5 ms·

Pricenoia shuts down

120 points by martinml 12y ago

fookyong 12y ago
The scary part of this isn't that they were denied access. It's that they were denied with no opportunity for appeal. As an entrepreneur this is probably one of the number 1 nightmare scenarios: one day you're in business, the next day you're not. We always say never build a business off an ecosystem you don't control but the fact is there are many, many businesses that do just fine from it - and on the flip side, even non-ecosystem businesses are fragile in other ways (such as Uber being regulated into illegality in certain parts of the US and Asia). That's just business! Somewhere, someone is just waiting to fuck you over :) the challenge is to make your fortune or build up your defenses before they do!
- tehwebguy 12y ago
  > It's that they were denied with no opportunity for appeal. And even if there was an appeal process it would still be unilaterally decided by Amazon. It's the same feeling I get from Google whenever something goes down.
patd 12y ago
My price comparison tool Shoptimate.com got hit a few months back. It's not Amazon only so I can keep the lights on but it sucks for Pricenoia. Amazon has been changing the rules lately. They're not allowing installable software anymore and only allowing mobile apps that are not focused on shopping. They also refuse websites optimized for mobile. This is after they excluded affiliates over the state tax issues in the US. Wikipedia says that Amazon gets 40% of their revenue from affiliates. They're probably dominant enough that they don't need to rely on affiliates as much as they used to.
- bitJericho 12y ago
  This isn't a new thing. Amazon hasnt allowed installable software (without prior approval) nor have they allowed price comparison sites for years and years and years. Actually, have they ever allowed it?
  - patd 12y ago
    This changed last year. It now says: "Except as agreed between you and us in a separate written agreement (...) you will not use any Content or Special Link (...) on or in connection with: a. any client-side software application" https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/oper... But it used to say: "You will not include on your site, display, or otherwise use Special Links or Content in connection with any spyware, malware, virus, worm, Trojan horse, or other malicious or harmful code, or any software application not expressly and knowingly authorized by users prior to being downloaded or installed on their computer or other electronic device." https://web.archive.org/web/20130401033525/https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation https://web.archive.org/web/20130401033525/https://affiliate...
- no_gravity 12y ago
  "Wikipedia says that Amazon gets 40% of their revenue from affiliates" It says 40% from affiliates and third-party sellers. The linked source says 40% from affiliates though. But it's 6 years old. I would love to see some current numbers.
- yasth 12y ago
  Wiki is incorrectly characterizing their cited source. 40% is from third party sellers. (Actually I believe it is much higher now, but the way amazon breaks it out makes it hard to tell how much of their total revenue stream it is, as they only report their commissions). I've made the wiki changes. I believe Amazon has realized that with their dominate place in the market most people would have gone to Amazon anyways, and they no longer need to pay to get people in the door.
- minouye 12y ago
  There is no way that this is true. eBay has a similar affiliate program and historically I believe they do around 4-5% of GMB (gross merchandise bought) for the marketplace side of the business. I'd imagine Amazon would be in the same ballpark. If Amazon was paying out 4-8% on 40% of their revenue they'd be in serious trouble.
davidw 12y ago
They mention http://camelcamelcamel.com/ http://camelcamelcamel.com/ - but I don't get why they haven't got the axe as well.
- joshdance 12y ago
  I was wondering this as well?
polyvisual 12y ago
I've not seen priceonia before - what's the difference between that and camelcamelcamel? Reading the blog post it seems as though camelcamelcamel will be forced to shut at soon, too?
- martinml 12y ago
  I use Pricenoia to check prices in the different european Amazons, because pretty much all items can be shipped to other countries within Europe. As far as I know camelcamelcamel doesn't do that :(
GFischer 12y ago
