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Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
- tjholowaychuk 6y agoThey've been doing this for ages, it's nothing new haha
- sharemywin 6y agowhy marketplaces are able to compete with their sellers is beyond me.
- dec0dedab0de 6y agoWhy sellers would use a market place that is obviously going to compete with them is beyond me.
- 542458 6y agoBecause for any individual seller there’s a heavy short/medium term advantage to using the marketplace in the form of dramatically increased reach and simplified logistics.
- dazc 6y agoYou could ask why people start businesses that rely on buying stuff for x and then selling it for y when that business model has already been fully exploited? There is a supermarket chain called Aldi who's entire business seems to rely upon copying branded products yet they are lauded for offering great value?
- oehpr 6y agoYou got two answers that are telling you this is good and normal, but I have a third one: They're the only game in town at this point.
- philmcc 6y agoBecause there's not another marketplace where you can, with some effort and very little actual innovation, turn a $5,000 investment into a six (and sometimes seven) figure a year revenue stream.
- graeme 6y agoEvery retail store does this.
- timdev2 6y agoMany retail stores do this to their vendors. Amazon does it to it's "sellers", which are really just a category of "customers". As an amazon seller, you pay for the privilege of selling through their platform.
- sharemywin 6y agoTo me this a form of bundling and should probably be illegal.
- graeme 6y agoYou would forbid the entire existing system of retail? Do you have an example of any country that operates this way? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
- sebwi 6y agoWell, because marketplaces like Amazon have a strategy for that: learn from sellers, imitate their products, offer your imitated product prominently on your "neutral" marketplace and crush the competition with a lower price until they have to give up or let themselves be bought [1]. That's nothing really new. The difference with Amazon is just the scale. [1] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/amazon-doesnt-just-want-to-dominate-the-market-it-wants-to-become-the-market/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/amazon-doesnt-just...
- tomcooks 6y agoit's the normal development of the capitalist market, right before eating itself.
- sharemywin 6y agoI guess they just cut their affiliate commissions too.
- mtnGoat 6y agoebay did too. :( i know a number of people that derive decent income from those affiliate channels that are scrambling right about now.
- outside1234 6y agoThey are doing this with AWS as well.
- DenisM 6y agoAny details you can share?
- Operyl 6y agoI thought this was common knowledge. Don’t the chains like Walmart do the exact same things?
- dangwu 6y agoYup. Costco’s Kirkland brand is another example.
- TheKarateKid 6y agoMany Amazon sellers only sell on Amazon, or have a large majority of their business sales there. This is equivalent to having insight to almost your entire business. Most brands at Walmart and other stores are sold many other places.
- delfinom 6y agoBut this is the sellers choice. They could find other online retail channels.
- AlanSE 6y agoWhich goes back to the buyer problem, that they don't consider other channels. Then you get hostile co-development of browser extensions for cross-channel price comparison, and life in the jungle continues on as such...
- ehnto 6y agoThere are many businesses who are 100% dependent on Amazon as a platform and Google as an acquisition stream. If you want to break out and sell on your own online platform, you're still dependent on Google, be it through search or advertising. I would love to hear of consumer facing (B2C) online businesses who are successfully operating without any Google or Amazon dependencies to see if it's even possible in the current online ecosystem. My hypothesis is that it isn't, and as such Amazon and Google should be broken up. They have close to a functional monopoly on consumers, but I'm putting forward that they also have a functional monopoly on online businesses in commerce.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoOf course they do. Like everybody else. Who doesn't do market research?
- michaelt 6y agoSome companies foster cordial relationships with their partners by staying strictly in their lane. For example, ARM licenses CPU core designs to chip manufacturers, but they don't make their own chips, as doing so would turn their customers into their competitors. Businesses like contract manufacturers are similar - Foxconn wouldn't start making their own smartphone. Of course, not every company takes that approach.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoNot that it really impacts your point, but Foxconn do make consumer products: RAM modules and motherboards.
- aguyfromnb 6y ago>Some companies foster cordial relationships with their partners by staying strictly in their lane. That happens to be ARM's business model at the moment. It isn't guaranteed to be their model tomorrow, nor are they doing it be friends with partners.
- jadeddrag 6y agoIs this any different than what other stores do with their own store brands?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoI suspect that's more coordinated - you get the own brand which is generally cheap and cheerful, then the premium brands. I suspect there's some oversight there though. I think the real question to ask is whether or not Amazon has a monopoly and whether they are abusing it to gain an unfair advantage over the producers of the stuff they sell. I mean when you mention other stores, I don't know if you mean this but I'm picturing e.g. a grocery store - where I come from there's usually three competing ones in the neighbourhood. They will all sell products from a premium brand, alongside their own (cheaper) store brand. But the premium brand is usually available at all competitors at similar prices.
- mywittyname 6y agoBecause it amounts to IP theft. It's one thing to see that unbleached toilet paper is selling well, and getting a supplier to sell you a store brand version. But it's completely different to see that a particular office stand is selling very well, determine that it has a 20% margin, and have someone build an identical product which you sell 5% margin. If you look at many Amazon Basics products, they are clear ripoffs of existing products. To the point where they are indistinguishable from the images. I was looking for a Lodge braisier just yesterday and saw that AB produced an identical product, down to the unique blue color Lodge uses in their enamel. I guess you could go through the trouble of suing Amazon, assuming you had the resources. But then you'd be booted from the platform and they'd still be selling your knockoffs for years. I think it's fine if Amazon sees that cast iron cookware is selling well and decides to enter that market. What's not fine is to blatantly steal the design of the best selling product in a category, then make your ripoff more visible on your site. At least make an attempt to differentiate the product.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago> "It's one thing to see that unbleached toilet paper is selling well, and getting a supplier to sell you a store brand version. But it's completely different to see that a particular office stand is selling very well, determine that it has a 20% margin, and have someone build an identical product which you sell 5% margin." Those two sound like the exact same thing to me. There is no real difference. It even happens between electronics manufacturers; you'll see a company noticing a competitor's product is successful, dissecting it to figure out the manufacturing costs and estimated margin, and tailoring its product line to provide a competitive product. (Aside from all that, I though HNers didn't believe in IP?)
