
Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS - JakeWesorick
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/06/21/wal-mart-to-vendors-get-off-amazons-cloud.html
======
__d__
I sold to Walmart for 4 years. In the beginning we believed we were lucky to
become vendors. Then we realized how much stress they created. Every single
year they would short pay our invoices. We would have to submit a claim with
Walmart accounting. This process was completely and utterly time consuming.
But the worst of it, they wouldn't pay the invoices owed until a year later.
It's hard to float a $100,000 short pay as a small business.

They did much more and I was surprised that they existed this way in business

~~~
vvanders
I've seen Game Publishers do this with milestone payments but for a different
effect. One of the common clauses is that the publisher gets all assets(source
code, art, etc) in the case of a studio folding.

They then intentionally delay milestone payments about 3/4 of the way though
the project, watch the company fold(since that's the highest-burn part of the
project) and then re-hire 2/3rds of the existing staff who are now out of a
job to finish the title.

It doesn't produce the highest quality games but I'm sure it earns them a bit
more money.

~~~
notyourwork
These types of practices make me sad for humanity.

~~~
smallnamespace
I mean, the two parties have a diametrically opposed view of how the world
works and what their own moral obligations are.

One party thinks they're trying to make good games, and getting paid in the
process.

The other party views the rest of the world as a potential money machine, and
they're just optimizing around which lever to pull to maximize their return.

Matt Levine had a fun article[1] about this happening in a different context.
'FERC built a terrible box, and the box had some buttons that were labeled
“push here for money,” and JPMorgan pushed them and got money.'

One approach isn't necessarily 'wrong' and the other 'right', but bad things
obviously happen if you thought you were working with a business partner, but
instead you got a shark.

[1] [http://dealbreaker.com/2013/07/electricity-market-rules-
were...](http://dealbreaker.com/2013/07/electricity-market-rules-were-not-a-
worthy-opponent-for-jpmorgans-brainpower/)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> I mean, the two parties have a diametrically opposed view of how the world
> works and what their own moral obligations are.

> One approach isn't necessarily 'wrong' and the other 'right', ...

No. The truth is that one approach is, in fact, unambiguously morally inferior
to the other. That morality may not match the financial implications of a
contract, which should be able to assume "good faith" and "fair dealings" in
their contracts.

I can understand that some people care more about the money than the morals,
and will exploit contracts and the law in unexpected ways to try to make more
money or gain more power. But I refuse to accept that this behavior is morally
ambiguous. And furthermore, I refuse to act immorally.

Perhaps that means I will miss out on some money or power. Perhaps I will be
competed out of business because of this conviction. And yeah, I'll
reluctantly play the stupid game where I must by offering discounts for on-
time payment instead of attempting to write in appropriate penalties and
interest for late payments that I can't enforce against an army of corporate
lawyers.

But I can say with conviction that acting in bad faith is morally wrong.

------
KirinDave
This is... Not the best? That Wal-Mart is powerful enough to dictate the
internal business practice and tech decisions of it's vendor.

On the other hand, Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US
economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year. It's
rapidly approaching a "too big to be allowed to fail" status, and that's awful
for Americans. Since anti-trust laws weren't written by a generation able to
envison entities like this and the current political climate is that they'd
rather die than appear anti-business... I guess the only entities with the
power to push back against Amazon are in fact the other major corporate
vendors.

~~~
dkrich
I think concerns about Amazon becoming a monopoly are greatly exaggerated.
They are getting attacked from all sides, by Microsoft in the cloud and Wal-
Mart in ecommerce. As Microsoft grabs share from them in web services it'll
reduce Amazon's ability to cross-subsidize its ecommerce business. As Wal-Mart
and Costco continue to catch up in ecommerce and free two-day shipping becomes
table stakes in ecommerce, Amazon's value proposition for Prime is going to
diminish.

~~~
randcraw
A few points in refutation. I see Amazon as far ahead of Walmart in all ways
that promise growth:

1) Walmart may be the biggest retailer in the US, but they don't have half of
the US homes as subscribers. Amazon Prime does. I doubt Walmart.com attracts
any where near as many e-tail visitors as Amazon, and I suspect the gap is
widening.

2) Amazon is _decades_ ahead of Walmart in the online shopper experience. I
grit my teeth each time I visit Walmart's website. It's slow and ugly and very
clumsy to navigate or search. And it hasn't gotten better after years of this.

3) Walmart's products are mostly middle-to-down-market, even online, and that
doesn't seem to have changed all that much even as they've grown their e-tail
efforts. Try buying a nice watch or high-end stereo equipment there. No such
ceiling applies to Amazon, probably because Amazon welcomes re-sellers (which
can span all market niches), while Walmart doesn't.

So I think Walmart has a long way to go to compete equally with Amazon, and
isn't a comparable threat as an all 'round monopoly.

And personally, I don't hate Amazon enough to object to a monopoly threat from
them the way I do Walmart. I think ill-will does matter when it comes to
federal action on anti-competition. If Microsoft were as despised as AT&T was
in 1984, they would be in pieces today.

