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> Bezos is out to make an empire, everything else comes second. I share this sentiment. For comparison, I believe the amount of and methods with which Google

> Bezos is out to make an empire, everything else comes second. I share this sentiment. For comparison, I believe the amount of and methods with which Google collects data to be wrong, but I also believe that they don't believe they are doing something (outright) wrong. Amazon, however, must know that they have a counterfeit goods problem, but it seems that they couldn't care less about it. Same applies to gaming the review system.

amelius 8y ago
> but I also believe that they don't believe they are doing something (outright) wrong. With so many engineers working at Google, someone there should be thinking they are doing something wrong. Right? Or are you more thinking of a collective conscious of some kind?
- ckastner 8y ago
  I mostly meant upper management, where strategic and policy decisions are made; where the direction a company is going is determined. Not that non-management is irrelevant. It's just less relevant. Because what is OK or not OK is ultimately decided at the very top. For example, in the not-so-recent-past, Uber was rocked with scandals on a weekly basis. The first step to fix this was to find a new CEO.
  - james-mcelwain 8y ago
    It's also a matter of degree vs kind. It's easy to say that Google is collecting too much data, but the basic premise of personalizing searches and selling ads is relatively unobjectionable to most people. Once you've accepted that selling counterfeit goods and other broadly anti-competitive practices are A-OK and part of your core business model, you've crossed a line where it's no longer really a matter of simply doing "less" of it.
apersona 8y ago
How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? It seems like a hard problem - eBay suffered from this too for their goods,Yelp with reviews. I doubt it's just a "I don't care" kind of thing.
- ckastner 8y ago
  > How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? No idea what do to about the reviews, but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product. Continuing to sell a product for which there are numerous and credible indications that they are counterfeit is borderline fraud.
  - 394549 8y ago
    > No idea what do to about the reviews, They need to patrol the sources for fake reviews (facebook groups, etc) and perform sting operations to catch the sellers who solicit them. It shouldn't be too hard, a simple Facebook search finds hundreds of groups and thousands of solicitations. Once you identify a seller that does this, you ban them from Amazon, as well as everyone who's given their products a fake review (for the reviewers, it should probably be a three strikes thing before they're banned, since a lot of them seem to just like free stuff). > but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product. > Continuing to sell a product for which there are numerous and credible indications that they are counterfeit is borderline fraud. I'd say the second step is to roll back many of Amazon's practices that make counterfeiting harder to detect, for instance how they can commingle inventory between sellers (if those sellers weren't careful when they made their listing). That makes it impossible for the sellers to have meaningful reputation scores, since bad-actors can sell their counterfeits through honest-actor storefronts (and vice versa). The third step is to implement better supply chain management and vetting of suppliers. Not everyone should be able to set up a marketplace store and sell any product. There needs to be effective vetting of sellers and it should be hard enough to setup a marketplace account they can't just create a new one when their last one is banned. There should also be especially stringent vetting around listings for frequently fake and counterfeit products, like SD cards. The fourth step is to implement active counterfeit and fake product detection (through test purchases). If a particular item is too often fake or counterfeited, Amazon should ban it from the marketplace and only sell inventory directly sourced from the original manufacturer. None of these things should be too hard for a company with Amazon's resources to effectively implement. The fact that it hasn't says that these problems aren't a priority for it.
zjaffee 8y ago
The counterfeit detection problem is one of the hardest problems that exists, fake branded products is much easier to solve, but at least in the world of fashion, the only proven way to detect fakes has been through leveraging teams of experts to inspect each item individually.

amelius 8y ago

> but I also believe that they don't believe they are doing something (outright) wrong. With so many engineers working at Google, someone there should be thinking they are doing something wrong. Right? Or are you more thinking of a collective conscious of some kind?

ckastner 8y ago
I mostly meant upper management, where strategic and policy decisions are made; where the direction a company is going is determined. Not that non-management is irrelevant. It's just less relevant. Because what is OK or not OK is ultimately decided at the very top. For example, in the not-so-recent-past, Uber was rocked with scandals on a weekly basis. The first step to fix this was to find a new CEO.
- james-mcelwain 8y ago
  It's also a matter of degree vs kind. It's easy to say that Google is collecting too much data, but the basic premise of personalizing searches and selling ads is relatively unobjectionable to most people. Once you've accepted that selling counterfeit goods and other broadly anti-competitive practices are A-OK and part of your core business model, you've crossed a line where it's no longer really a matter of simply doing "less" of it.

apersona 8y ago

How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? It seems like a hard problem - eBay suffered from this too for their goods,Yelp with reviews. I doubt it's just a "I don't care" kind of thing.

ckastner 8y ago
> How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? No idea what do to about the reviews, but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product. Continuing to sell a product for which there are numerous and credible indications that they are counterfeit is borderline fraud.
- 394549 8y ago
  > No idea what do to about the reviews, They need to patrol the sources for fake reviews (facebook groups, etc) and perform sting operations to catch the sellers who solicit them. It shouldn't be too hard, a simple Facebook search finds hundreds of groups and thousands of solicitations. Once you identify a seller that does this, you ban them from Amazon, as well as everyone who's given their products a fake review (for the reviewers, it should probably be a three strikes thing before they're banned, since a lot of them seem to just like free stuff). > but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product. > Continuing to sell a product for which there are numerous and credible indications that they are counterfeit is borderline fraud. I'd say the second step is to roll back many of Amazon's practices that make counterfeiting harder to detect, for instance how they can commingle inventory between sellers (if those sellers weren't careful when they made their listing). That makes it impossible for the sellers to have meaningful reputation scores, since bad-actors can sell their counterfeits through honest-actor storefronts (and vice versa). The third step is to implement better supply chain management and vetting of suppliers. Not everyone should be able to set up a marketplace store and sell any product. There needs to be effective vetting of sellers and it should be hard enough to setup a marketplace account they can't just create a new one when their last one is banned. There should also be especially stringent vetting around listings for frequently fake and counterfeit products, like SD cards. The fourth step is to implement active counterfeit and fake product detection (through test purchases). If a particular item is too often fake or counterfeited, Amazon should ban it from the marketplace and only sell inventory directly sourced from the original manufacturer. None of these things should be too hard for a company with Amazon's resources to effectively implement. The fact that it hasn't says that these problems aren't a priority for it.

zjaffee 8y ago

The counterfeit detection problem is one of the hardest problems that exists, fake branded products is much easier to solve, but at least in the world of fashion, the only proven way to detect fakes has been through leveraging teams of experts to inspect each item individually.