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What Amazon was doing was a little different. They were trying to figure out how much people would pay based on available information that Amazon had. They were

What Amazon was doing was a little different. They were trying to figure out how much people would pay based on available information that Amazon had. They were actually figuring out how much a specific individual would pay for something. Cool, but a little creepy. This is just simple price testing and is done all the time with minimal fanfare.

btilly 16y ago
What Amazon was doing was a little different. They were trying to figure out how much people would pay based on available information that Amazon had. Evidence, please. My memory of the event, backed up by Amazon's statements in the link that I provided, were that Amazon was randomly varying prices and no demographic information was used to do so. Now there were lots of people who thought that they might be doing something more nefarious. But to the best of my knowledge, no evidence exists. Furthermore my understanding of A/B testing and how Amazon runs A/B tests makes Amazon's version of the story seem extremely reasonable.
- damoncali 16y ago
  Just going off memory. Even if they were just varying prices randomly, the resulting data set could (and I would guess would) be used to price dynamically based on personal information. The difference is the possession of personal data, which Amazon already had by the ton.
  - btilly 16y ago
    In that case I believe your memory is incorrect. Furthermore my strong expectation is that they were using A/B tests to collect data on the optimal price point to show everyone. I don't dispute that eventually they likely would have gotten around to correlating geography and price to be able to dynamically show the right price point, but there is absolutely no reason to doubt their assertion that they hadn't done so, or to believe that they had any near term plans to do so. (For one thing A/B tests to try to figure out that level of detail are very difficult to do.)

btilly 16y ago

What Amazon was doing was a little different. They were trying to figure out how much people would pay based on available information that Amazon had. Evidence, please. My memory of the event, backed up by Amazon's statements in the link that I provided, were that Amazon was randomly varying prices and no demographic information was used to do so. Now there were lots of people who thought that they might be doing something more nefarious. But to the best of my knowledge, no evidence exists. Furthermore my understanding of A/B testing and how Amazon runs A/B tests makes Amazon's version of the story seem extremely reasonable.

damoncali 16y ago
Just going off memory. Even if they were just varying prices randomly, the resulting data set could (and I would guess would) be used to price dynamically based on personal information. The difference is the possession of personal data, which Amazon already had by the ton.
- btilly 16y ago
  In that case I believe your memory is incorrect. Furthermore my strong expectation is that they were using A/B tests to collect data on the optimal price point to show everyone. I don't dispute that eventually they likely would have gotten around to correlating geography and price to be able to dynamically show the right price point, but there is absolutely no reason to doubt their assertion that they hadn't done so, or to believe that they had any near term plans to do so. (For one thing A/B tests to try to figure out that level of detail are very difficult to do.)