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I was shocked to discover this is the canonical URL & domain for the Amazon press releases. After I clicked the link and saw the URL I initially thought this wa

I was shocked to discover this is the canonical URL & domain for the Amazon press releases. After I clicked the link and saw the URL I initially thought this was some bizarre phishing scheme. That being said, I think this is a great idea. I don't love the Facebook OAuth flow and the amount of access most apps ask for. I have trouble taking Twitter seriously as an OAuth provider [bias much?]. I think there are many US-focused companies who will be excited to have Google & Amazon as the two default OAuth authentication providers. If nothing else, it's much more adult than Twitter/Facebook. Oh, and Amazon has your credit card info and a great platform for SaaS billing :)

criley 13y ago
I agree. I love OAuth idea and the single-sign on flow. I love having one source where I can go and see all of the sites that have my info, and I love being able to rescind my account from that central location. However, I hate that Facebook/Twitter take it a step further with all of their social integration features to the point where many apps assume, by default, that you want to share share share everything you do all over your social network. As I've found a number of apps/websites that do not allow you to continue without giving them permission to post on your wall, I've been forced to mark every single app/OAuth site on my Facebook as available to "only me". Post all you want, no one will ever see it. Curating what gets posted under your name shouldn't be this much work. I shouldn't have to strive for a clean digital presence with content that adds something to my readers life. I'd love an OAuth provider that HAS NO SOCIAL NETWORK! And Google is out on this too, sorry, but Google Plus is obviously the only web property that Google cares about anymore and trusting them not to socialify everything is a fools game.
- r4vik 13y ago
  Amazon does have a social network though https://kindle.amazon.com/ https://kindle.amazon.com/, actually two now with the aquisition of goodreads
- rdl 13y ago
  I'd rather use one with an exceptionally good security policy (including account recovery), realtime multi-modal notification, customizable settings (i.e. being able to ip/geo restrict, rate limit, etc.), etc. And maybe do groups, too. Google Apps for Your Domain could be kind of like this, but isn't. Probably the closest, though. Maybe someone like Dropbox/Box.Net/AeroFS?
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    This is basically exactly what I built https://www.persowna.net/ https://www.persowna.net/ for. It's still in its infancy (as is Mozilla Persona), but that's where I want to take it. Can I email you to talk about your needs a bit? It sounds like you have some good ideas.
    - rdl 13y ago
      sure
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  I though persona by Mozilla was basically this.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    It is. It's unfortunate that more people don't know about it, especially since it's ridiculously easy to implement, well-designed and would save us all a lot of hassle. If you're running a Django app, please add Persona integration. It takes around five minutes, literally.
  - criley 13y ago
    I thought Persona was an _idea_. I personally haven't seen a single Persona login in the wild.
- elithrar 13y ago
  > I'd love an OAuth provider that HAS NO SOCIAL NETWORK! GitHub, BitBucket? Both are actually good options if you have a service with developer demographic (even if its just in part). I'm using Google & GitHub right now, and will likely add Amazon since it's very little work to do so.
loganfrederick 13y ago
The URL is quite common among large corporations and is used by, off the top of my head, Gamestop and NVIDIA. www.google.com/search?q=corporate-ir.net
- buggyURLs 13y ago
  Yeah, but that URL behaves really weird, when you try requests for the domain without any actual URI at the end. For example: http://phx.corporate-ir.net http://phx.corporate-ir.net http://www.corporate-ir.net http://www.corporate-ir.net http://www.ccbn.com http://www.ccbn.com < I somehow got redirected there... Also: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:corporate-ir.net http://www.google.com/search?q=site:corporate-ir.net
  - arscan 13y ago
    Some history for those that are interested: corporate-ir.net is a utility domain that only exists to serve customized investor relations sites. The base domain itself actually does nothing. Think of it like github.io... www.github.io serves no purpose in itself. phx.corporate-ir.net was a major upgrade to corporate-ir.net done around 2003, called phoenix. That's why there's the strange phx subdomain in front of the domain. Apparently that was the last upgrade they did to this service... and its neglect is most likely the result of a couple of acquisitions. corporate-ir.net was created by a company called CCBN (ccbn.com). They were purchased in the 2000's by Thompson, which then merged with Reuters. Thomson purchased CCBN for a different product (not corporate-ir.net) that was strategically important to their business. So its not really a surprise that they haven't put much TLC into the way that the domains resolve -- this investor relations website business is peanuts compared to Thomson-Reuter's core competency.
arscan 13y ago
Regarding the URL: Amazon (and just about every public company in the US) outsources the investor relations portion of their site, because it is easier to do so than to integrate the feeds mandated by the SEC on their public site themselves (stock quote, press releases, sec filings, etc). There are 2 major competitors in this space, and the one that Amazon chose has these ugly URLs. I'm surprised that they haven't made this better since that platform (phoenix) was designed in the mid-2000s. I presume that nobody really cares enough to put money into migrating it to a url scheme that is more sensible... the site exists to satisfy the SEC, and serious investors get their news/stock data from other sources anyhow.
smackfu 13y ago
>I was shocked to discover this is the canonical URL & domain for the Amazon press releases. It seems like it is outsourced investor relations. Funny thing is that if you go to the bare domain, it redirects you to ccbn.com, which doesn't work because CCBN (Corporate Communications Broadcast Network) got bought out in January and apparently killed their domain too. That's pretty shoddy.
300bps 13y ago
>That being said, I think this is a great idea. I don't love the Facebook OAuth flow and the amount of access most apps ask for. You bring up a perfect point from a user's perspective and I agree with you. The challenge for Amazon is that there are two competing interests: 1. Users who don't want their entire life to be open to developers 2. Developers that want as much info as possible on the users Facebook favors group #2 above, Amazon will probably favor group #1 above. If that ends up being the case, how many developers will be willing to utilize the OAuth service that doesn't give them as much info by default?
- nucleardog 13y ago
  If Amazon were as ubiquitous as Facebook, we would. In most situations where we've used a Facebook login, it's simply to avoid forcing the users to create yet another account. We don't pull any real data (except maybe a couple things, again, for their convenience - to fill out their profile) like their name. We push nothing back. Being able to say "Hey, just login. We don't actually care about your information." would be much preferable to Facebook's unnecessary "This app is requesting permissions to access your profile and friends list." We don't need that information. I guess maybe that's our fault for abusing Facebook integration by using it simply as a single sign-on service.
- Anonazon 13y ago
  If you have any doubts about which customer Amazon is more interested in, just take a look at this new AWS service and the APIs http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/29/amazon-web-services-launches-web-identity-service-with-support-for-google-and-facebook/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/29/amazon-web-services-launche...
unhammer 13y ago
If you have trouble with Facebook and Twitter, how is Amazon/Google better? They all have great engineering teams, but they also all make money on data mining – not the best feature of a login provider (2013-05-30: jrandomhacker successfully logged in to PersistentGenitalArousalDisorder.com … let's show some relevant ads next time his in-laws are near the computer). I'd stick with Mozilla Persona.