- mensetmanusman 6y agoBased on how much Amazon will grow during this pandemic, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are cut up by government to reduce their power to destroy any competitor.
- oehpr 6y agohas there been any antitrust activity in the united states recently? Like... past 10 years? Particularly given the current administrations disposition, I think pinning your hopes to anti-trust is like financially planning around lottery tickets.
- netsharc 6y agoBut Trump hates Bezos because Bezos owns Washington Post, which publishes articles critical of Trump. I'd imagine if the administration goes through with the antitrust investigations, Bezos would just show up with a suitcase saying "Here's my offer to your 2020 reelection campaign" (not literally, he could put it through a Super PAC) and Trump would say "Art of the deal!" and that threat would disappear... Or Bezos could double down and get a law firm very rich trying to prove that the suit would be unfair because it's driven by the president's little ego...
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> has there been any antitrust activity in the united states recently? Yes, lots [1][2]. (I count fourteen cases year to date.) [1] https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/terms/217 https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/terms/217 [2] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/terms/217 https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/terms/217
- oehpr 6y agoI mean, no one's concerned amazon is going to merge with someone, my god I hope the FTC would block that. But I think the grand parent comment and I are talking about breaking up gigantic pre-existing monopolies. Not any general activity that can be categorized under "anti-trust"
- tcarn 6y agoAmazon makes life so hard for their suppliers it doesn't even surprise me. I once shipped a box of 10 laptops to sell on FBA (retail value ~$10k) and UPS showed the box as delivered, Amazon checked in the units and showed them available for sale on the website. Then 24 hours later all of them got removed saying I sent the inaccurate quantity in the box and none where now available for sale. The laptops disappeared and I had to do an insurance claim with UPS. Amazon's support was horrible and made me never want to sell with them again. Lots of stories like mine on the Amazon subreddit.
- a_wild_dandan 6y agoSubreddits tend to wildly misrepresent reality due to survivorship bias. People generally don't post or noodle through such communities when things are going well. That's not to say there isn't a significant supplier issue -- just be aware of the company you keep. I often forget to be critical of the bubbles I inhabit. In any case, I do wonder if Amazon's treatment of folk like you would improve considerably if Amazon had competition. It seems they can push you around because there are no consequences to pay.
- sacks2k 6y ago"Subreddits tend to wildly misrepresent reality due to survivorship bias" I disagree. If Amazon had great customer service, there wouldn't be a large volume of people complaining. "In any case, I do wonder if Amazon's treatment of folk like you would improve considerably if Amazon had competitio" I agree with you here. The only two marketplaces that actually get traffic are Ebay and Amazon. I've tried them all over the years and the rest combined don't even come close.
- arkades 6y ago> If Amazon had great customer service, there wouldn't be a large volume of people complaining. Volume of complainers is an absolute number. Customer service can only reduce the proportion of complainers. If you have 50 complainers on 100 customers, bad customer service. If you have 50 complainers on 1,000,000 customers, good customer service. You can conclude nearly nothing based on the absolute number of complainers in isolation.
- so_tired 6y agoImportant line from the article > a practice at odds with the company’s stated policies... > .. as stated to congress
- SlowRobotAhead 6y agoYou want to start a discussion about company stated policies and how each person feels they do or do not live up to them? That could go on for quite awhile! edit: it was mostly a joke, calm down.
- salawat 6y agoYou're either missing the point or strawmanning, I'm not sure which. In speaking with Congress, they're stating to everyone that they are there to act as a platform for third parties. They're a "pass-thru" service. That implies that while metadata may be being collected, you shouldn't be looking at it, as it isn't "yours". It would be like a cloud provider going into business undercutting their client's because they weren't savvy enough to encrypt their business records. Or the post office going through your B2B mailings, figuring out your footprint, them becoming a competitor. You have one job. That's it. Once you start abusing your access to your seller's transaction data to figure out where to or whether to diversify into their vertical, there is a fundamental breach of trust, and a very reasonable case to be made in having exploited something you shouldn't be. That's the Hobbesian Leviathan for you; you don't need all those little businesses anyway!
- salawat 6y agoSo lying to the Congress, eh? Great. Yet another example of how the system can't muster itself to dealing with actual threats to it's integrity. Just get big enough, and you can lie in front of everyone without penalty it looks like.
- whoisjuan 6y agoStating the obvious I guess. All retailers do this and create their own white-label brands to squeeze profit from well-performing categories. Target, for instance, is very upfront about it and they have like a gazillion white-label brands that compete in hundreds of categories, which makes it very gray for the customer. Does anyone really think that any retailer launches a competing product in a category without looking at all their supplier data? If you want distribution you risk this. The only way to avoid it, it's to do direct to consumer or having a product that is extremely hard to copy.
- hlmencken 6y agoI really don't think Target is that upfront. How am I supposed to know Mossimo and Goodfellow are Target brands. I do however understand that Kroger groceries are made by the kroger store.
- Cactus2018 6y ago>Mossimo Interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossimo#IPO_(1996)_and_relationship_with_Target_(2000%E2%80%932017) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossimo#IPO_(1996)_and_relatio... >On March 28, 2000, Mossimo, Inc announced a major, multi-product licensing agreement with Target stores, for $27.8 million. >In 2017, Target underwent a makeover, introducing new smaller lines and eliminating bigger billion-dollar lines, including Mossimo. >Target distanced itself from Mossimo amid Mossimo Giannulli's alleged involvement in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, saying that Target had not been involved with Giannulli in over a decade
- whoisjuan 6y agoI mean. That's what I meant. Upfront in the sense that they compete with their suppliers by having a lot of brands that are hard to distinguish as white-label brands by Target.
- xbmcuser 6y agoTo me that is not a problem as long as they are not giving their own products better placement. If 50 brands of cornflakes and in them target has a 10 white-label brands that is not a problem but if all 10 white-label brands are put in front of other brands ie first few in search results then it is a problem.
- api 6y agoApple does this with apps too.