~~~
johnflan
Walmart also launched jet.com

~~~
mason55
Walmart bought jet.com

------
gregatragenet3
Seems as if this is a reasonable request, which is being framed as an
unreasonable one.

WalMart has asked a Data-Warehousing service (via its customer) to please not
do what it does - data-warehouse internal information about sales, revenue,
etc - on their retail-competitor's servers. Data which could give Amazon
sensitive inside information on WalMart's operations and financials..

I dono if they've made other less-reasonable requests, but the example
provided in the article is completely reasonable.

I always find it a ironic when I've interacted with startups which have a plan
to bring some disruptive thing to market that potentially competes with Amazon
or Google, and yet route all their data and communication through these
platforms. :)

~~~
kakarot
I don't use AWS, but it's not against their ToS to encrypt data at all stages,
right? How does that not that solve this problem? I would hope that anyone
using a cloud provider follows that practice.

~~~
gshulegaard
Honest question, I apologize if it's stupid...

But how do you guarantee encryption at all stages such that Amazon cannot
snoop it when you have to do final mile encryption on hardware controlled by
Amazon?

I mean encryption for messenger services where each end is not controlled by a
third-party is one thing...but how do you guarantee the third-party in control
of the hardware responsible for performing the encryption isn't snooping?

The only thing I can think of (and again this isn't my strongest area) is to
not handle any data on an Amazon server that isn't already encrypted...but how
does that work if you are using a service like RDS or Redshift?

And even if you could work out a super complicated security-conscious
solution...is it unreasonable for Walmart to not trust all it's vendors to
take such extreme measures and therefore just create a general policy against
the use of AWS?

~~~
FmrAMZN_TA
You can't (and they don't promise) encryption such that AWS can't see
everything, if they were in fact malicious. This is true of every cloud.

That said, it's not illegal for them to see that xxx vendor increased their
storage costs/bandwidth costs by $yyy every month, and that you could look
into it - without using one piece of encrypted data.

Disclosure: Former AWS

~~~
kakarot
I was thinking client-side encryption and decryption, and if you need to run
operations on the server, utilizing homomorphic encryption practices. Is this
not feasible or just naive?

~~~
cobookman
How do you stop the cloud provider from accessing ram or cpu cache. At some
point the data has to be decrypted for it to be used. And if decrypted on
Amazon equipment, then Amazon could in theory gain access to it.

~~~
x1798DE
They were saying all decryption would happen client side and the only
operations done by the server would be ones where the server can operate on
encrypted data and yield encrypted results. I suspect that the main sticking
point in that plan would be that the current state of homomorphic encryption
is fairly limited/slow, so if you need AWS for computation as opposed to
storage, it's not a practical plan.

~~~
kakarot
Yeah. AWS isn't the best for just plain old storage so I guess this just isn't
quite feasible yet. I'm hopeful we'll figure out the fully-encrypted cloud
within the decade.

------
snowwolf
Is this because they actively want to discourage any revenue going Amazon's
way from Wal-Mart related business activities, or because they don't trust
Amazon not to look at the data hosted on their platform?

