Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#291

Post by rsanek » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

allemagne wrote: post #235

rsanek wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's not what a platform is. You can always sell your product direct to consumer. You just can't be the intermediary for both your own and other companies' products on the same site.

Alright, so you actually can be a manufacturer and a retailer at the same time, just with your own products on a separate website. Are manufacturers legally barred from linking to the marketplaces of its peers? Could Amazon not just maintain two websites, and shut down the marketplace for certain goods when it feels it has enough information to sell its own versions on the other site? If not, could Amazon not just se…

I think those are good implementation concerns. Maintaining two separate websites isn't really an option under the supposed regulation, that's still one company being a platform and a manufacturer. The second option seems alot more likely to be allowed -- but now, at least you've created a market for that information and it's not just Amazon that has access to the data. Not sure I understand why it would treat the those products preferentially though -- unless you're bundling selling that information with product placement fees, which doesn't seem to be related (or necessary). I would assume product placement would be another revenue stream for the platform, like it is now for brick and mortar retailers like walmart

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#292

Post by ChuckMcM » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #222

ChuckMcM wrote: post #179

The obligatory, "I'm shocked I tell you, shocked!" but unlike say the "Kirkland" brand at CostCo, this is more like UPS using the data it has on what is being delivered to peoples houses to start stocking their trucks with things people order often[1]. [1] Maybe the next step after food trucks is "mini-mart" trucks.

Mini-mart trucks used to be a thing with ice cream trucks a while ago... they use to sell laser pointers.

Good comparison, except in this case it would be like, "Hey we've been delivering USB chargers to all of your neighbors, why not get one from the van here, same quality, lower price and you get it right now? How about it?"

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#293

Post by MiroF » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #111

beagle3 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not illegal to have a monopoly; but it is illegal to use a monopoly you have in one area to get an unfair advantage in another. Amazon may or may not legally be a retail monopoly - I do not know the answer. But your question can be rephrased for any monopoly and the answer would be “monopolies should be punished for leveraging their monopoly power in other markets, because that ruins the market for everyone els…

> It is not illegal to have a monopoly; but it is illegal to use a monopoly you have in one area to get an unfair advantage in another. This is a very common misconception in the United States. It’s how a lot of defenders of antitrust law want antitrust law to work, but it is not how antitrust law does work. This Supreme Court case explicitly establishes that antitrust laws can be used against companies which obtain…

a. That isn't a supreme court case

b. This 1945 precedent is not the standard that most modern antitrust (post-Bell breakup) cases are held to.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#294

Post by TimSchumann » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #282

TimSchumann wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It taught me a valuable lesson not to build my entire business on someone else's platform. This sounds eerily similar to what happened to a close friend of mine, and that's 100% the right takeaway from the situation. > My wife runs a small business on Etsy and it's just as bad. They make random code changes, which bumps listings up or down and you suddenly have no orders for weeks at a time. Same as above, differen…

The 'I got nothing to hide' is when discussing law enforcement surveilence? It is funny how fear of the "police state" is more or less irrelevant now vs early 2000s and private companies are the main problem. It is hard to predict the future.

Yeah that may have not been the correct phrase to turn there. I guess in this context it's more about personal ownership of data. Which at this point in time, is 100% trust based with Amazon and 0% tech based.

I don't think that's something people, even many very technologically knowledgeable people, are aware of.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#295

Post by jedimastert » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #285

nateburke wrote: post #266

About 10 years ago I met the head of IT for B&H cameras in NYC. Among many things, he was in charge of the hosting for their online store. After he complained about dealing with physical servers, I asked him if he had ever considered using AWS ec2 for the website, and he replied that his boss refused because he believed that Amazon would pull data on B&H products and use it to compete more effectively. I'm not sure t…

Sounds like this head of IT isn't very good at his job if he can't explain the difference between EC2 access, databases, and web requests over TLS There are ways that you can use AWS that Amazon would have no way to access any of your data even if they wanted to.

> There are ways that you can use AWS that Amazon would have no way to access any of your data even if they wanted to.

Is it worth the extra effort and moving already functional servers to do so?