This part is the one I'd be most worried about: "They also wiped all the commission fees we were keeping there." Amazon can be a jerk and unilaterally change the rules, but wiping out their commision goes beyond that. I know Google does the same, but it's not an example to follow. It's odd because Amazon has got a good reputation as a fair arbiter of disputes for buyers, but it seems not in this case. Things like these might impact the perception in other cases, I always thought Amazon AWS would have better customer support than Google's developer offerings, this might make me rethink that (I never had to contact AWS support yet and read mostly positive things about them, so this is surprising). I guess they violated some provision of the Amazon TOS?
- personZ 12y ago
  I know Google does the same, but it's not an example to follow. When Google decides that clicks were invalid, they remove the commission and also remove the charges from the advertiser. The fact that they do this, and aggressively fight click fraud, is one of the major reasons they have so little real competition. In the case of Amazon I'm not sure how they could do that...do they cancel all of the orders under the old agreement? Give customers their money back and ask for stuff to be shipped back? As an aside, Amazon's Affiliate program is one of the big vehicles of noise on the net. When authors suddenly decide to write a big blog entry about the best headphones, or the best coffee grinders, etc, invariably you find that it was 100% affiliate fee driven. That might seem like a "well they might as well capitalize", but the corrupting influence of peddling commission goods is unavoidable.
- josefresco 12y ago
  "Amazon can be a jerk and unilaterally change the rules" Just guessing, but they probably didn't change the rules, only started enforcing rules they weren't prior. Therefore commissions earned would still be "invalid". Considering Amazon fulfilled the orders sent from this affiliate and most likely re-invested the profits in their business (which is the Amazon way), makes it a dickish move.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Amazon has a good reputation from consumers, many people in the retail space who deal with them find them quite difficult (and arrogant) to work with. The only company I've found worse is Walmart in the US. But US retailers in general like to make one anothers' lives as difficult as possible, even when they depend on each other to even exist, I don't get it! In western europe (aside from a few French companies) most businesses are pretty cooperative, and want to reduce workload not increase it arbitrarily (looking at you US companies, again). I just think Americans love bureaucracy. It reminds me of Futurama with the "central bureaucracy" where everyone there takes pleasure in making things as slow and inefficient as possible.
userbinator 12y ago
On a side note, Amazon does not allow the use of its API for price trackers, they made that clear, and has lately made it very difficult to get the data in other ways. If people can still access the same data just by going to Amazon with their browser, I don't see any fundamental reason why they wouldn't be able to get the data if they really wanted to. I've always believed that APIs on websites are more than just convenience - they're a way for corporations to exert control over the data they give out, sort of like DRM. In the same way, they're also pretty trivial to circumvent; with webscraping, the major issue is that your traffic stands out, but distribute it widely enough and it won't look anything different from the massive traffic Amazon gets already. You could make a browser plugin and have your users do it for you (just make sure your privacy policies are stated clearly...!) I'm willing to bet that Amazon's data is already being scraped by many other sites, so that also gives rise to this similarity: the "pirates" win, the "legitimate users" going through their API lose.
- eli 12y ago
  I'm sure it's technically possible to scrape Amazon. I'm much less confident that it would be legal.
  - mooreds 12y ago
    This is the key point. If all you are doing is scraping prices for a personal project, questionable legality is ok (even if clear legality would be preferable). But if you are trying to build a business, ya gotta stay on the right side of the law.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      What law prevents you from scrapping publicly available site?
      - minouye 12y ago
        Supposedly the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_v._3Taps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_v._3Taps
Titanbase 12y ago
I was looking at the Uber API, and thought about comparing prices between Uber and Lyft... then I read this blog post on Pricenoia and it changed my mind. It does seem like a gamble to work with a company's API. It also seems like free work, but perhaps with donations you could make it work.
