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

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

#401

Post by sudosysgen »

beagle3 wrote: post #304
deanCommie wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have 100% hypervisor access. To give them zero knowledge, you need full homomorphic encryption which is impractical at this point (and likely for a while). You may trust them not to abuse hypervisor access, but they still have network “meta” data - it could tell them how many transactions clear against credit processors (though not the actual amounts if encrypted), a good idea general distribution of page views…

Even if homomorphic encryption was practical, you would need hardware to decrypt that would have to be either on the cloud oron premise.

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

#402

Post by mlcrypto »

Invent and Simplify Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here." As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.

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

#403

Post by mulmen »

hammock wrote: post #381
darkerside wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a similar level of trust that you give to banks not to seize your money, or to your bodyguard not to do you physical harm. Stealing data from a customer paying for hosting would be _very_ different, and much more scandalous, than identifying trends on a competitive marketplace and taking advantage of them by launching competing products.

Banks mightn't seize your money. They certainly take the data from your bank accounts and monetize/resell it. This is a dirty secret, and pervasive. How else do you think "closed-loop" measurement of marketing effectiveness, and retargeting based on purchase behavior are done? How else do you think suppliers can pull a D&B report on your company showing your bank account balances?

Banks definitely seize your money. When I was a young teenager my parents encouraged me to put my lawn mowing money in a bank account. I had a total of $100.00! We went over to Bank of America and I opened up an account and deposited my hard earned cash. A month or two later I tried to withdraw some cash and was told I had no money. My full $100.00 had been consumed by insufficient balance fees.

A valuable if painful lesson to learn. I still do all my personal banking with a credit union and consider my relationship with banks to be adversarial. They only own my debt, never my cash.

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

#404

Post by qaq »

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…

This amazes me it's so much easier at that scale to deal with 6-10 boxes vs all the crap that comes with AWS. Don't want to deal with managing them there are companies that will do it for you and you will have an actual on call people that are accountable to you. Unless you are doing 6+ figures a month in AWS spend have fun trying to have same level of service.

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

#405

Post by shim__ »

CodeCube wrote: post #290

So many comments about, "doesn't everyone know they do this?", and "everyone does this!" I say there should be an explicit difference between "running a platform", and "selling on a platform", and never should the two meet. By "platform" here, and in the context of selling stuff online or IRL, I mainly mean that the store should never compete with their suppliers ... it's madness and unethical. If everyone can get a…

> And yes, I believe this should be regulated at the policy level.

But why? Nobody is forcing you to use AWS, there in fact heaps of similar services around which at first glance don't share have said problem.

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

#406

Post by TulliusCicero »

CodeCube wrote: post #290

So many comments about, "doesn't everyone know they do this?", and "everyone does this!" I say there should be an explicit difference between "running a platform", and "selling on a platform", and never should the two meet. By "platform" here, and in the context of selling stuff online or IRL, I mainly mean that the store should never compete with their suppliers ... it's madness and unethical. If everyone can get a…

Nah, the way Amazon runs right now is pretty beneficial to me as a consumer. Having access to Amazon stuff and third party stuff in one place is nice.

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

#407

Post by balls187 »

stcredzero wrote: post #170
balls187 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance companies are already offering discounts for using their apps while in car.

Insurance companies are already offering discounts for using their apps while in car. I was debating on whether I should include mention of these apps. Here's the thing about that: The data available to these apps is nothing compared to the data available to Tesla. Tesla can figure out how often you get close to bumping into something, exactly how far, how fast you were going, and what the lighting/weather conditions…

I agree with your point.

I think the insurance companies are doing what they can to compete but wont be able to match the platform builders offering.

Perhaps they look at licensing data from other platforms like Ford, Yota, etc.

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

#408

Post by nwallin »

darkerside wrote: post #345
TimSchumann wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The is absolutely no veil between the hypervisor and the guest virtual machines. Not in the EBS either. This is 100% true. To do any useful computation on your data (read, what you're using all AWS for) they have to have 100% visibility into your data. > If they say they won't read your data, better trust them. If you don't, stay away from their datacenters. That's it, right there. All of this is based on Trust in…

This is a similar level of trust that you give to banks not to seize your money, or to your bodyguard not to do you physical harm. Stealing data from a customer paying for hosting would be _very_ different, and much more scandalous, than identifying trends on a competitive marketplace and taking advantage of them by launching competing products.

If a bank were to seize your money, you'd notice, because you wouldn't have that money anymore. And it would be very well documented, leaving a clear paper trail to a criminal conviction and a civil suit. If your bodyguard did you physical harm, you'd notice, because your knees would hurt. And there would be ample evidence for a criminal case. If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly never notice, no criminal law would apply, and you'd have a hell of a time proving it in a civil suit.

It's the difference between breaking into a Walmart with a ski mask and assault rifle and stealing a bunch of blu rays vs recording the HDMI out from whatever device you stream Netflix from. They're not the same thing at all, either in terms of harm done, applicable criminal law, or ability to build a compelling civil lawsuit.

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

#409

Post by milesvp »

werber wrote: post #393
adrianmonk wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or your commercial landlord to not send the cleaning staff to rummage around in your filing cabinets. Which, while it could happen, is something that people don't really seem to get concerned about.

I have been chastised for not locking my desk for this exact concern. It does happen

Don’t let anyone chastise you for this. Most desk locks are easy to pick. Also, there are like 3 keys to have on your keychain to open like 80% of all manufactured locks like the ones in furniture. Deviant Ulam, a pen tester, gives a lot of talks on this topic.

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

#410

Post by jkestner »

CodeCube wrote: post #290

So many comments about, "doesn't everyone know they do this?", and "everyone does this!" I say there should be an explicit difference between "running a platform", and "selling on a platform", and never should the two meet. By "platform" here, and in the context of selling stuff online or IRL, I mainly mean that the store should never compete with their suppliers ... it's madness and unethical. If everyone can get a…

Elizabeth Warren's plan does just this by designating such companies as “platform utilities”: https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big...

I agree a diverse marketplace is a healthy one, and that requires intervention since clearly the initial rules are not enough. Some like to pretend that free markets are only negatively impacted by regulation, and only positively impacted by its participants.

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