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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

#701

Post by tick_tock_tick »

snowwrestler wrote: post #436
entee wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major question I don’t have a good answer to is, “Why is this different than brick and mortar store brands like Safeway signature?” Surely a part of is is placement, but Safeway could put own brand ketchup at the same level (and I think sometimes does) as Heinz and still wouldn’t sell the same volume. Amazon is clearly getting a big advantage here, I’m just curious about what the underlying dynamics are that allo…

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…

That's actually not true at all the shelf space at grocery store are often paid for by the name brands. "Slotting fees" etc. Often if the product doesn't sell Safeway returns it to get the money back.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/718711109 https://www.vox.com/2016/11/22/13707022/grocery-store-slotti...

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

#702

Post by softawre »

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 know the B&H execs too. All Hasidic Jews, super nice, smart people. They had a big contract with some software I wrote ages ago.

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

#703

Post by qaq »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #641
jlgaddis wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

AWS haven’t had a major incident since 2017. Their last one before that was in 2015. If you’re not counting managed services, it was 2014.

2018 May 31 Outage no ?

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

#704

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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?

In my limited experience Amazon UK's prices are lower than the seller's/manufacturer's own website. I always check, it's always been significant when I've checked.

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

#705

Post by kbos87 »

The fact that Amazon can argue they don’t do this with a straight face tells me that they have no fear of regulators and feel confident they can get away with just lying about it.

Any observant Whole Foods shopper can see this happening over the arc of weeks and months. New products from small brands show up on the shelves at Whole Foods. If they sell quickly, it’s only a matter of time before a Whole 365 knock off shows up in the exact same spot on the shelf with similar packaging and a lower price. The predecessor brand is relegated to a low visibility location nearby, and eventually disappears altogether. They don’t even try to hide this practice, they just say they don’t do it.

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

#706

Post by seppin »

george_kaplan wrote: post #667
seppin wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBay charges almost 10% for all goods sold, that's larceny.

Not only on goods, they even charge commission on shipping costs. With eroding seller protection and stupid changes to the UI, I guess one of the only reasons they still have vendors is their monopoly.

And have begun collecting sales tax which only shows up after you've legally committed to buying the item.

All on purpose, all user-hostile actions to take.

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

#707

Post by crusader76 »

"Amazon.com Inc. employees have used data about independent sellers on the company’s platform to develop competing products"

Don't brick and mortar stores do this too? Not sure how popular "own brand" products are in America but in Europe grocery stores will sell "own brand" produce at cheaper prices. How do grocery stores choose what products to sell under their own brand, surely this is based on how well certain products are selling?

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

#708

Post by AmericanChopper »

qaq wrote: post #703
AmericanChopper wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS haven’t had a major incident since 2017. Their last one before that was in 2015. If you’re not counting managed services, it was 2014.

2018 May 31 Outage no ?

You mean the incident where a small percentage of EC2 instances were unavailable for 30 minutes in a single AZ in US East 1? I see your definition of major incident is pretty loose. I remember that incident. I had services running there. It was so minor that my auto-scaling picked it up and my service impact was nothing.

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

#709

Post by lima »

AgentME wrote: post #617
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…

If AWS used Intel SGX, then it would be possible for them to offer VMs that ran inside of a secure enclave that AWS could not peer into as long as Intel didn't give them a backdoor. (Well, it seems like SGX is insecure right now with all of the CPU vulnerabilities, but in principle it may be fixed in a future generation and be well-suited for this.) The fact that you wouldn't have to trust your host specifically coul…

SGX has no syscalls. You cannot run VMs or any regular application in SGX.

AMD SEV, on the other hand, is exactly that.

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

#710

Post by joyj2nd »

monkmartinez wrote: post #575
joyj2nd wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does one find bankrupt businesses to purchase?

Depends on the country. But why would you like to purchase one?

I asked this business if I can buy a stake before they filed for bankruptcy because I saw potential and value that I could bring to the company. I still do.

If a restaurant of bakery goes bankrupt I would not want it for free since I don't understand the business, nor can I bring value to the business.

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