- josefresco 12y ago
  If you understand it to be a temporary venture and plan for the next step, you can still use API's etc. and create unique web apps that will attract users and give you either publicity or short term revenue.
  - Titanbase 12y ago
    My primary goal when starting any business is to create a sustainable, reliable income. Also, I like to focus on businesses that, once I set my vision in place for satisfying customers, I can guarantee that the service will be there for my customers.
    - josefresco 12y ago
      That's fine... my point was that temporary businesses/platforms can provide you the assets (exposure/cash/partnerships) needed to launch your sustainable, reliable income.
      - Titanbase 12y ago
        I'm not sure why you are arguing with me. I have stated what I am interested in when in comes to building a new business. I am not looking for exposure, cash or partnerships -- those aren't the problem at all -- but I am looking for sustainable, trustworthy, long-term business ideas. I have no problem building a business on another business' API's, but based on the track record of doing so, and your comments about them being temporary by nature, I think I will stay away from them. I think we're in agreement there.
josefresco 12y ago
Just found and have been using PriceZombie http://www.pricezombie.com/ http://www.pricezombie.com/ ... does this effect them as well?
EToS 12y ago
It looks to be only a matter of time before amazon seek out other targets, such as pricezombie.com, camelcamelcamel.com
Stratoscope 12y ago
A couple of months ago Amazon changed its own price tracker to make it much less useful than it was before. I'm talking about the "Important messages about items in your Cart" that appears at the top of your cart when any prices have changed since the last time you viewed it. They've had this feature for many years, of course. It used to be an incredibly verbose list with a bunch of boilerplate text repeated for every item, and the items were in apparently random order. With only a few items in your cart this wouldn't matter much, but I use the Saved Items for a list of things I might want to pick up sometime but don't need right now. So I may have as many as a hundred items or more there. With Amazon prices fluctuating as much as they do - often by only a few pennies - it was hard to spot the more interesting price changes. A couple of years ago they made some nice improvements to this feature on both the desktop and mobile sites. All the boilerplate was pulled out making the list much easier to scan, and the list was sorted in descending order by price change. So the items with the most interesting price changes were right at the top. But a couple of months ago this list took a big step downhill. On mobile, the item names are no longer tappable links, and on both desktop and mobile the sorting was taken out! The list is still nicely formatted, but it's back in random order again, so the items with significant price changes are hard to find among all the two-or-three-penny changes. I thought this was probably just a bug, but now I wonder if it was a deliberate move on Amazon's part. It seems they not only want to shut down third party price trackers, they don't want their own tracker to be very easy to use either.
- annnnd 12y ago
  One would think it is not in Amazon's best interest if their customers are vigilant in price comparisons. ;)
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
hari_sem3 12y ago
Semantics3 (www.semantics3.com) has been tracking Amazon for almost 2 years now (we have price histories to boot!). We can, and do still offer price comparison functionality for products sold on Amazon; you can also compare these prices against other domains.
- finkin1 12y ago
  I'm a happy customer of Semantics3, although the number of products they have data for isn't overwhelming.
paulhauggis 12y ago
This is the norm with Amazon. They will shutdown your account, take your money, and ignore your emails/not give you any real reason why they shut it down. Amazon is an evil company that abuses their monopoly position on a daily basis. On top of this, when you are a seller, they get to keep your customers. You can't contact them outside of Amazon or get any personal info.
legohead 12y ago
Could this be a hint at a larger business move? Such as, unique pricing by customer?
tmgp 12y ago
http://www.tropicalprice.com http://www.tropicalprice.com is another alternative, without the fancy features of pricenoia like graphs and other info.

