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Google and Facebook are not really in the same businesses as Amazon and Apple. That Amazon isn't worth more is puzzling. I know I've stopped buying from them u

Google and Facebook are not really in the same businesses as Amazon and Apple. That Amazon isn't worth more is puzzling. I know I've stopped buying from them unless I absolutely have to because I can't trust that the product I get is non-counterfeit and previously unused -- seriously, who sells used shavers as new, totally f'in gross -- but has everyone else stopped buying too? update: grammar

reaperducer 4y ago
Google and Facebook are not really in the same businesses as Amazon and Apple. I think it's interesting, and still kinda sorta valid since when tech companies surpass the value of companies like Ford and Exxon, they make similar hoopla, even though those are in entirely different sectors.
fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
> That Amazon isn't worth more is puzzling. The simple answer is that Amazon is the least profitable company in the list (even less than Meta in its current state). There are factors that excuse this, hence Amazon is actually valued very high compared to how little money it makes.
- jjeaff 4y ago
  That's because Amazon is the most aggressive at attempting to push all of there value into stock appreciation rather than profits / dividends.
  - ancientworldnow 4y ago
    Then shouldn't their stock be worth even more which is what this discussion is about? The simple answer is their fixed margins are far worse than these other competitors (aws aside).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
potatolicious 4y ago
Yes, for a lot of classes of products I simply do not buy from Amazon any more. The counterfeiting and inventory co-mingling (such that you can't even filter for trustworthy sellers) has destroyed a lot of Amazon's usefulness. IMO Amazon's foray into 3P market-making will ultimately be seen as an attempt to grow the product that ends up killing the product. Even besides the counterfeiting, there's just so much crappy junk. Want lightbulbs? Wade through page after page of crappy no-name brands who all have fake/gamed reviews, so you can't tell the good from the bad. Want a name-brand lightbulb? Well, then we're back to the counterfeiting problem. Even when I do buy from Amazon there's at least a 50% chance what I buy will be some cheap bullshit with faked reviews that will fall apart in under a month of use. Amazon is worse than the Walmart discount bin. Amazon has weirdly given me a newfound appreciation for traditional retailers. There is value in the curation - in filtering bad products so that as a customer I can shop with confidence, and that even if I don't do too much research the product I buy will be good enough - or at least authentic and safe. The complete laissez-faire free-for-all model just results in me Googling for product reviews for the most mundane things I buy. It is a massive time-sink.
- yftsui 4y ago
  inventory “co-mingling” is a myth invented by fantasist. If that’s true, then any merchant could send in fake items to Amazon Warehouse then request them returned so there will be legitimate items exchanged in.
  - jolux 4y ago
    I bought a Blu-Ray on Amazon recently, shipped from and sold by Amazon.com, and instead received a box of commemorative quarters. Of course they replaced it but I'm still baffled how this happened.
    - lukas099 4y ago
      That to me sounds like something just got labeled with the wrong barcode or something.
amanj41 4y ago
Because most of Amazon's profits come from AWS (74%). So I would say it's more like comparing Google or Oracle to Apple than you think.
- undoware 4y ago
  Not only this, but, critically, there is now an entire *industry* devoted to preventing cloud-provider lock-in. You can't throw a penny into an SF crowd without hitting someone working on this. Because capitalism is efficient, and because there are lots of dollars chasing the Lock-in Problem, and moreover because AWS is the market leader, it has an enormous amount to lose. Even if 0.5% of the aforementioned startups succeed in reducing dollars lost to lock-in by (say) 10%, on average, that's billions that AWS stands to lose. (By my armchair math) The market prices these risks in.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    I worked for a company that claimed to do this. The secret was instead they locked you into their company. You had your full choice AWS, GCP or Azure... Which only worked through their web portal and infrastructure, which was entirely hosted on AWS anyway.
    - undoware 4y ago
      Yes :D It reminds me of this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/butterflies-parasitic-wasps-finland https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/butterflies-parasitic-... "These Butterflies Full of Wasps Full of Microwasps Are a Science Nightmare"
randycupertino 4y ago
Stopped buying from Amazon for any household products after getting a fake hummingbird feeder and fake castor oil (was opened and repackaged canola oil). Just can't trust them to send you the real name-brand product and not something knockoff or fake.
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  How did you know it was canola?
  - denkmoon 4y ago
    You can't tell from the odor?
  - randycupertino 4y ago