criley 13y ago

I agree. I love OAuth idea and the single-sign on flow. I love having one source where I can go and see all of the sites that have my info, and I love being able to rescind my account from that central location. However, I hate that Facebook/Twitter take it a step further with all of their social integration features to the point where many apps assume, by default, that you want to share share share everything you do all over your social network. As I've found a number of apps/websites that do not allow you to continue without giving them permission to post on your wall, I've been forced to mark every single app/OAuth site on my Facebook as available to "only me". Post all you want, no one will ever see it. Curating what gets posted under your name shouldn't be this much work. I shouldn't have to strive for a clean digital presence with content that adds something to my readers life. I'd love an OAuth provider that HAS NO SOCIAL NETWORK! And Google is out on this too, sorry, but Google Plus is obviously the only web property that Google cares about anymore and trusting them not to socialify everything is a fools game.

r4vik 13y ago
Amazon does have a social network though https://kindle.amazon.com/ https://kindle.amazon.com/, actually two now with the aquisition of goodreads
rdl 13y ago
I'd rather use one with an exceptionally good security policy (including account recovery), realtime multi-modal notification, customizable settings (i.e. being able to ip/geo restrict, rate limit, etc.), etc. And maybe do groups, too. Google Apps for Your Domain could be kind of like this, but isn't. Probably the closest, though. Maybe someone like Dropbox/Box.Net/AeroFS?
- StavrosK 13y ago
  This is basically exactly what I built https://www.persowna.net/ https://www.persowna.net/ for. It's still in its infancy (as is Mozilla Persona), but that's where I want to take it. Can I email you to talk about your needs a bit? It sounds like you have some good ideas.
  - rdl 13y ago
    sure
hayksaakian 13y ago
I though persona by Mozilla was basically this.
- StavrosK 13y ago
  It is. It's unfortunate that more people don't know about it, especially since it's ridiculously easy to implement, well-designed and would save us all a lot of hassle. If you're running a Django app, please add Persona integration. It takes around five minutes, literally.
- criley 13y ago
  I thought Persona was an _idea_. I personally haven't seen a single Persona login in the wild.
elithrar 13y ago
> I'd love an OAuth provider that HAS NO SOCIAL NETWORK! GitHub, BitBucket? Both are actually good options if you have a service with developer demographic (even if its just in part). I'm using Google & GitHub right now, and will likely add Amazon since it's very little work to do so.