If the latter, then I think that's just extreme paranoia. If there was ANY
evidence of Amazon doing that it would destroy everyones trust in AWS and I
suspect people wouldn't be able to move away fast enough (Which actually long
term would be good for Wal-Mart).

~~~
mdasen
I think it's harsh to call it extreme paranoia. I've heard that one of the
reasons Amazon won't use Slack for its chat is because it isn't self-hosted.
I'm sure many major companies won't use Gmail. I don't think Slack or Google
have done anything that suggests they'd mine their platforms for corporate
espionage. Slack isn't even in the same industry as Amazon. Is Amazon
paranoid?

According to the article, Walmart seems hesitant to support so much profit
running to Amazon. While Amazon's retail business runs on razor thin margins,
their cloud business reaps enormous profits. That means that the cloud
business is helping Amazon put a lot of pressure on Walmart. Without it, would
they be able to eat such thin to negative margins in the retail business or
would they need to raise prices and make Walmart's offerings look better for
consumers?

In the article, they note that AWS was 89% of Amazon's operating income. It's
likely that Amazon's thin retail margins would bother investors if AWS wasn't
raking in money. It's also likely that AWS margins are helping Amazon be more
aggressive in retail.

Still, I don't think it would be more paranoid than most companies to avoid
using a competitor's infrastructure at that size. Amazon will prefer self-
hosing email rather than using Gmail regardless of assurances.

It's not even just about trusting that the competitor wouldn't actively decide
to peek into your data. It's trusting that no one in that company would take a
peek even though that the competitive data could give them a huge career
boost. Let's say Amazon hosts their email with Gmail. You're a struggling
middle-manager at Google Cloud who has seen some failures. Maybe peek at
Amazon's email and see what their cloud plans might be and when you're able to
get out in front of Amazon you amaze your colleagues - maybe you have to bribe
someone with access.* It's not just trusting that Google doesn't want to do
this.

*Now, I'm sure that Google has safeguards to make sure that employees can't do this (or it's at least hard), but the point is that you have to trust 1) the company, 2) the employees, and 3) procedures the company has put in place to prevent nefarious data access.

~~~
snowwolf
Isn't Slack on AWS? So effectively it is self-hosted for them :)

[https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-
studies/slack/](https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/slack/)

~~~
discodave
But AWS can't control Slacks security practices.

AWS also has many compliance certifications (HIPAA, FedRAMP etc), sending data
outside your organisation may be a no-go from a compliance perspective.

------
throwawaymanbot
If Wal-Mart decrees this, put up or shut up. Welcome to business.

CEO Diktats about using not using competitor services for anything whatsoever,
are as old as Microsoft. Wal-mart is not in the cloud business, so I can only
wonder if, as others have commented, it is about data security in AWS domain,
since Wal-Mart's main competitor is Amazon.

We know what Google and Facebook get up to with peoples data, why would Amazon
not analyze or try similar to their customers? To have all that technical
capability and not be curious about stuff would be a waste.

Finally, I think it would be great for everyone (except Amazon), if wal-mart
got in to the cloud. Using their leverage to create cheaper cloud would
benefit us all.

~~~
mabbo
Peeking at competitor data would be a short term great idea, long term
terrible idea. You do it once, you'll do it again. You do it too many times,
someone will rat you out and now your losing customers fast.

Amazon may not be the most ethical company, but they've never been accused of
short term thinking. It's just completely outside of what if expect from them.

~~~
sharemywin
Amazon is a collection of individuals. It only takes a small number of
employees to circumvent the best protocols.

~~~
deegles
I'm sorry but that's ridiculous to say. If you had enough knowledge about AWS
security practices to assert that, you'd know _not_ to say it.

~~~
sqeaky
What about Amazon, a company, a collection of individuals, makes them better
than other people?

Even groups with extremely stringent security protocols has trouble with
people skirting security procedure. Consider the US Air Force who has control
over a large collection of nuclear weapons. They have some of the most
stringent procedures like Chain of Custody (any time a weapon changes hands a
verified ledger is written to by the recipients and deliverers and sent
elsewhere for archiving and oversight), Two person control (There are always
two people with every weapon and every launch code container) and about a
dozen other extreme procedures they still occasionally "lose" a nuclear
fucking bomb.

The last time they lost one they accidentally left it loaded on an airplane on
a low security runway. Any construction worker (which are always on every
Military base) could have walked up to the plane and hauled off with it.
Thankfully this didn't happen and hopefully runway security would have
intervened, but this goes to show that as long as people are involved there
can and will be mistakes.

To drive this point just a little harder, the Air Force has strong motive to
not lose weapons and Amazon might have financial incentive to look on
occasion.

I re-iterate, what about Amazon, a company, a collection of individuals, makes
them better than other people?

------
ilamont
Wal-mart has expected vendors to bow to its methods and policies for years, no
matter how unreasonable or inconvenient. The carrot dangled in front of
vendors: The possibility of massive nationwide sales.

Now they are dealing with a much more nimble and capable competitor. Yes,
Amazon has its own unreasonable policies that squeeze vendors, but at least
they have reasonable tech in place and they move fast when it comes to support
and service. Case in point: Applying to be a third-party seller on Amazon
takes days, Wal-mart Marketplace takes 6 weeks.

I am not sure if this latest Walmart policy reflects incompetence, misguided
policy, dirty tricks, or a combination of the three, but it serves to push
vendors away from Walmart and into Amazon's tight embrace.

------
nargella
Years ago I read The Wal-Mart Effect. Basically it was a whole slew of
industries that Walmart had dramatically affected. Things like forcing vendors
to manufacture in China and building a crazy infrastructure to get 'fresh'
Salmon imported from Chile.

I got the impression they would turn the screws on industries to get cost
savings via scale. This move seems odd.