    Castor oil is darker, thicker and higher viscosity. Canola is more of a pale yellow and thin. If it wasn't canola (which I assumed it was because it's the cheapest) it was some other cheap filler. Point being, I no longer trust amazon to send me anything that's going on or in my body. Then when we got a fake birdfeeder I realized there were a ton of fake products on there. We weren't the only ones to get a fake birdfeeder, fwiw: https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on-amazon-cost-warren-bird-feeder-business-1-5m/ https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on... > WARREN, R.I. (WPRI) — Aspects has been in business for decades, manufacturing bird feeders that come with a lifetime guarantee. So in 2016, when a customer called about a defective hummingbird feeder, the Warren-based company took the complaint seriously. “We went through the process of cutting the plastic and looking at all the different molding telltales and we realized it was not our product,” Trisha Torres, the CEO of Aspects, told Call 12 for Action. Torres said the product was a counterfeit. She knew if there was one, there had to be others. > “We found that it was just rampant on Amazon,” Torres said. In 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 3,828 counterfeit Aspects bird feeders in 68 cartons. Federal court records show Aspects won a permanent injunction against the LLC that made the shipment, but even now, Torres still finds fakes on Amazon. “My customer service department has fielded hundreds of these calls,” Torres said. “People’s knee-jerk reaction is they are just angry at us. They think we’re not standing behind our product.”
chillfox 4y ago
I have stopped buying books from Amazon unless I really have to because of the counterfeit problem, and sellers canceling orders then upping the price. So I try to buy books from thenile or eBay instead.
- abracadaniel 4y ago
  Better world books has been my go to lately.
- lake_vincent 4y ago
  The Book Depository is another excellent Amazon book seller. Not the fastest shipping, but always real books, and great collection of specialty technical books. Highly recommended.
  - ESMirro 4y ago
    I second this, the book depository has remained consistently excellent despite Amazons ownership, providing slow but efficient worldwide delivery.
ulfw 4y ago
Non are in the exact same business but there are significant overlaps. Amazon makes it's profit from AWS, which is in the same business (and beating) Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Putting Amazon and Apple in the same business is a bit more of a stretch. Amazon sells things (and is nowadays mostly a middle man for third parties selling things through Amazon warehouses and delivery), Apple designs (and has them manufactured by third parties) things from CPUs all up the value chain to devices and it's software. The overlap is partially in services, but of which aren't particularly strong right now (Amazon Prime Movies/Series vs Apple TV+). There's not really a competition on devices anymore (Fire Phone/tablets vs iPhone/iPad).
- Ftuuky 4y ago
  Both Amazon and Apple are really into ads right now.
cercatrova 4y ago
> Google and Facebook are not really in the same businesses as ... Apple. Not for long, Apple is getting into the ads game as well, and much more strenuously than until now.
gumby 4y ago
Interesting you talked about shavers. Admittedly AWS is only 16% of AMZN's revenue, but it's 75% of profits and growing like gangbusters, especially when compared to the rest of the company. If regulators force AWS to spilt from the rest of Amazon it will be like the breakup of Standard Oil: shareholders will make more from the separate entities than they did from them combined.
lamontcg 4y ago
I haven't really stopped buying from Amazon, but I'm definitely starting to put in more effort. Just bought a comforter last week from a localish store that I found going through reddit reviews rather than buying off Amazon. Just bought some new shoes but got them from the local store and got a lot more out of being able to get properly fitted and able to talk to the guy about my issues. Still buy bits of cheap junk from Amazon, definitely if I'm thinking more along the lines of "Buy It For Life" (or just some long term durability) I'll try to get it from someone else. Also just ditched Android and Fitbit and got a new iPhone and Apple watch, pretty much decided to suck it up and join everyone else (and not a moment too soon because my Android case is starting to bulge out due to the battery again). And first impression is that they're really nice products and its worthwhile. Really wish Apple was a little more open of an ecosystem and that their products were more repairable--but for all the whinging and moaning about Apple that hits the headlines here on HN they seem to be miles better than anything else if you're just an average person.
taylodl 4y ago
Amazon has become my vendor of last resort. I first started noticing a change in the quality of their goods and vendors 2-3 years ago. Now it's gotten bad enough to where I'm actively avoiding them - even going to brick and mortar stores to avoid having to do business with them. I still have Amazon vendors I trust, but I no longer trust Amazon to vet their vendors - and that's a HUGE degradation of service!
random42_ 4y ago
I’ve just realized I’ve stopped buying stuff at Amazon that I can find at other, more reliable, stores. Recently I bought a new laptop at BestBuy, even though it was a $100 cheaper at Amazon. Legos, headphones, stuff for the kitchen… all bought either locally or at other online retailers. I’m buying less and less stuff at Amazon, usually books (Kindle, mostly) and stuff I can’t find anywhere else.
webinvest 4y ago
Amazon doesn’t yet have a dividend and dividend payers have outperformed non-dividend payers in total return this past year.