loganfrederick 13y ago

The URL is quite common among large corporations and is used by, off the top of my head, Gamestop and NVIDIA. www.google.com/search?q=corporate-ir.net

buggyURLs 13y ago
Yeah, but that URL behaves really weird, when you try requests for the domain without any actual URI at the end. For example: http://phx.corporate-ir.net http://phx.corporate-ir.net http://www.corporate-ir.net http://www.corporate-ir.net http://www.ccbn.com http://www.ccbn.com < I somehow got redirected there... Also: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:corporate-ir.net http://www.google.com/search?q=site:corporate-ir.net
- arscan 13y ago
  Some history for those that are interested: corporate-ir.net is a utility domain that only exists to serve customized investor relations sites. The base domain itself actually does nothing. Think of it like github.io... www.github.io serves no purpose in itself. phx.corporate-ir.net was a major upgrade to corporate-ir.net done around 2003, called phoenix. That's why there's the strange phx subdomain in front of the domain. Apparently that was the last upgrade they did to this service... and its neglect is most likely the result of a couple of acquisitions. corporate-ir.net was created by a company called CCBN (ccbn.com). They were purchased in the 2000's by Thompson, which then merged with Reuters. Thomson purchased CCBN for a different product (not corporate-ir.net) that was strategically important to their business. So its not really a surprise that they haven't put much TLC into the way that the domains resolve -- this investor relations website business is peanuts compared to Thomson-Reuter's core competency.

arscan 13y ago

Regarding the URL: Amazon (and just about every public company in the US) outsources the investor relations portion of their site, because it is easier to do so than to integrate the feeds mandated by the SEC on their public site themselves (stock quote, press releases, sec filings, etc). There are 2 major competitors in this space, and the one that Amazon chose has these ugly URLs. I'm surprised that they haven't made this better since that platform (phoenix) was designed in the mid-2000s. I presume that nobody really cares enough to put money into migrating it to a url scheme that is more sensible... the site exists to satisfy the SEC, and serious investors get their news/stock data from other sources anyhow.

smackfu 13y ago

>I was shocked to discover this is the canonical URL & domain for the Amazon press releases. It seems like it is outsourced investor relations. Funny thing is that if you go to the bare domain, it redirects you to ccbn.com, which doesn't work because CCBN (Corporate Communications Broadcast Network) got bought out in January and apparently killed their domain too. That's pretty shoddy.

300bps 13y ago

>That being said, I think this is a great idea. I don't love the Facebook OAuth flow and the amount of access most apps ask for. You bring up a perfect point from a user's perspective and I agree with you. The challenge for Amazon is that there are two competing interests: 1. Users who don't want their entire life to be open to developers 2. Developers that want as much info as possible on the users Facebook favors group #2 above, Amazon will probably favor group #1 above. If that ends up being the case, how many developers will be willing to utilize the OAuth service that doesn't give them as much info by default?

nucleardog 13y ago
If Amazon were as ubiquitous as Facebook, we would. In most situations where we've used a Facebook login, it's simply to avoid forcing the users to create yet another account. We don't pull any real data (except maybe a couple things, again, for their convenience - to fill out their profile) like their name. We push nothing back. Being able to say "Hey, just login. We don't actually care about your information." would be much preferable to Facebook's unnecessary "This app is requesting permissions to access your profile and friends list." We don't need that information. I guess maybe that's our fault for abusing Facebook integration by using it simply as a single sign-on service.
Anonazon 13y ago
If you have any doubts about which customer Amazon is more interested in, just take a look at this new AWS service and the APIs http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/29/amazon-web-services-launches-web-identity-service-with-support-for-google-and-facebook/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/29/amazon-web-services-launche...

unhammer 13y ago

If you have trouble with Facebook and Twitter, how is Amazon/Google better? They all have great engineering teams, but they also all make money on data mining – not the best feature of a login provider (2013-05-30: jrandomhacker successfully logged in to PersistentGenitalArousalDisorder.com … let's show some relevant ads next time his in-laws are near the computer). I'd stick with Mozilla Persona.