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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

#631

Post by URSpider94 »

triceratops wrote: post #499
URSpider94 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, force all retail stores to divest their house brands, which they have been selling without complaint as long as I’ve been alive?

Those are different. Explained elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22961009

That seems like a distinction without a difference. Yes, Safeway owns inventory of branded merchandise that's on their shelves, but in modern retail, they probably don't own more than a couple of weeks of inventory. And, in modern retail, it's highly likely that branded vendors (like Coke and Pepsi) have very complex relationships with retailers that include co-op fees for marketing, premiums paid for end-cap placement and special displays, and bonuses for hitting certain volumes.

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

#632

Post by greyskull »

jlgaddis wrote: post #608
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 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. And yet, a couple times a year perhaps, we have discussions right here on HN about the latest AWS outage that took down half the Internet.

No group is infallible. If I thought about a world where cloud providers didn't exist (AWS or otherwise), where every company had to build and maintain all of their infrastructure themselves, and had to make a guess, I'd wager the combined occurrences of issues around availability, durability, etc. would far outpace what we have had.

That's not even considering the potential impact to software development and innovation that we get with commodity cloud services. This is hand-wavy of course but I'd stick to it.

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

#633

Post by AmericanChopper »

tekknik wrote: post #622
qaq wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our AWS monthly spend is deep 7 figures over the last 10 years our colo projects had better uptime than AWS US East. You keep living in the marketing bubble for AWS.

I would love to see some data here. What service outages? What’s your infrastructure like? What’s your DCs uptime?

There’s a few confounding factors to address before you get to the believability of the claims (which are remarkably dubious). For starters they’ve only spoken about the AWS region which is least reliable by design (as it is the first to receive new features), and they’re talking about a 10 year time span (AWS in 2010 was much less reliable than it is today). It’s also not really clear what they’re talking about when they say AWS. If it’s just the core features you’d need to forklift an on-prem service into the cloud, then the claims are especially frivolous, but the SLA difference between EC2 and AWS Ground Station is more than an order of magnitude.

Even if their claims are true (which I certainly don’t believe they are), you’d be more likely to get better uptime than EC2 with a small on-prem setup through dumb luck rather than through deliberate planning. Something still has to go wrong for you to have an outage, and you’re more likely to get an incredible lucky streak than you are to outperform their entire AWS infrastructure capability with a few people and half a rack of servers.

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

#634

Post by Oblouk »

Guest42 wrote: post #530
alaskamiller wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Shopify you don't pay ~20% sales commission to Amazon per se, but you sure as heck will end up paying for that if not more to Facebook. Where by FB has no direct incentive, yet. It could be a FB Marketplace PM team someone has already copied Shopify outright and is just waiting for the right time to roll that out to all FB user worldwide. With Amazon Marketplace the strategy has always been to convert customers…

Does amazon allow seller sites to have lower prices?

You could sell a variant or have a constant recycled set of promos

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

#635

Post by selimthegrim »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #557
CerealFounder wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty anti-competitive that a company can operate a marketplace and sell on the same marketplace. It would seem like an obvious law to enact.

It's one of those Schrodinger's laws that applies to companies like Amazon. They're either a marketplace or not depending on the complaint. Complain about shady sellers and fakes? They're a marketplace and not responsible! Complain about anti competitive practices? Well this is clearly the Amazon store, says so right on it, clearly not a marketplace!

Yes, Prime Minister used to call these irregular verbs. I compete, you steal, he or she colludes...

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

#636

Post by partiallypro »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #614
partiallypro wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Shopify should experiment with a centralized market place where stores can opt in. If you opt in, your store items are listed in a central location searchable in at single point, just like Amazon. Your item listing in the central market place merely directs you to YOUR branded store, allowing you to check out, and see your other products. That solves a huge problem of visibility that Amazon has mastered.

I’m not sure it would be easy. Large hosting platforms like GoDaddy, Wix or Squarespace could try this too, but it puts you inherently at odds with your own customers. If I pay you to host my site where I sell my products, but you index me into the central sales portal in a bad way, I’ll be pissed. Kind of like restaurants on Seamless. It comes off as deep rent seeking - instead of helping me succeed, which is the re…

But I propose it as opt-in. If you don't want in, you aren't. It would also be entirely free, Shopify makes money on the transactions, so there are no ads but they have incentive to make you visible. I don't see how this is a negative in any way for anyone. Your store still exists in its own container, and the portal is just to drive sales to you by increasing your visibility. You could theoretically carry on your business as if this never existed within Shopify. It is basically just a giant search engine that only works across the Shopify network. If Shopify won't do it, I am near willing to bet this business model is eventually put together by someone. Wordpress.com kind of does it...but it's only with content and they don't make money on transactions. They key is that there are no ads, it's a pure search engine, the money is made from the new transaction/hosting.

GoDaddy, Wix and Squarespace couldn't really afford to do it because they aren't e-commerce focused.

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

#637

Post by ben0x539 »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #596
snowwrestler wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Safeway does not have any other sellers on their shelves. Safeway buys inventory at wholesale and sells it at retail. Everything that is sold in Safeway was intentionally selected by Safeway to be there. If you see a product on a Safeway shelf, the company that makes that product already got paid--by Safeway. If Safeway puts a generic ibuprofen bottle next to a bottle of Advil, that's fine with…

> If you see a product on a Safeway shelf, the company that makes that product already got paid--by Safeway. This is not necessarily true. It's typical to not be paid for anywhere between 30 and 90 days. Additionally, some deals are more complex and depend on actual purchase volume.

I think getting paid and getting a fairly solid commitment to be paid at some point in the future are equivalent for this argument.

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

#638

Post by three_seagrass »

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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_shipping

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

#639

Post by throwlaplace »

movedx wrote: post #593
throwaway_aws wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for talking to journalists, I didn't leave with any ill will and don't want to complicate my life. I personally know a friend who got involved with journalists... his past employer came to know about it, sued him... and he became almost unemployable in the valley. Edit: fixed a typo

> ... his past employer came to know about it, sued him... and he became almost unemployable in the valley. You might have a family to protect. A home to maintain, etc. I understand. It's scary. But the world doesn't and cannot change for the better if we let corporations bully us into silence. The world will and does change when brave individuals, with the support of society, stand up and blow the whistle.

Lol exactly what support will you be providing? Will you contribute to paying this person's salary for the next 10 years? I wish people would quit with the empty platitudes and the rhetoric.

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

#640

Post by missedthecue »

Ensorceled wrote: post #516
missedthecue wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really in the spirit of anti competitive laws if the consumer wins? This is more like one business owner (FBA seller) trying to sic the authorities on their competition (Amazon Basics) in order to keep a competitive advantage. This seems more anti competitive than what Amazon is doing

Yes. Anti-monopoly laws are about overall society health, not just consumer protection. Having only a few large companies controlling large segments has massive negative effects on suppliers, employee wages, etc. etc.

>Anti-monopoly laws are about overall society health

you can't prove this

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