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

Post by saurabhtandon » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:51 PM UTC

julianlam wrote: post #533

theturtletalks wrote: post #455

This is the exact reason why Shopify grew rapidly. Sellers knew they needed a platform where they own the data and could abstract the operations outside of Amazon seller dashboard. People also forget that Amazon doesn't have to pay to advertise its own products, but 3rd party sellers do. This immediately puts you at a disadvantage if you want your product at the top since you pay seller commission and advertising fee…

> Next time you want to buy something from Amazon, I would encourage you to find the seller's website directly or find them on eBay. eBay charges less seller fees and is not in the business of selling products directly. Last time I bought an item off eBay, it arrived shipped via Amazon Prime. Pretty sure the seller just bought it off Amazon and shipped it to my house... it was a weird turn of events. It wasn't a bran…

Post by throwaway_aws » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:56 PM UTC

throwaway_aws wrote: post #521

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…

Throwaway account for obvious reasons. In the past, AWS has used the data from third party hosted services on AWS to build a similar service and in fact start poaching their customers. Source: I used to be at AWS and know the PM & his manager who built a service this way. I was hired on that team.

Post by monkmartinez » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 12:00 AM UTC

joyj2nd wrote: post #352

TimSchumann wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know what is a pretty good competitor? Competitor on what vector? Speaking from a US-centric viewpoint here, but my thoughts; * Distribution & Warehousing - Walmart & Costco * Sales & Advertising - Google & Facebook A few notable online storefronts that are independent and I use frequently are B&H Photovideo and Newegg. Realistically though the options I listed above are the only companies I see having the scal…

Yes, sorry, I meant from a buyer perspective. As a side node: I am actually thinking of buying a tiny bankrupt travel equipment company. Friends advised against it because of "Amazon essentials". I would not sell on Amazon but it is a strong argument. Maybe someone has some words of wisdom regarding to this.

Post by AmericanChopper » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 12:05 AM UTC

qaq wrote: post #541

AmericanChopper wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you completely ignore scaling. The two things you simply cannot replicate at that scale are redundancy and operational resource. AWS has their entire operations team working at all hours of the day and night supporting their infrastructure. They also offer some of the most highly redundant services in the world. There is simply no way you could ever dream of replicating those service levels with such a small oper…

AWS has amazing marketing the truth of the matter is AWS Region has worse downtime than a single top tier DC. Mainly due to nightmarish complexity of their control layer. They had outages that lasted many hours in a row multiple times. You need to carefully separate marketing claims from operational reality and actual track record. When US East has major issues there is not enough spare capacity to spin up everything…

Post by jlbnjmn » Fri, Apr 24, 2020, 12:07 AM UTC

werber wrote: post #450

milesvp wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I pick my battles, I’m not going to complain about a policy unless I think it could really hurt people. If I complained about everything i think is dumb, I’d never be able to keep a job, because most of it seems dumb to me.