- Reimersholme 6y agoYeah, it's true for basically all platforms unless there are strong regulations against it. https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/ https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/
- Spooky23 6y agoI wonder if issues like this combined with the COVID crisis will impact customer and supplier behavior? For me, Amazon has been a shitshow for the last month. For in-stock product, they project delivery for Memorial Day and deliver in 24 hours, or promise prime and deliver not-so-much. Other retailers seem to be fine. Target, NewEgg, Walmart, etc seem to be fine. Small online retail seem to be fine. I wonder that their awful practices are biting them now... once they hit a bump the whole system jams up.
- sharkweek 6y agoI’m not an Amazon fan boy, but I am a Costco fan boy, and they do the same thing, so I don’t really think I can be too upset about this. Retail is ruthless.
- RyJones 6y agoI've lived in Kirkland, Washington, off and on since 1994. It's amazing how many people all over the world know of Kirkland from Costco branding. For a log time the reddit tag line[0] was "We're more than Costco!" [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Kirkland/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Kirkland/
- sharkweek 6y agoSame actually! Grew up in Juanita from ‘89-‘03 then went to UW and have stayed in Seattle proper mostly since. I always thought it was funny, as a young kid, that my city’s name was on all sorts of products, not making the connection.
- RyJones 6y agoNice. My youngest was born in Juanita at our apartment! I like the area well enough, obviously, to start a reddit about it.
- glitcher 6y ago> they do the same thing So I can sell my small company's products through Costco's web platform without Costco ever directly purchasing my product?
- aksx 6y agoSo costco pays a small companies to sell their product and extract sales data. Should amazon start paying small companies at the same margin that costco does?
- akira2501 6y ago> but I am a Costco fan boy, and they do the same thing Are you sure? My understand was the Kirkland is mostly just a re-badge for already existing manufacturers.. Kirkland usually buys up their "B" stock/bin of items and just rebrands them.
- MichaelApproved 6y agoThe solution isn't hoping the free market would solve this with a competing platform. The solution is to create regulations & laws that prevent this behavior. You're either a platform/retailer or you're a manufacturer. You don't get to be both because we see the perverse incentive that happens when it's allowed.
- ses1984 6y agoIn this case it's shitty to be a supplier but isn't this great for the consumer?
- annoyingnoob 6y agoNo, this is not great for the consumer. It lowers the bar for everyone. What I find mostly on Amazon in the past year or so is cheaper imported versions of decent products. The decent products are hard to find or I have to look outside of Amazon. They've pushed out the quality and replaced it with higher profit junk. Its kind of the same thing with Home Depot. I used to be able to buy quality hardware from a local store. Now all I have is Home Depot and they sell mostly imported junk hardware. I have to go somewhere like McMaster-Carr now for quality hardware. Home Depot has not been good for me, Home Depot has only been good for itself.
- jacobr1 6y agoDifferent problems. One is the regulation of which suppliers can distribute on a platform, deceptive advertising, right-to-repair, and similar consumer protection considerations. The other problem the article and parent comments are describing relates to the distributor/retailer creating or sourcing generic alternatives to the items sold by their existing suppliers and informing their decisions to do so based on the sales data from their own partners/suppliers. This latter case seems ok to me, even if it sucks for suppliers, in the sense that we generally get better outcomes for customers. As long as the general regulations for consumer protection are in-place such as preventing confusion between brands and generics.
- cocktailpeanuts 6y agoThanks for the enlightening insight, captain obvious. Every single platform company, whether online or offline, does this. Apple does this with their appstore. Microsoft did this with their windows platform. Every retail or grocery store does this by developing their own native brand that blatantly copy existing products but with a bit lower quality and lower price. Is this good or bad? Well this is how the vendors are forced to innovate, and that's good for the consumers! If we just all become social justice warriors and shame all these platform companies to do nothing because their products shouldn't hurt others like a bunch of communists, then it is US, the consumers, who lose from this. And even these social justice warriors, at the end of the day, are all consumers. I also find it weird how they say Amazon "scooped up data", when all that data has been on Amazon's own server all along, voluntarily.
- mthoms 6y agoImportant line from the article > a practice at odds with the company’s stated policies... > .. as stated to congress (per the comment of user "so_tired" above)
- MagnumPIG 6y agoBreaking news: Amazon is evil
- Tiktaalik 6y agoThe key difference between what Amazon does and Costco/Walmart etc does, is that regular retail takes the risk of buying the product to resell, prior to gathering data and considering whether to clone it. Amazon is able to snoop on all the sales data without any risk.
- acwan93 6y agoWe sell an ERP catered to distributors and many do sell on Amazon. I’ve always wondered why on earth they would continue to sell on a platform that’s constantly gathering their selling data, or even inventory if they’re going FBA, and eventually try to undercut them if their products sell well. Their response is usually “I’m making enough money now, why worry about later?” or “our product category is too niche for Amazon to enter.” It seems like that kind of reasoning makes sense for traditional retailers like Costco/Walmart/Macy’s etc., but not Amazon where Amazon virtually has no risk in listing a product.
- bootlooped 6y agoThe other thing is that Amazon effectively has unlimited funds to fight a seller for control of an ASIN. They can sell at a loss for as long as it takes to squeeze you out. They have a massive unfair advantage.
- toasterlovin 6y agoWhen your customers say that their product is too niche, they're probably right in a lot of cases. The argument that Amazon can enter every niche and cater to every consumer want is essentially saying that planned economies can actually function. But they can't. Amazon is skimming the highest volume product categories and that's it. They couldn't manage the complexity of branching out into every single long tail product.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoNot highest volume. Highest gross profit (volume * margin). And how would you ever know either of these two (volume, margin) if you were an arbitrary 3rd party? Amazon doesn't need to branch out into every single long tail product to cause severe disruption to a retail sector that is often predicated on low single digit margins.
- kregasaurusrex 6y agoOftentimes this is done to circumvent paying patent license fees- for example if a patented component in a BOM would cost 75 cents per unit from the manufacturer, and the in-house team found a way to perform the equivalent function for 15 cents then it would instantly allow your product to undercut the competition. In Amazon's case, all it takes is a query to find high margin items in which knockoffs can be made and self-promoted to eventually outrank sales of the original item.
