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What Amazon is doing is more akin to your landlord breaking into your apartment and using source code they found on your flash drives to build new applications.

What Amazon is doing is more akin to your landlord breaking into your apartment and using source code they found on your flash drives to build new applications. Yes, your landlord owns the building you live in, but they promise not to go through your door as long as you pay rent. Similarly, yes, Amazon owns the platform you sell stuff on, but they publicly promise not to use your sales against you. It's not fair competition if one of your competitors can view all of your sales and related metadata while you can't view any of theirs.

LatteLazy 7y ago
>It's not fair competition if one of your competitors can view all of your sales and related metadata while you can't view any of theirs. Why not? I can get a pretty good idea of my competitors sales figures just by reading their accounts if they are public companies. I can get a good estimate of the sales if they use amazon by using reviews as a proxy for sales numbers. Amazon are doing nothing that retailers have not done for 100s of years. Walmart were pulling the same thing when amazing was a twinkle in Jeff B's eye. Also, sorry to be a dick but... "fair" is a very hard arguement for you to make. Fair is entirely subjective. And fair isn't actually what markets are about (markets are meant to be efficient companies are meant to be profitable, industries are meant to be productive). If you think this behaviour is a bad thing, you sort of have to explain why it's harming innovation or making markets inefficient or some other way it hurts consumers. Companies aren't people, and even people don't have to be "fair"... Personally, as I said above, companies already have a lot (maybe too much) control of interlectual property. If you are inovating, you have nothing to fear from people copying you. If you're not inovating then you don't get a monopoly just because you really really like making easy profits and gouging consumers.

LatteLazy 7y ago

>It's not fair competition if one of your competitors can view all of your sales and related metadata while you can't view any of theirs. Why not? I can get a pretty good idea of my competitors sales figures just by reading their accounts if they are public companies. I can get a good estimate of the sales if they use amazon by using reviews as a proxy for sales numbers. Amazon are doing nothing that retailers have not done for 100s of years. Walmart were pulling the same thing when amazing was a twinkle in Jeff B's eye. Also, sorry to be a dick but... "fair" is a very hard arguement for you to make. Fair is entirely subjective. And fair isn't actually what markets are about (markets are meant to be efficient companies are meant to be profitable, industries are meant to be productive). If you think this behaviour is a bad thing, you sort of have to explain why it's harming innovation or making markets inefficient or some other way it hurts consumers. Companies aren't people, and even people don't have to be "fair"... Personally, as I said above, companies already have a lot (maybe too much) control of interlectual property. If you are inovating, you have nothing to fear from people copying you. If you're not inovating then you don't get a monopoly just because you really really like making easy profits and gouging consumers.