Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#51

Post by CPLX » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

shortoncash wrote: post #44

CPLX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were for a while there, and it took legislation to fix it, it didn't just magically get better.

I am always surprised by the turn of events when legislation is not involved. Several years ago, documentaries were coming out attacking Walmart over everything. Now it's Amazon. I don't hear as much about Walmart from the rabble-rousing press anywhere now. Moreover, Amazon ended up killing many of the mom and pops anyway. We could not get a Walmart near our city because of the political opposition, and in the end, t…

I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at. Both Amazon and Walmart have problematic side effects on society. The general trend over this period has been more consolidation of corporate market power and rising income inequality.

The idea that these problems don't just fix themselves is certainly supported, rather than undercut, by these observed realities.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#52

Post by yesiamyourdad » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

Data point: I just moved and Amazon sent me a $20 off cleaning offer, which I used to clean out my old rental this past weekend. They did a nice job (I think, haven't gotten my deposit back yet). I was talking to the cleaner and she said she used to work through HomeAdvisor exclusively but has put HA on hold because Amazon takes less commission and keeps her just as busy.

The price was OK with $20 off, I know you can do better if you search out the right service, but I imagine that you can already ask Alexa to schedule a house cleaning, so the integration & convenience would have to be pretty compelling for me to make it a regular thing.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#53

Post by kakarot » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:47 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #50

kakarot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future is a lot less deterministic than you think. Unless our current understanding of physics is completely wrong, the future is entirely deterministic. I think you mean to use the word predictable , which insinuates that we don't have enough information to accurately model the future.

You seem certain of that, but I don't think it's been quite that clear for some time. I'm not a physicist, but AFAIK the Copenhagen interpretation essentially requires indeterminacy. Suffice it to say that I don't think it's as clear-cut as you do :)

Quantum mechanics has no bearing on the macro scale that classical physics inhabit in our current models. We currently have not synthesized the two models into a singular theory.

Classical physics is deterministic. I thought this was common knowledge...

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#54

Post by ghaff » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:49 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #5

> "Any products that require additional services beyond opening a box, Amazon doesn’t do well," Kalyanam said. Well, there’s AWS, which smashes that mold.

Amazon seems to do a mostly reasonable job of customer service, especially given their scale. However, I'd argue that's something quite different from managing an army of low-wage contract workers. Yes, they have their warehouses and there's even Mechanical Turk (though you don't really hear much about that these days) but those seem different and much more constrained that people providing personal services of various sorts. That's generally proven to be a hard type of thing to deliver at scale.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#55

Post by _ea1k » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

shortoncash wrote: post #44

CPLX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were for a while there, and it took legislation to fix it, it didn't just magically get better.

I am always surprised by the turn of events when legislation is not involved. Several years ago, documentaries were coming out attacking Walmart over everything. Now it's Amazon. I don't hear as much about Walmart from the rabble-rousing press anywhere now. Moreover, Amazon ended up killing many of the mom and pops anyway. We could not get a Walmart near our city because of the political opposition, and in the end, t…

I think about this quite a bit. Why does there only have to be one boogeyman?

I also remember when Wal-Mart was the company destroying boogeyman. It was easy to see why. Their sales in electronics, some furniture, housegoods, and some clothing were causing massive erosion to some key competitors. It wasn't really mom and pop shops either, it was places like Sears and other big box stores. And, of course, other shops were eating other businesses for some of them as well (for example, Home Depot and Lowes having a devastating impact on appliance sales at Sears).

But somehow, the media somehow decided that Amazon should be the new boogeyman. Thinking about that list above, are those even things that I would buy at Amazon? Generally, they are not.