- jacobr1 6y agoAnother approach ... they could also identify which products either have wide-supplier diversity for the same thing (commodities) or narrow supplier density with many branded variants (OEM suppliers). In either case, they can go direct to the manufacturer without ANY innovation, slap the label on, and cut out the middle-man/sub-retailer costs. I think Amazon, in particular, has a team analyzing these factors as input into their sourcing (on top of general considerations like margin).
- yesplorer 6y agoIs there any Business to Consumer intermediary/platform that doesn't do this? All big retailers (Walmart, Costco, etc) Apple Google Amazon. Once you sell or distribute through a marketplace where they also sell or offer products to the same audience, expect the best ideas to be copied by the platform owners. That's one of the downside retailers have to deal with.
- Upvoter33 6y agoAny seller will do this, it is natural. Watch how WholeFoods for years has replaced successful independent brands with "365" competitors. Any seller will act this way; only regulation will prevent it.
- SlowRobotAhead 6y agoRegulation would not prevent Whole Foods and “some independent company” sharing data and producing these white label products to be sold exclusively at Whole Foods. This very easily defeated regulation is a perfect example why they aren’t a silver bullet. Throwing your hands up and saying “just make government fix everything” isn’t realistic, there is overhead and cost and bad precedent in that.
- olivermarks 6y agoAnti trust and anti monopoly oversight is urgently needed. Amazon is growing like a rapidy mutating weed on coronapocalypse fallout and the centralization is rapidly getting out of control imo. https://slopeofhope.com/2020/04/locking-in-amazon-gains.html https://slopeofhope.com/2020/04/locking-in-amazon-gains.html
- acwan93 6y agoSometimes I wonder if Shopify’s long-term plan is to do something like this. It's probably the leading direct-to-consumer platform out there right now, it’s touted sometimes as the anti-Amazon. The leading D2C brands I’ve seen are on there (Allbirds, Atoms, Untuckit) as well as random drop shippers. Shopify is also expanding into a fulfillment network too: https://www.shopify.com/fulfillment https://www.shopify.com/fulfillment
- bhouston 6y agoMaybe. But I think the first step is that Shopify creates a means of unified discovery across its many merchants. Maybe not quite a unified store front like Amazon, but maybe a unified search listing, like Google Shopping. Probably also get into recommendations across stores as well. There is a lot of related opportunities here once Shopify starts to link data and search and recommendations (and eventually ads) across their various stores.
- immy 6y agoWhatever their plan is, this type of behavior is good for Shopify carving out their growing niche serving up strongly branded products.
- toasterlovin 6y agoI think they want to do something like this. The problem is that Shopify has zero traction with consumers. Until they solve the problem of getting consumers to search for products on their platform, they'll have no success. That's a tall mountain to climb.
- acwan93 6y agoYeah I mean, the brands themselves have generated a lot of buzz. But the average consumer still doesn’t know what Shopify is.
- erentz 6y agoThis reinforces the belief I have that antitrust regulation of online companies needs to force them to pick between being a platform or being a store (or publisher), but they're not allowed to be both.
- repiret 6y agoevery major retailer has store brands, and I fully expect they all use their sales data to inform their generic products business, and all of their suppliers expect that too. As a consumer, I like that Amazon is upfront about what products come from their brand. Good luck browsing through the plumbing and electrical fixtures at Home Depot or Lowes and figuring out what crappy store brand stuff and whats not.
- stronglikedan 6y ago> figuring out what crappy store brand stuff and whats not. Don't they usually have only one store brand? Or maybe two, if there's a premium option? I don't think I've ever questioned which is the store brand. I know I've questioned which non-store brands are of dubious origin though (e.g., knockoffs)
- repiret 6y agoMy experience has been that they have multiple house brands in each department, and they are different in each department.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago(1) it's not just about generic products. Amazon uses the same approach to decide what non-generic products it should become a direct seller of, potentially (and normally) negatively impacting 3rd party sellers. (2) HD and Lowes have almost no generic/store brand stuff at all. There are a few exceptions, and they likely do represent fairly profitable sections of their overall business. The main ones I am aware of: lighting, ceiling fans, toilets/sinks, flooring. That leaves huge sections of these stores without generics.
- repiret 6y ago(1) You don't think HD and Lowes and Safeway and Walmart and every big retailer doesn't use their sales data to decide which products to try to disintermediate distributors and other middle-men in the supply chain? (2) I'll concede HD and Lowes have a lot of departments without store brands [1], but raise you the local grocery store, which doesn't. [1]: The pattern I see is that the stuff marketed mostly to contractors is less likely to be infected with crappy store brands than the stuff marked mostly to DIY'ers. I suspect its in part because pros will learn whats quality and whats crap a lot faster than DIYers, because the latter only buy a ceiling fan or whatever once a decade.
- dunkelheit 6y agoWow, lots of comments stating that it was common knowledge, but some fact doesn't become common knowledge simply because everyone knows it. Everyone should also know that everyone knows it and know that everyone knows that etc. which only becomes true after the article is published. The situation is materially different - this is illustrated e.g. by the famous 'island with a blue eyed population' puzzle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic) In this case one of consequences could be that previously during negotiations with Amazon suppliers couldn't effectively use the fact that Amazon would scoop them (even if both parties knew that it was true), and now they can.
- jader201 6y ago> Wow, lots of comments stating that it was common knowledge, but some fact doesn't become common knowledge simply because everyone knows it. Common knowledge: something that many or most people know. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/common%20knowledge https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/common%20knowledg...
- dunkelheit 6y agoSure, not going to quibble about word choice. The point is that many comments are like "so what, everybody knew this", but there is a material difference between "everybody knows" and "everybody knows that everybody knows".
