever was needed to build new…

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair.

I wish we went into this in much more detail in high school when covering economics and ethics (if the school even bothers to teach ethics). It should be a prerequisite in any capitalistic economy (but not only those, it can easily be extended to other things).

I've also worked in industries that I think don't operate very ethically. It's amazing what you can ignore as an outlier because the alternative is uncomfortable or means you have to make a large personal change.

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#25

Post by ggl_thorwaway »

throwaway_aws wrote: post #12

"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…

When I was at Google, we were encouraged by our lawyers not to worry about patents or unique parts of any product. If there ever will be a claim, they will drown the company in legal fees, so nobody is going to dare to sue us.

Patents were used, in many cases, as a form of research into a new area.

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#26

Post by rvnx »

m3kw9 wrote: post #11

The meeting probably went like this. “I want (crazy %) for (low ball $) or we start one ourselves.

Well, I have been on both side (a company that wants to be acquired, and a large buyer), and yes, that's the discussion you have. It's normal and expected by all parties.

When you want to buy a company it's because you want to launch yourself into that field.

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#29

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

throwaway_aws wrote: post #12

"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…

Just ... wow. This is an egregious abuse of monopoly power and is exactly the kind of thing that antitrust laws are supposed to address.

I was certainly naive when I heard about other big retailers who would refuse to allow any subcontractors to use AWS. "Surely Amazon has a Chinese wall" to prevent that kind of data sharing, I thought. Never underestimate the lack of morals in business is the right answer I guess.

Re: Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products

#30

Post by jacquesm »

throwaway_aws wrote: post #12

"An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products" Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the sa…

Wow. I understand you do this as a throwaway but if true this is very bad stuff and it would be nice to have a lot more substantiation so that it could be verified.
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