reaperducer 4y ago

Google and Facebook are not really in the same businesses as Amazon and Apple. I think it's interesting, and still kinda sorta valid since when tech companies surpass the value of companies like Ford and Exxon, they make similar hoopla, even though those are in entirely different sectors.

fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago

> That Amazon isn't worth more is puzzling. The simple answer is that Amazon is the least profitable company in the list (even less than Meta in its current state). There are factors that excuse this, hence Amazon is actually valued very high compared to how little money it makes.

jjeaff 4y ago
That's because Amazon is the most aggressive at attempting to push all of there value into stock appreciation rather than profits / dividends.
- ancientworldnow 4y ago
  Then shouldn't their stock be worth even more which is what this discussion is about? The simple answer is their fixed margins are far worse than these other competitors (aws aside).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

potatolicious 4y ago

Yes, for a lot of classes of products I simply do not buy from Amazon any more. The counterfeiting and inventory co-mingling (such that you can't even filter for trustworthy sellers) has destroyed a lot of Amazon's usefulness. IMO Amazon's foray into 3P market-making will ultimately be seen as an attempt to grow the product that ends up killing the product. Even besides the counterfeiting, there's just so much crappy junk. Want lightbulbs? Wade through page after page of crappy no-name brands who all have fake/gamed reviews, so you can't tell the good from the bad. Want a name-brand lightbulb? Well, then we're back to the counterfeiting problem. Even when I do buy from Amazon there's at least a 50% chance what I buy will be some cheap bullshit with faked reviews that will fall apart in under a month of use. Amazon is worse than the Walmart discount bin. Amazon has weirdly given me a newfound appreciation for traditional retailers. There is value in the curation - in filtering bad products so that as a customer I can shop with confidence, and that even if I don't do too much research the product I buy will be good enough - or at least authentic and safe. The complete laissez-faire free-for-all model just results in me Googling for product reviews for the most mundane things I buy. It is a massive time-sink.

yftsui 4y ago
inventory “co-mingling” is a myth invented by fantasist. If that’s true, then any merchant could send in fake items to Amazon Warehouse then request them returned so there will be legitimate items exchanged in.
- jolux 4y ago
  I bought a Blu-Ray on Amazon recently, shipped from and sold by Amazon.com, and instead received a box of commemorative quarters. Of course they replaced it but I'm still baffled how this happened.
  - lukas099 4y ago
    That to me sounds like something just got labeled with the wrong barcode or something.

amanj41 4y ago

Because most of Amazon's profits come from AWS (74%). So I would say it's more like comparing Google or Oracle to Apple than you think.

undoware 4y ago
Not only this, but, critically, there is now an entire *industry* devoted to preventing cloud-provider lock-in. You can't throw a penny into an SF crowd without hitting someone working on this. Because capitalism is efficient, and because there are lots of dollars chasing the Lock-in Problem, and moreover because AWS is the market leader, it has an enormous amount to lose. Even if 0.5% of the aforementioned startups succeed in reducing dollars lost to lock-in by (say) 10%, on average, that's billions that AWS stands to lose. (By my armchair math) The market prices these risks in.
- XorNot 4y ago
  I worked for a company that claimed to do this. The secret was instead they locked you into their company. You had your full choice AWS, GCP or Azure... Which only worked through their web portal and infrastructure, which was entirely hosted on AWS anyway.
  - undoware 4y ago
    Yes :D It reminds me of this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/butterflies-parasitic-wasps-finland https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/butterflies-parasitic-... "These Butterflies Full of Wasps Full of Microwasps Are a Science Nightmare"