- SlowRobotAhead 6y agoHmm, I see a lot of people here mad and arguing for regulation to stop Amazon from making their own white label products, but it seems like selective outrage. When the discussion is about censorship online (demonetizing, blocking people who they don’t like but have done nothing against explicitly stated rules, banning anyone critical of the WHO) the argument often becomes “They’re a private business, they can do whatever they like and you don’t need to use them”. How is the solution if you don’t like what Amazon is doing with white label products (that almost all major retailer does) to just not use Amazon? Even if you consider Amazon a monopoly, they don’t prevent the name brand product from being sold there. If they did it would be a similar issue. This really seems like a Rorschach test for a political ideology.
- fishingisfun 6y agonothing new. Read the book about it and it mentions this process on virtually all the categories they list for selling
- dredmorbius 6y agoWhat book?
- williesleg 6y agoShocking! I say! Good for Amazon, I love them and the Washington Post!
- csunbird 6y agoIt is actually illegal in EU, I wonder the implications of these actions for them.
- malandrew 6y agoLearn from US businesses and launch same white label product in Europe. This avoids running afoul of taking advantage of any data on European Amazon sellers.
- dchyrdvh 6y agoAt the same time, Amazon makes its corporate employees sign non-competes and actually sues former employees from time to time.
- Cactus2018 6y agoQuick link to AmazonBasics https://www.amazon.com/s?rh=p_89%3AAmazonBasics https://www.amazon.com/s?rh=p_89%3AAmazonBasics I am happy to buy these products over generics because of the higher quality. Batteries, paper shredders, water filters, electronics accessories, household supplies, office products...
- matteuan 6y agoAmazonBasics is just one of Amazon's brands. Take a look here: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-owns-these-brands-list-2018-7?r=DE&IR=T#buttoned-down-mens-clothing-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-owns-these-brands-lis...
- Cactus2018 6y ago"Amazon owns more than 80 private-label brands" !
- Ididntdothis 6y agoI am believing more and more that these big companies are really bad for the economy and size should be discouraged. In the short run they can be very efficient and create cheap products for consumers but this comes at the cost of killing innovation that may come from smaller players.
- newztech11 6y agoAmazon
- jankyxenon 6y agoThis is not that different from smartphone OS makes building functions from popular apps into the OS
- ivan_ah 6y agoPaywall bypass http://archive.is/7cdD3 http://archive.is/7cdD3
- throwaway55554 6y agoDon't grocery stores do this with own-labeled items?
- yalogin 6y agoThis is not something unique to Amazon. Everyone does it. Costco, Target and even smaller ones do it. However the problem and scale is magnified because Amazon has a monopoly on online shopping so given their volume they can always undercut everyone else.
- sh1ps 6y agoUp front disclaimer: this is my own personal conspiracy theory with no objective proof. I have quite a few pieces of anecdotal evidence to support this, but anecdotal is anecdotal. Looking through the comments, everyone is talking about Amazon.com purchases, but the much quieter, arguably more valuable move on Amazon's part would be to do this via AWS. If you're running your entire system on AWS, Amazon immediately knows what kind of scale you're currently running. Depending on the type of product, they can pretty easily ballpark what your profit margin is based on your pricing model and all the metrics they have on your application (which is basically everything). The application of this data could be used for acquisition targets, deciding which products to build into AWS, ongoing competitive analysis when they do build those competing products...
- kyrra 6y agoWalmart was pushing its vendors (3 years ago) to not host on AWS. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/21/wal-mart-is-reportedly-telling-its-tech-vendors-to-leave-amazons-cloud.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/21/wal-mart-is-reportedly-telli...
- crazygringo 6y agoThis doesn't pass the smell test for me at all. First, Amazon has no idea whether you run your whole business on AWS or only 5% of it. Second, different businesses have such vastly different computing requirements, which make up drastically different percentages of budgets, that there is virtually no signal here to figure out profits. You're going to be far better off just looking at publicly available data -- funding, employees, pricing on the website -- and having a business analyst put them together.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- archgoon 6y agoSo this seems to be getting drowned out a bit; but the core issue here is not that Amazon is creating their own labels to compete with seller's products. It's that they've publicly stated, including to congress, that they don't use non-public, seller specific data to compete with them; and now former employees are claiming that's a lie. Amazon agrees that, as claimed, this is a problem. 'Amazon said employees using such data to inform private-label decisions in the way the Journal described would violate its policies, and that the company has launched an internal investigation.'
- sacks2k 6y agoI saw this happening a decade ago, but I had no real proof. I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010. I found niche products that Amazon didn't sell. As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks. I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product. Within a few minutes of me receiving this claim, my account was suspended. I had no chance to rectify the situation. No amount of calling or emailing Amazon could get me in front of someone that could help me. All responses were an automated rejection. This was a rough time for me as it was my only form of income and Amazon held almost $30,000 of my money for 3 months. I ended up having to close my business and move on, though I did eventually get all of my money back. I've built multiple successful businesses since then and Amazon has recently had many business reps try to get me to sign up with a business account, because we purchase lots of items on Amazon/month. I always try to get them to re-investigate my old seller account and our email correspondence stops shortly after this. It's crazy to me that after 10 years and in a completely different industry, I still can't open a seller account. It taught me a valuable lesson not to build my entire business on someone else's platform. It only gives them more control over you and they will most likely use your customers, data, and more resources to out-compete you, if you get too big. Twitter has also done this to their app developers. My wife runs a small business on Etsy and it's just as bad. They make random code changes, which bumps listings up or down and you suddenly have no orders for weeks at a time. What's even scarier is if a handful of companies run everything we use online. Will I suddenly not be able to get a home loan for a decade because of an account closure?
- TimSchumann 6y ago> It taught me a valuable lesson not to build my entire business on someone else's platform. This sounds eerily similar to what happened to a close friend of mine, and that's 100% the right takeaway from the situation. > My wife runs a small business on Etsy and it's just as bad. They make random code changes, which bumps listings up or down and you suddenly have no orders for weeks at a time. Same as above, different friend, but again Etsy. > What's even scarier is if a handful of companies run everything we use online. Will I suddenly not be able to get a home loan for a decade because of an account closure? And that's why I'm in favor of strong individual privacy laws, and corresponding enforcement of said laws. Because 'I've got nothing to hide' only works so long as your values/goals are in line with everyone else in the system you're operating in. The second that changes, good luck and godspeed. Thanks for the great read, and... I dunno just validating your view of things.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoThe obligatory, "I'm shocked I tell you, shocked!" but unlike say the "Kirkland" brand at CostCo, this is more like UPS using the data it has on what is being delivered to peoples houses to start stocking their trucks with things people order often[1]. [1] Maybe the next step after food trucks is "mini-mart" trucks.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoMini-mart trucks used to be a thing with ice cream trucks a while ago... they use to sell laser pointers.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoGood comparison, except in this case it would be like, "Hey we've been delivering USB chargers to all of your neighbors, why not get one from the van here, same quality, lower price and you get it right now? How about it?"