120 points by martinml 12y ago

The scary part of this isn't that they were denied access. It's that they were denied with no opportunity for appeal. As an entrepreneur this is probably one of the number 1 nightmare scenarios: one day you're in business, the next day you're not. We always say never build a business off an ecosystem you don't control but the fact is there are many, many businesses that do just fine from it - and on the flip side, even non-ecosystem businesses are fragile in other ways (such as Uber being regulated into illegality in certain parts of the US and Asia). That's just business! Somewhere, someone is just waiting to fuck you over :) the challenge is to make your fortune or build up your defenses before they do!

tehwebguy 12y ago
> It's that they were denied with no opportunity for appeal. And even if there was an appeal process it would still be unilaterally decided by Amazon. It's the same feeling I get from Google whenever something goes down.

patd 12y ago

My price comparison tool Shoptimate.com got hit a few months back. It's not Amazon only so I can keep the lights on but it sucks for Pricenoia. Amazon has been changing the rules lately. They're not allowing installable software anymore and only allowing mobile apps that are not focused on shopping. They also refuse websites optimized for mobile. This is after they excluded affiliates over the state tax issues in the US. Wikipedia says that Amazon gets 40% of their revenue from affiliates. They're probably dominant enough that they don't need to rely on affiliates as much as they used to.

bitJericho 12y ago
This isn't a new thing. Amazon hasnt allowed installable software (without prior approval) nor have they allowed price comparison sites for years and years and years. Actually, have they ever allowed it?
- patd 12y ago
  This changed last year. It now says: "Except as agreed between you and us in a separate written agreement (...) you will not use any Content or Special Link (...) on or in connection with: a. any client-side software application" https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/oper... But it used to say: "You will not include on your site, display, or otherwise use Special Links or Content in connection with any spyware, malware, virus, worm, Trojan horse, or other malicious or harmful code, or any software application not expressly and knowingly authorized by users prior to being downloaded or installed on their computer or other electronic device." https://web.archive.org/web/20130401033525/https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation https://web.archive.org/web/20130401033525/https://affiliate...
no_gravity 12y ago
"Wikipedia says that Amazon gets 40% of their revenue from affiliates" It says 40% from affiliates and third-party sellers. The linked source says 40% from affiliates though. But it's 6 years old. I would love to see some current numbers.
yasth 12y ago
Wiki is incorrectly characterizing their cited source. 40% is from third party sellers. (Actually I believe it is much higher now, but the way amazon breaks it out makes it hard to tell how much of their total revenue stream it is, as they only report their commissions). I've made the wiki changes. I believe Amazon has realized that with their dominate place in the market most people would have gone to Amazon anyways, and they no longer need to pay to get people in the door.
minouye 12y ago
There is no way that this is true. eBay has a similar affiliate program and historically I believe they do around 4-5% of GMB (gross merchandise bought) for the marketplace side of the business. I'd imagine Amazon would be in the same ballpark. If Amazon was paying out 4-8% on 40% of their revenue they'd be in serious trouble.

davidw 12y ago

They mention http://camelcamelcamel.com/ http://camelcamelcamel.com/ - but I don't get why they haven't got the axe as well.

joshdance 12y ago
I was wondering this as well?

polyvisual 12y ago

I've not seen priceonia before - what's the difference between that and camelcamelcamel? Reading the blog post it seems as though camelcamelcamel will be forced to shut at soon, too?

martinml 12y ago
I use Pricenoia to check prices in the different european Amazons, because pretty much all items can be shipped to other countries within Europe. As far as I know camelcamelcamel doesn't do that :(

GFischer 12y ago

This part is the one I'd be most worried about: "They also wiped all the commission fees we were keeping there." Amazon can be a jerk and unilaterally change the rules, but wiping out their commision goes beyond that. I know Google does the same, but it's not an example to follow. It's odd because Amazon has got a good reputation as a fair arbiter of disputes for buyers, but it seems not in this case. Things like these might impact the perception in other cases, I always thought Amazon AWS would have better customer support than Google's developer offerings, this might make me rethink that (I never had to contact AWS support yet and read mostly positive things about them, so this is surprising). I guess they violated some provision of the Amazon TOS?

personZ 12y ago
I know Google does the same, but it's not an example to follow. When Google decides that clicks were invalid, they remove the commission and also remove the charges from the advertiser. The fact that they do this, and aggressively fight click fraud, is one of the major reasons they have so little real competition. In the case of Amazon I'm not sure how they could do that...do they cancel all of the orders under the old agreement? Give customers their money back and ask for stuff to be shipped back? As an aside, Amazon's Affiliate program is one of the big vehicles of noise on the net. When authors suddenly decide to write a big blog entry about the best headphones, or the best coffee grinders, etc, invariably you find that it was 100% affiliate fee driven. That might seem like a "well they might as well capitalize", but the corrupting influence of peddling commission goods is unavoidable.
josefresco 12y ago
"Amazon can be a jerk and unilaterally change the rules" Just guessing, but they probably didn't change the rules, only started enforcing rules they weren't prior. Therefore commissions earned would still be "invalid". Considering Amazon fulfilled the orders sent from this affiliate and most likely re-invested the profits in their business (which is the Amazon way), makes it a dickish move.
Someone1234 12y ago
Amazon has a good reputation from consumers, many people in the retail space who deal with them find them quite difficult (and arrogant) to work with. The only company I've found worse is Walmart in the US. But US retailers in general like to make one anothers' lives as difficult as possible, even when they depend on each other to even exist, I don't get it! In western europe (aside from a few French companies) most businesses are pretty cooperative, and want to reduce workload not increase it arbitrarily (looking at you US companies, again). I just think Americans love bureaucracy. It reminds me of Futurama with the "central bureaucracy" where everyone there takes pleasure in making things as slow and inefficient as possible.

userbinator 12y ago

On a side note, Amazon does not allow the use of its API for price trackers, they made that clear, and has lately made it very difficult to get the data in other ways. If people can still access the same data just by going to Amazon with their browser, I don't see any fundamental reason why they wouldn't be able to get the data if they really wanted to. I've always believed that APIs on websites are more than just convenience - they're a way for corporations to exert control over the data they give out, sort of like DRM. In the same way, they're also pretty trivial to circumvent; with webscraping, the major issue is that your traffic stands out, but distribute it widely enough and it won't look anything different from the massive traffic Amazon gets already. You could make a browser plugin and have your users do it for you (just make sure your privacy policies are stated clearly...!) I'm willing to bet that Amazon's data is already being scraped by many other sites, so that also gives rise to this similarity: the "pirates" win, the "legitimate users" going through their API lose.