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#296

Post by odysseus » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

libertine wrote: post #247

stcredzero wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if they want such massive platforms and play on such marketplaces, they must obey their own guidelines, else they are either stripped from the playground or someone else should own the play ground. So here's a question: Is a store really a marketplace? It seems to me that Amazon, Target, Macys, etc, do a lot of curation and editorial work with regards to standards of production and marketing for items in their stores…

I understand your idea, but I still think they are and should be defined as marketplaces, with a scrutiny any marketplace should get. The first reason is, Amazon isn't doing much curation (if any), due to their size they can't do proper curation, and bots are terrible at it (either based on keywords or reporting). This is proven by counterfeit items being sold, listings being stolen/manipulated, biased report systems…

What kind of "full data" would you want from the customer? Earlier, you mentioned their name. Why can't the customer's transaction be as anonymous as possible, if they choose to be?

It seems as if Amazon, likely prodded by the GDPR and CCPA, is limiting the personal information they share with third parties. I think that's a good thing, for the consumer at least.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#297

Post by swarnie_ » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

nateburke wrote: post #266

About 10 years ago I met the head of IT for B&H cameras in NYC. Among many things, he was in charge of the hosting for their online store. After he complained about dealing with physical servers, I asked him if he had ever considered using AWS ec2 for the website, and he replied that his boss refused because he believed that Amazon would pull data on B&H products and use it to compete more effectively. I'm not sure t…

I love B&H, we planned family holidays from the UK specifically around buying from this shop. When the $/£ exchange was healthier we got some real bargains!

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#298

Post by sneak » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #287

sacks2k wrote: post #171

I saw this happening a decade ago, but I had no real proof. I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010. I found niche products that Amazon didn't sell. As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks. I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product. W…

You know, at some point people will discover that "online market" is something important enough for governments to regulate.

I think this is just a special case of “online communication”. It’s illegal for the phone company to arbitrarily suspend your service for what (legal things) you say over the phone.

It’s legal for Twitter or Amazon or Etsy or Twitch or Discord or YouTube.

I recently got suspended by Twitter after using it daily for 12 years and in addition to not being able to send new tweets or DMs (or do data backup/takeout), I also can no longer see even the usernames (or the message history) of the people I was communicating with in DM. For many of them, that was my only contact info for them.

I am becoming increasingly convinced for the need to regulate arbitrary suspensions for communications platforms (including sales/business platforms, that’s just a special case of communication). The current emergency situation really woke me up to the huge dangers involved.

GP lost his business, which is sad and tragic and unfair. I envision that in disasters or emergencies, eventually someone is going to lose their life.

Imagine if the mobile phone or cable company could arbitrarily suspend your connectivity because you left bad reviews online about their service.

I recently did a deep dive on how these sorts of centralized, censorship systems pose an inherent and existential threat to safety and human rights in an emergency/pandemic/war that is non-obvious in peacetime: https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/

It’s truly terrifying to me that these systems (among them Amazon, Discord, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram) have final say, practically, over who gets to speak to whom in a lot of cases in society, or what is allowed to be said. These companies (and the government in their jurisdiction) are entirely unaccountable for this terrible censorship power they wield, and it is only a matter of when, not if, it will be horribly abused. TFA is just one important facet of this danger.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#299

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #200

acwan93 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We sell an ERP catered to distributors and many do sell on Amazon. I’ve always wondered why on earth they would continue to sell on a platform that’s constantly gathering their selling data, or even inventory if they’re going FBA, and eventually try to undercut them if their products sell well. Their response is usually “I’m making enough money now, why worry about later?” or “our product category is too niche for Am…

When your customers say that their product is too niche, they're probably right in a lot of cases. The argument that Amazon can enter every niche and cater to every consumer want is essentially saying that planned economies can actually function. But they can't. Amazon is skimming the highest volume product categories and that's it. They couldn't manage the complexity of branching out into every single long tail prod…

Not highest volume.

Highest gross profit (volume * margin).

And how would you ever know either of these two (volume, margin) if you were an arbitrary 3rd party?

Amazon doesn't need to branch out into every single long tail product to cause severe disruption to a retail sector that is often predicated on low single digit margins.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#300

Post by eecc » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #271

jhall1468 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely not the same thing lol. What Amazon did is unethical. What you are describing is illegal.

I'm honesty curious what crime this would be. If I rent time on someone else's server, and they look at what I'm doing on that server, what illegal thing has happened?

Huh, WTF?! Your FBI used to railroad random kiddies for messing around with poorly programmed dynamic pages and now you’re arguing there’s nothing wrong if a hosting provider trespasses and mines your private property?!