- jacknews 6y agono shit we're in the era of 'all out competition', rules be damned look at China
- stevemadere 6y agoSurprise Surprise. So did HEB, Safeway, etc.
- mtnGoat 6y agoso did a lot of retailers. Walmart, Target, REI, every major grocery chain, etc. have all done it. IMHO, this is just business as usual, not sure why it's worth pointing out that Amazon did it when others have been doing the same for years. Direct to Consumer is the way of the future, only way to protect your brand, sales numbers, and other proprietary infos.
- bigbossman 6y agoThis is not only obvious, it's Amazon's explicit strategy to have their own products listed alongside 3rd party products. It's been that way ever since they made the then-controversial decision to launch a 3rd party marketplace business in 1999 to compete vs eBay.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoThe competition with eBay started before 1999, and 3rd party sellers was not a major part of the strategy nor was it really concerned with eBay (which is 1999 was literally NOTHING but an auction site). Amazon had its own "auctions" site in the late 1990s which many people forget even existed (it's one of the few things that Amazon tried and failed at). Bezos knew that eBay was a problem as soon as they emerged, and worried that Amazon would never compete effectively against them. In many senses, he was right. How do I know this? I worked with Bezos in the legendary "garage" in Bellevue, WA.
- WFHRenaissance 6y agoGood. Once Amazon has gobbled up all competition, we can have one reliable place to buy every thing we'll ever need. All detractors are impeding on the approach of utopia.
- acka 6y agoLet's call those happy customers the Eloi, and call the Amazon employees (who are by then manufacturing everything) the Morlocks. See where this is going? I for one don't want to be living in that timeline.
- DLA 6y agoTarget and probably other physical retailers do the same exact thing. Bring a product line in. See how it sells. Replace that with a white label brand they own once data proves a winner.
- perfectstorm 6y agoisn't this what Costco, Walmart are doing? I thought this is pretty common in the retail world - i.e to cut out the middle man and price it just below the name brand so people buy the store brand because it's cheaper.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.md/7cdD3 https://archive.md/7cdD3
- awad 6y agoA point that I have not seen mentioned while skimming through the comments is that the relationships between traditional retailers and their brands is one of buyer <> wholesaler (in simple terms, I understand there are complexities here) and that in itself is different from Amazon Marketplace (as compared to sold by Amazon.com).
- DonnyV 6y agoIs anyone really shocked by this? Number 1 rule when building a business. Never build one on someone else's platform. Never ends well.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoAll the platforms do this. Many of the big online travel agencies (booking.com, expedia, etc.) are some of the biggest buyers of AdWords (or at least were before coronavirus), spending billions on Google. Last fall Expedia's stock tanked (again, before all the coronavirus stuff) because Google's search results started including the ability to go through directly to booking sites without going to an OTA.
- nateburke 6y agoAbout 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 that Amazon would be able to pierce the veil of the hypervisor like that, but his instincts were in the correct direction.
- jhall1468 6y agoThat's absolutely not the same thing lol. What Amazon did is unethical. What you are describing is illegal.
- CobrastanJorji 6y agoI'm honesty curious what crime this would be. If I rent time on someone else's server, and they look at what I'm doing on that server, what illegal thing has happened?
- rickety-gherkin 6y agoAssuming that the information would be behind at least a password entrance that a user had setup, Amazon breaking through that would be considered illegal unless they had a court order or something. They can peer into metadata that your machine creates but I think looking at private information on a server that they lease out would be illegal. Maybe I'm just hopeful?
- bluntfang 6y agoThis could fall under Unlawful Access to Computers.
- eecc 6y agoHuh, WTF?! Your FBI used to railroad random kiddies for messing around with poorly programmed dynamic pages and now you’re arguing there’s nothing wrong if a hosting provider trespasses and mines your private property?!
- CodeCube 6y agoSo many comments about, "doesn't everyone know they do this?", and "everyone does this!" I say there should be an explicit difference between "running a platform", and "selling on a platform", and never should the two meet. By "platform" here, and in the context of selling stuff online or IRL, I mainly mean that the store should never compete with their suppliers ... it's madness and unethical. If everyone can get a piece of the pie, it makes for a healthier ecosystem. We should want the rising tide to lift more than one boat. And yes, I believe this should be regulated at the policy level. This of course has implications for other forms of "platforms", such as operating systems, APIs, and clouds; but I'll leave those discussions for another time ;)
- dnissley 6y agoWould this apply to physical platforms as well? E.g. Walmart and Target who also do similar things with similar data
- CodeCube 6y agoyes
- replicatorblog 6y agoSo no private label products from Walmart, Target, Kroger, or CVS?
- CodeCube 6y agoideally, no
- triceratops 6y agoThose are different. Explained elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22961009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22961009
- entee 6y agoThe 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 allow them to be so much more successful in their context than it seems store brands are in other contexts.
- jsdwarf 6y agoAnd? Every supermarket chain does this... First they look for good-selling brand products in their assortment, then they launch a very similar product under their own house brand following the "80% of the quality for 50% of the price" principle
- marcrosoft 6y agoOf course they did, and what’s wrong with it? Regular brick and mortar grocery stores do the same thing. It’s called private label.
- lisamillercool 6y agoAmazon is the worst company when it comes to ethics. They don't even pay taxes. Horrible company.