randycupertino 4y ago

Stopped buying from Amazon for any household products after getting a fake hummingbird feeder and fake castor oil (was opened and repackaged canola oil). Just can't trust them to send you the real name-brand product and not something knockoff or fake.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
How did you know it was canola?
- denkmoon 4y ago
  You can't tell from the odor?
- randycupertino 4y ago
  Castor oil is darker, thicker and higher viscosity. Canola is more of a pale yellow and thin. If it wasn't canola (which I assumed it was because it's the cheapest) it was some other cheap filler. Point being, I no longer trust amazon to send me anything that's going on or in my body. Then when we got a fake birdfeeder I realized there were a ton of fake products on there. We weren't the only ones to get a fake birdfeeder, fwiw: https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on-amazon-cost-warren-bird-feeder-business-1-5m/ https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on... > WARREN, R.I. (WPRI) — Aspects has been in business for decades, manufacturing bird feeders that come with a lifetime guarantee. So in 2016, when a customer called about a defective hummingbird feeder, the Warren-based company took the complaint seriously. “We went through the process of cutting the plastic and looking at all the different molding telltales and we realized it was not our product,” Trisha Torres, the CEO of Aspects, told Call 12 for Action. Torres said the product was a counterfeit. She knew if there was one, there had to be others. > “We found that it was just rampant on Amazon,” Torres said. In 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 3,828 counterfeit Aspects bird feeders in 68 cartons. Federal court records show Aspects won a permanent injunction against the LLC that made the shipment, but even now, Torres still finds fakes on Amazon. “My customer service department has fielded hundreds of these calls,” Torres said. “People’s knee-jerk reaction is they are just angry at us. They think we’re not standing behind our product.”

chillfox 4y ago

I have stopped buying books from Amazon unless I really have to because of the counterfeit problem, and sellers canceling orders then upping the price. So I try to buy books from thenile or eBay instead.

abracadaniel 4y ago
Better world books has been my go to lately.
lake_vincent 4y ago
The Book Depository is another excellent Amazon book seller. Not the fastest shipping, but always real books, and great collection of specialty technical books. Highly recommended.
- ESMirro 4y ago
  I second this, the book depository has remained consistently excellent despite Amazons ownership, providing slow but efficient worldwide delivery.

ulfw 4y ago

Non are in the exact same business but there are significant overlaps. Amazon makes it's profit from AWS, which is in the same business (and beating) Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Putting Amazon and Apple in the same business is a bit more of a stretch. Amazon sells things (and is nowadays mostly a middle man for third parties selling things through Amazon warehouses and delivery), Apple designs (and has them manufactured by third parties) things from CPUs all up the value chain to devices and it's software. The overlap is partially in services, but of which aren't particularly strong right now (Amazon Prime Movies/Series vs Apple TV+). There's not really a competition on devices anymore (Fire Phone/tablets vs iPhone/iPad).

Ftuuky 4y ago
Both Amazon and Apple are really into ads right now.

cercatrova 4y ago

> Google and Facebook are not really in the same businesses as ... Apple. Not for long, Apple is getting into the ads game as well, and much more strenuously than until now.

gumby 4y ago

Interesting you talked about shavers. Admittedly AWS is only 16% of AMZN's revenue, but it's 75% of profits and growing like gangbusters, especially when compared to the rest of the company. If regulators force AWS to spilt from the rest of Amazon it will be like the breakup of Standard Oil: shareholders will make more from the separate entities than they did from them combined.

lamontcg 4y ago

I haven't really stopped buying from Amazon, but I'm definitely starting to put in more effort. Just bought a comforter last week from a localish store that I found going through reddit reviews rather than buying off Amazon. Just bought some new shoes but got them from the local store and got a lot more out of being able to get properly fitted and able to talk to the guy about my issues. Still buy bits of cheap junk from Amazon, definitely if I'm thinking more along the lines of "Buy It For Life" (or just some long term durability) I'll try to get it from someone else. Also just ditched Android and Fitbit and got a new iPhone and Apple watch, pretty much decided to suck it up and join everyone else (and not a moment too soon because my Android case is starting to bulge out due to the battery again). And first impression is that they're really nice products and its worthwhile. Really wish Apple was a little more open of an ecosystem and that their products were more repairable--but for all the whinging and moaning about Apple that hits the headlines here on HN they seem to be miles better than anything else if you're just an average person.

taylodl 4y ago

Amazon has become my vendor of last resort. I first started noticing a change in the quality of their goods and vendors 2-3 years ago. Now it's gotten bad enough to where I'm actively avoiding them - even going to brick and mortar stores to avoid having to do business with them. I still have Amazon vendors I trust, but I no longer trust Amazon to vet their vendors - and that's a HUGE degradation of service!

random42_ 4y ago

I’ve just realized I’ve stopped buying stuff at Amazon that I can find at other, more reliable, stores. Recently I bought a new laptop at BestBuy, even though it was a $100 cheaper at Amazon. Legos, headphones, stuff for the kitchen… all bought either locally or at other online retailers. I’m buying less and less stuff at Amazon, usually books (Kindle, mostly) and stuff I can’t find anywhere else.

webinvest 4y ago

Amazon doesn’t yet have a dividend and dividend payers have outperformed non-dividend payers in total return this past year.