Amazon has had a huge impact, but not necessarily in the obvious way that gets bandied about in our politics and our press.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#56

Post by Eridrus » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

2_listerine_pls wrote: post #12

Amazon and Google will end up being the middle men for everything. You simply can't compete with a company that has all the data, all the money, the best engineers, the patents, etc... Once they like your business model, you are out of business. This is happening at an increasingly faster pase. There will be an Amazon AirBnB, and Amazon Uber, Amazon Food, Amazon Freight, etc... the future of free markets is not free.…

I think the playbook at these two companies is very different. Amazon will eat your business completely, but Google will mostly just take a cut off the top. I say this since I don't think Google is willing to hire large amounts of people who aren't software engineers.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#57

Post by _ea1k » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #51

shortoncash wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am always surprised by the turn of events when legislation is not involved. Several years ago, documentaries were coming out attacking Walmart over everything. Now it's Amazon. I don't hear as much about Walmart from the rabble-rousing press anywhere now. Moreover, Amazon ended up killing many of the mom and pops anyway. We could not get a Walmart near our city because of the political opposition, and in the end, t…

I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at. Both Amazon and Walmart have problematic side effects on society. The general trend over this period has been more consolidation of corporate market power and rising income inequality. The idea that these problems don't just fix themselves is certainly supported, rather than undercut, by these observed realities.

I think the point is that a narrative of "Amazon is destroying awesome local companies... like Sears!" is both misleading and not useful in any particular way.

A more general narrative of the dangers of our current "winner take all" market environment might be useful.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#58

Post by GSimon » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:55 PM UTC

htormey wrote: post #49

2_listerine_pls wrote: post #12

Amazon and Google will end up being the middle men for everything. You simply can't compete with a company that has all the data, all the money, the best engineers, the patents, etc... Once they like your business model, you are out of business. This is happening at an increasingly faster pase. There will be an Amazon AirBnB, and Amazon Uber, Amazon Food, Amazon Freight, etc... the future of free markets is not free.…

Nah, both companies have a major weaknesses that no amount of money seems to be able to solve. Namely, user experience. Example 1, Dropbox: Google & Amazon seem like companies ideally positioned to destroy Dropbox. They excel at making network infrastructure at scale, they both have competing products and massive existing customer basis. Yet Dropbox has managed to compete and win on user experience. Example 2, Netfli…

Not the most airtight examples. Dropbox was first to market with an innovative service, they've been losing market share ever since Google Drive which now has 25%+ of the market. Netflix was also an innovative service that was first to market. So now there's a new monopoly type of a company who dominates a new market > cable tv. Smaller company can't oust bigger ones unless it is actually possible for them to #1. Out innovate and implement a better service and #2. Hope the monopolies don't catch on to your idea and overwhelm it with their resources (i.e what Blockbuster could have done by adapting an online model). Those 2 critical circumstances don't have all that often.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#59

Post by yellowstuff » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:55 PM UTC

The general problem with "Uber for X" is that mostly consumers don't want one-time anonymous services. It works for cabs and probably for one-time cleaning, but if I'm going to have someone clean my apartment every week I want the same person there every time, and I think that's pretty typical.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#60

Post by neogodless » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 1:55 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #9

neogodless wrote: post #6

I'm in the weird position where, we are family planning, but (to our knowledge) unsuccessful, but started getting a series of emails from Amazon congratulating us and offering up suggestions like vitamins, baby registry and, of course, housecleaning services w/ discounts available. (The first email was, to put it lightly, premature. Now we got one that says "week one", and it could be right, or not. We don't know yet…

We may not be there yet, but there's certainly going to be a day where online advertisers know a woman is pregnant before she does based on the changes in her behavior. I'm not sure if that counts as a dystopia or not. Is there a good word for "Weirdtopia"?

While "notifying" that you "are" pregnant, according to data and calculations seems helpful, the fact that a lot of apparent pregnancies end in miscarriage[0], or just the emotional roller-coaster that is family planning (particularly when it requires additional medical assistance) takes a toll on people, means that these well-meaning emails can really be a negative trigger.

[0] https://www.webmd.com/baby/guide/pregnancy-miscarriage

"According to the March of Dimes, as many as 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage -- most often before a woman misses a menstrual period or even knows she is pregnant. About 15-25% of recognized pregnancies will end in a miscarriage."