eli 12y ago
I'm sure it's technically possible to scrape Amazon. I'm much less confident that it would be legal.
- mooreds 12y ago
  This is the key point. If all you are doing is scraping prices for a personal project, questionable legality is ok (even if clear legality would be preferable). But if you are trying to build a business, ya gotta stay on the right side of the law.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    What law prevents you from scrapping publicly available site?
    - minouye 12y ago
      Supposedly the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_v._3Taps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_v._3Taps

Titanbase 12y ago

I was looking at the Uber API, and thought about comparing prices between Uber and Lyft... then I read this blog post on Pricenoia and it changed my mind. It does seem like a gamble to work with a company's API. It also seems like free work, but perhaps with donations you could make it work.

josefresco 12y ago
If you understand it to be a temporary venture and plan for the next step, you can still use API's etc. and create unique web apps that will attract users and give you either publicity or short term revenue.
- Titanbase 12y ago
  My primary goal when starting any business is to create a sustainable, reliable income. Also, I like to focus on businesses that, once I set my vision in place for satisfying customers, I can guarantee that the service will be there for my customers.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    That's fine... my point was that temporary businesses/platforms can provide you the assets (exposure/cash/partnerships) needed to launch your sustainable, reliable income.
    - Titanbase 12y ago
      I'm not sure why you are arguing with me. I have stated what I am interested in when in comes to building a new business. I am not looking for exposure, cash or partnerships -- those aren't the problem at all -- but I am looking for sustainable, trustworthy, long-term business ideas. I have no problem building a business on another business' API's, but based on the track record of doing so, and your comments about them being temporary by nature, I think I will stay away from them. I think we're in agreement there.

josefresco 12y ago

Just found and have been using PriceZombie http://www.pricezombie.com/ http://www.pricezombie.com/ ... does this effect them as well?

EToS 12y ago

It looks to be only a matter of time before amazon seek out other targets, such as pricezombie.com, camelcamelcamel.com

Stratoscope 12y ago

A couple of months ago Amazon changed its own price tracker to make it much less useful than it was before. I'm talking about the "Important messages about items in your Cart" that appears at the top of your cart when any prices have changed since the last time you viewed it. They've had this feature for many years, of course. It used to be an incredibly verbose list with a bunch of boilerplate text repeated for every item, and the items were in apparently random order. With only a few items in your cart this wouldn't matter much, but I use the Saved Items for a list of things I might want to pick up sometime but don't need right now. So I may have as many as a hundred items or more there. With Amazon prices fluctuating as much as they do - often by only a few pennies - it was hard to spot the more interesting price changes. A couple of years ago they made some nice improvements to this feature on both the desktop and mobile sites. All the boilerplate was pulled out making the list much easier to scan, and the list was sorted in descending order by price change. So the items with the most interesting price changes were right at the top. But a couple of months ago this list took a big step downhill. On mobile, the item names are no longer tappable links, and on both desktop and mobile the sorting was taken out! The list is still nicely formatted, but it's back in random order again, so the items with significant price changes are hard to find among all the two-or-three-penny changes. I thought this was probably just a bug, but now I wonder if it was a deliberate move on Amazon's part. It seems they not only want to shut down third party price trackers, they don't want their own tracker to be very easy to use either.

annnnd 12y ago
One would think it is not in Amazon's best interest if their customers are vigilant in price comparisons. ;)

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

hari_sem3 12y ago

Semantics3 (www.semantics3.com) has been tracking Amazon for almost 2 years now (we have price histories to boot!). We can, and do still offer price comparison functionality for products sold on Amazon; you can also compare these prices against other domains.

finkin1 12y ago
I'm a happy customer of Semantics3, although the number of products they have data for isn't overwhelming.

paulhauggis 12y ago

This is the norm with Amazon. They will shutdown your account, take your money, and ignore your emails/not give you any real reason why they shut it down. Amazon is an evil company that abuses their monopoly position on a daily basis. On top of this, when you are a seller, they get to keep your customers. You can't contact them outside of Amazon or get any personal info.

legohead 12y ago

Could this be a hint at a larger business move? Such as, unique pricing by customer?

tmgp 12y ago

http://www.tropicalprice.com http://www.tropicalprice.com is another alternative, without the fancy features of pricenoia like graphs and other info.