- animalCrax0rz 6y agoGiven Amazon's willingness to spy on their business customers (traffic data in this case), should I be worried to deploy code on AWS that has high IP value in source code form (JS, Python, etc) or bytecode (Java/C#, which can be easily decompiled). I ask this because I noticed on AWS EC2 the default behavior is that Amazon produces the private/public key pair (as opposed to having the user add their SSH public key) so if they wish, they can access any code I deploy. Let's say I make a product on AWS that competes with a current or future product of AWS itself, and let's say it gets a ton of traffic, should I be worried? Should I be using only native binaries? (C/C++, Go, Rust, etc) ??
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- econcon 6y agoAs someone who sells on Amazon India, we made huge money on Amazon India. Our process is rather simple. Buy 100 units of some new promising product from Alibaba, list it on Amazon. Work on our marketing copy. If it sells well, optimize packaging and sales copy, increase price and order 1000 units. Then rise and repeat. You'll be suprized how low is the competition on Amazon India and how high is the volume. It seems local sellers are clueless for now.
- econcon 6y agoWho knows if Shopify employees are not doing it privately!?
- thunkshift1 6y agoThis was banned by india in december. It got a lot of press about ‘uncertainty’ when that happened. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/05/amazon-how-india-ecommerce-law-will-affect-the-retailer.html?new https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/05/amazon-how-india-ecommerce-l...
- rkagerer 6y agoAmazon draws a distinction between the data of an individual third-party seller and what it calls aggregated data, which it defines as the data of products with two or more sellers Oh, definitely. Two sellers is "aggregated".
- jwiley 6y agoI worked for a small health products reseller around 2008 that had stores on Amazon, Yahoo (when that was a thing) and other marketplaces. It was well-known that any exclusive distribution deals between the health products reseller and manufacturers had a very short life: if the product was profitable Amazon would go around the reseller, negotiate a better deal, and sell it themselves. Fast forward to today, and companies that are direct competitors with Amazon (like Netflix) are completely committed to AWS. Amazon is watching, learning, and evolving from every piece of data they can get their hands on. What better way to learn about your business model than to watch them being tested and deployed on their infrastructure? I'm not specifically pro or anti Amazon...but I find it surprising the C-suite of most organizations seems content to think of AWS as a separate business un-related to the business that is actively trying to corner the market they are competing in.
- Giorgi 6y agoIs this surprising though? Bank owners do this all the time
- kevinthew 6y agoThis is probably illegal via antitrust law -- it's inherently anticompetitive -- and just hasn't been tested. Another example of Amazon being an unethical company.
- g8oz 6y agoRelevant to this: Lina Khan's influential analysis - "Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox" https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
- zitterbewegung 6y agoFrom what I have gathered at various user group meetings Scraping online web prices is pretty much done by everyone in the industry to provide for competitive pricing. It looks like Amazon took this up a notch. On the other hand at least for Amazon's first party products you don't have to worry about them being counterfeit and I haven't had a bad experience with what I have bought from them (HDMI cords).
- throwaway5752 6y agoThere is going to be a coordinated attack on Amazon ahead of the US presidential election and it will have valid information and misinformation. The WSJ will no doubt be involved. Question why and when old news is being dredged up. For example, is Amazon any worse than Wal-mart or Oracle or any other number of companies out there? If something is not contemporaneous news, then why is being being used at the point in time you are reading it? What is the motivation of the group pushing that information? Sometimes that is the even bigger story.
- mlcrypto 6y agoInvent and Simplify Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here." As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.
- c3534l 6y agoI've heard about these kinds of practices anecdotally. We really need some anti-trust action in the US. We have these laws that give the federal government a lot of power to force companies to play fair, but we don't use them because of politics.
- wintermutestwin 6y agoHow long until the headline is: "google datamined your emails to detect and squash disruption to its business models?"
- sneak 6y agoDoes this count? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/26/gmail-hiding-bernie-sanders-emails-google-inbox-sorting-consequences-2020 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/26/gmail-hiding...
- saadalem 6y agoThose were the dirtiest business tactics of Amazon Nobody can beat Amazon’s margin. Amazon “invites” you to sell on their marketplace. You hustle. You innovate. You test the market. You risk your time and money. Until FINALLY you nail it! After weeks or months of hard work you finally find the right product at the right price… SUCCESS! You start making money! Everything is amazing… But “someone” has been watching you! The “owner” of YOUR customers has been collecting ALL your data. Watching your progress, your growth, your competitors, your margins, your shipping costs, etc. THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING! Amazon will copy your product. Add their private label “Amazon Basics” to it. Sell it at an unbeatable price. Attach FREE Amazon Prime shipping to it. Position the exposure of their product on their website better than yours. In a matter of days, you will be OUT of business! THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING IN AMAZON MARKETPLACE!
- Tostino 6y agoIt's almost like there should probably be some oversight on one of the most powerful entities on the planet to stop these anti-competitive practices.
- taurath 6y agoAnd now they can threaten what, the losses of 400k jobs if forced to not utilize their nation-state scale to screw competitors?
- dathinab 6y agoActually that thread doesn't work at all. Because restricting them might cost Amazone jobs BUT: 1. Not all of them, probably a negligible amount. (Just the ones responsible for crating/producing copied products, not any ones involved in any other area) 2. Create new jobs through fair competition in similar amounts as jobs lost, likely even more as more companies being involved means more operational positions like e.g. for book keeping. 3. (2. reformulated). Not restricting it will cost as much or more jobs due to small companies going out of business and amazon as a giant company can better optimize overhead of operation away compared to many small independent businesses.
- viahoptop 6y agoWhat is the difference between this and the store brands at supermarkets?
- Guest42 6y agoSupermarkets don’t have even a fraction of the internal business data which leads to a more competitive marketplace.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- theturtletalks 6y agoThis is different that Costco selling their own brand vodka or toilet paper because buyers can see those items side by side when shopping. Amazon has their products on the top every time and if 3rd party sellers want to be next to them, they have to pay for ads. Amazon doesn't pay for its own ads so they can effectively hide their competition.
- dathinab 6y agoI believe amazone should pay for their own advertisement to well themsell and prices should be transparent (amazone has to pay them self what other would have to pay), _because then they would still need to pay tax_ for this. At least in countries where taxes are not very low this could make the situation slightly better. Through not that much better tbh.