~~~
chiph
FastCompany had an article back in 2003 about the Vlasic gallon jar of
pickles. Sales to Walmart quickly eclipsed all their other channels. And then
Walmart said "We want you to lower your price."

> For many suppliers, though, the only thing worse than doing business with
> Wal-Mart may be not doing business with Wal-Mart.

[https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-
know](https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know)

~~~
bookmarkacc
Great article. I wish they supported their thesis that shopping at Walmart is
a self harming cycle that exports jobs. Maybe by focusing on small towns.

------
ajarmst
I know there's some complexity here, but let's just take a minute to marvel at
the phenomena of Walmart complaining about another company's excessive
dominance and potential to apply monopolistic power.

~~~
jessaustin
It is my custom to use Amazon gift certificates at Coinstar machines to
dispose of my extra coins, because in that case the coins are exchanged for
free. (I have many extra coins, since I usually eschew credit cards.)

Wal-mart hosts many Coinstar machines, but I have yet to see one that will
produce Amazon gift certificates. You have to go to Coinstars hosted at
grocery stores for that. So, they have a contract with Coinstar that
specifically mentions which firms may have gift certificates on Coinstar
machines.

Who knows, this may be a boon for the grocery stores?

~~~
jbronn
I think Amazon just stopped its collaboration with Coinstar, as it wasn't an
option at the grocery store (HEB) machine I used last month.

~~~
jessaustin
I guess I haven't changed any coins in the last month, but I just looked at
the Coinstar website listing for the kiosk I usually use, and "Amazon.com" is
still listed as an "eGift" brand.

~~~
dwyerm
Some locations do, and some locations don't. Fortunately, you can check ahead
of time by asking the Coinstar website which locations offer a specific gift
card.

[http://www.coinstar.com/KioskFinder?element=Partner&parmName...](http://www.coinstar.com/KioskFinder?element=Partner&parmName=amazon)

------
tdburn
Amazon does similar practises, like not selling Chromecast/apple TV etc on
their site. Is this instance of AWS blockage a big deal? probably not. I
wonder if it just slows down Walmarts efforts

~~~
Ntrails
Didn't they stop stocking those things because they wouldn't run Amazon Prime
by defaults or something?

~~~
bubblethink
Amazon decided to fork Android, and create fire phone, their own app store,
and a bunch of other attempts at cutting Google out. They decided to not
support other streamers because they again launched their own stick. So
instead of explaining to customers, or dealing with returns, about why they
can't play amazon content on chromecast, they just banned chromecast from the
store. And to emphasize, it's not about not stocking. No third party seller
can sell a chromecast on amazon either. The upshot of that is that when you
search for chromecast on amazon, you see a bunch of knock off results that
look similar to chromecast, but aren't.

~~~
swiley
I'd just like to point out, Amazon forking android is probably a good thing.