- hnick 6y agoYes this sounds like an antitrust situation to me (I know they are not technically a monopoly but different countries have different takes on these laws so it's worth considering why they exist). A phone wholesaler with a retail business will be broken up since it is a problem for their other retail customers. This is quite similar where Amazon is acting as both the provider and a retail customer competing against their other retail (marketplace business) customers, with a number of advantages. Having them forced to provide services at arm's length, at published costs, with audited public books and no inside information would level the playing field. They probably already account for advertising "spend" internally anyway if they're smart, since as another poster alluded they miss out on PPC when someone clicks on an Amazon product so need to know what it cost them.
- coolswan 6y agoIn long-run, I predict that sellers de-listing because of this and moving elsewhere will have not been worth whatever money it is they will make as a seller on their own platform.
- fuddle 6y agoThey also get free advertising, while every merchant has to pay $1+ cost per click on the Amazon advertising network to advertise the same product.
- theturtletalks 6y agoThis 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 fees to Amazon. 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.
- chrischen 6y agoAmazon does have to pay. It is an opportunity cost to them.
- theturtletalks 6y agoSure, another seller could take their spot and they are potentially losing that ad money, but with their strategy, they can price out anyone since they don't pay seller commissions either.
- chrischen 6y agoIt's not as if seller commissions are purely an invented cost. They charge them because it's not a free service they provide, even for themselves.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoshopify is collecting a lot of data for all web interactions in their customer's websites. What it does with this info, is anyone's guess. There was a pretty explosive article a few days ago in HN. Shopify may not be amazon yet, but it is certainly learning to be that way.
- alaskamiller 6y agoWith 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 off that platform into your own. Most top listings in most niches/categories are priced for break even inclusive of the multitudes of keyword PPC campaigns they're running with the hope that you leave a review and that you actually pay attention to the little postcard that comes inside the package asking you to register your email address. Both games suck tbh.
- xibalba 6y agoThis is completely unconscionable. I've reached the tipping point in my opinion of Amazon re: antitrust. Set the dogs loose on these bastards.
- johnnyballgame 6y agoAmazon is a cesspool of scammers now. I created a listing for a physical book. I have yet to send a single book out to anyone and there are already two sellers trying to sell the book on the listing I created. And one is listed as a "collectible"!
- riazrizvi 6y agoNot sure I understand. Are you saying you are the author of a new book, you haven't sold any copies yet, you created a listing for your book and people are offering to sell it as a collectible (presumably as an arbitrage where they'd fulfill on your book)? Or did you create a new listing for someone else's book, that others might credibly own already?
- johnnyballgame 6y agoAuthor of a brand new book no one has any copies of yet.
- riazrizvi 6y agoHmmm, why not jack up the price of yours and immediately buy one from the scammer, just as an experiment?
- rhacker 6y agoSame thing happens on Etsy. You work hard, get your product out there. You are successful. Then, 100 people copy you. And you tank. And copyright, trademark, and patent laws all fail you miserably.
- davesque 6y agoThis has been happening for years. I personally remember hearing people complain about it as far back as 2010 or 2011.
- woranl 6y agoJeff Bezos has once said, “Your margin is my opportunity”. Well... don’t said he didn’t warn you.
- vinniejames 6y ago"its own sellers" aka its own data, why the surprise here?
- MisterBastahrd 6y agoHow Wal-Mart of them.
- scottmcleod 6y agoDuh..?
- ironfootnz 6y agoLike any soft vendor on the marketplace, They launch products of their own based on the others. It reminds me one of the post I've seen here https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/aws-startups-conflict.html https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/aws-startups-conflict.html
- ngoel36 6y agoIs this any different than Walmart selling Great Value products, or Google putting its Flights module first on the search results page?
- downrightmike 6y agoDidn't anyone read Brad Stone's book? This is Amazon's play. Jewelry was one category they had trouble making work, but many other categories fell to them. They did it with Diapers.com and really everyone they wanted to acquire. And really the only thing keeping the regulators off of them is that it doesn't harm the consumer because prices are kept low. That's really the only test for antitrust cases to proceed because of a slippery slope.
- sfoblows 6y agoduh.
- brentis 6y agoYears ago I said amzn should buy shopify or another vendor, host it and get transaction revenue for those anti-amzn. Would have been huge. Similar to how people use insta thinking its not FB.
- shabuta 6y agoIsn’t this what Walgreens, CVS or even Costco do? It’s called capitalism. When you want to invest, build and grow the channel then you can do the same. Not totally sure why people think this is unfair.
- rosywoozlechan 6y agoWell, there are antitrust laws, aren't there. So it's not that straight forward.
- samstave 6y agoNot related to this particular story, but: You are transparent. I see plans within plans. We are coming after you. And if you on HN, reddit etc? understand this, either join or be fearful.
- dmtroyer 6y agoduh.
- edtruji 6y agoThat’s the reason Walmart use Azure Cloud and Not AWS.
- echan00 6y agoThe title of the article says it all. I mean what do you expect? This is just business.
- vadasambar 6y agoAm I the only one who could not access the article because it sits behind a paywall?
- xmly 6y agoWhy is this news?
- Aissen 6y agoThis type of practice right there is why there will always be a place for at least one cloud competitor. No company that is slightly invested in retail (directly or indirectly) want to increase Amazon's profitability by paying AWS.
- 8bitsrule 6y agoEthically, I don't see how this is much different from hiring someone at the lowest possible wage, then using the hours and vital years of their lives to enrich oneself. In the end, one either cares as much about the welfare of those in one's employ, or just uses them as tools in some Pyrrhic victory.
- kbos87 6y agoThe 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.
- crusader76 6y ago"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?
- AtomicOrbital 6y agoIf true this is Crony Capitalism at its finest ... I almost think a competitor planted operatives inside Amazon to pull this off - Pure Evil
- TooManyRedHats 6y agoI believe this is reason enough to take the company apart. They should separate it to parts that are not that powerful and have less data.