You wouldn't be able to run quite a few apps like tinder without google play
if it weren't for what amazon did.

~~~
wibbleywobbley
Oh no, not Tinder! What would we ever do without Tinder?

------
djhworld
> _“It shouldn’t be a big surprise that there are cases in which we’d prefer
> our most sensitive data isn’t sitting on a competitor’s platform,”_

Ok sounds reasonable from an information security standpoint

> _Snowflake Computing Inc., a data-warehousing service, was approached by a
> Wal-Mart client about handling its business from the retailer, Chief
> Executive Bob Muglia said. The catch: Snowflake had to run those services on
> Azure._

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
gadders
Maybe Bob still holds a grudge:

"Some have speculated that Muglia and Ballmer disagree about the development
and future of Microsoft's cloud computing platform, Windows Azure, but no
details are available. So for now, at least, the departure remains somewhat of
a mystery --- as is the blunt way that Ballmer handled it."

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2470214/social-
business...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2470214/social-business/why-
did-microsoft-s-steve-ballmer-publicly-oust-bob-muglia-.html)

~~~
Johnny555
He sure has an unusual way of holding his grudge -- by porting his company's
application to the company he holds the grudge against. With enemies like
that, who needs friends?

------
michaelbuckbee
Interesting that Netflix (biggest competitor to Amazon Prime Video) still is
on AWS. Not sure who is being savvy and who is being short sighted.

~~~
ChrisAntaki
“The best way to express it is that everything you see on Netflix up until the
play button is on AWS, the actual video is delivered through our CDN,” Netflix
spokesperson Joris Evers said.

[http://www.networkworld.com/article/3037428/cloud-
computing/...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/3037428/cloud-
computing/netflix-is-not-really-all-in-on-amazon-s-cloud.html)

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Yes. I'm aware and they do
[https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/) \-
but the point remains that they're both:

1\. Giving their largest competitor money

2\. Relying on them not to peek at their data for competitive advantage.

Which are the items that Walmart has objections with.

~~~
Kocrachon
Is Amazon Video really a competitor? Their prime offering is shit. Hulu, to
me, is a far more viable competitor. Amazon Video is only good for buying or
renting. Their free offerings are terrible.

~~~
j2bax
They've got plenty of great content. A good roster of original shows, lots of
classic and new movies and on and on. The fact that you can rent/buy new
releases before they are typically on Netflix or Hulu, is a major bonus of the
service if you ask me.

~~~
Kocrachon
Maybe its just harder to parse through then. Whenever I go through the prime
videos, I have a hard time finding good content to watch outside of Amazon
created series. Where as with netflix, lots of good new, exclusive stand up
content and newer videos such as disney classics.

Amazon outside of its own created content seems to lack.

~~~
phil21
As far as I'm concerned Netflix and Amazon Video are pretty much
interchangeable except for exclusive content where Netflix wipes the floor
with Amazon.

I've exceedingly rarely been able to find someone on Netflix I wanted to watch
when it was not on Amazon. Amazon actually I'd say is the better experience
for me, since they'll typically have an option to rent/buy content that they
don't have in their unlimited library, where Netflix you're just SoL.

------
retailtech
I work in retailtech and this feeling is very common across retailers.
Everyone feels like amazon is their biggest competitor and they don't want any
of their money going (even indirectly) to amazon. Especially when the
technology in question is supposed to help them compete better against amazon.

~~~
jameskegel
Is "retailtech" a real term now, or is that a typo?

~~~
retailtech
What would it be a typo of?

------
coldcode
I wonder if this is restraint of trade and illegal. It's as if they are
telling retailers they can't sell to Walmart and Target.

~~~
tallanvor
There's nothing that says a company couldn't run their service on both AWS or
another provider as long as they can guarantee that Wal-Mart's confidential
data is not stored on AWS.

Honestly, it's not an unreasonable request from a corporate security
standpoint.

~~~
disiplus
aws does not have access to that data, so it does not make sense. walmart are
trusting third party with that data, but are somehow afraid that amazon would
break in its own system to look at your data, something that would kill aws. i
dont think that data is of that value, if it where it would be inhouse.

~~~
throwaway2048
They most certainly DO have access to that data, its naivety to the point of
farce to suggest they don't.

The real question is do they access it in compromising ways?

------
raverbashing
Walmart is notorious for wanting their suppliers to run the way they want it

Might be cheaper to not sell to them (though revenue might suffer)

------
kennydude
> “Tactics like this are bad for business and customers,”

Because Amazon's tactics aren't bad for business or consumers?

~~~
midnitewarrior
Great source of reviews, incredible convenience, massive selection of goods,
huge value for membership (Amazon Instant Video included), free 2-day
delivery, reasonable pricing, consumer-friendly customer service, yes, it's a
nightmare?

This is one of those things where you are going to have to explain to
consumers why they should be outraged in order for them to realize how awful
it is. By most measures, Amazon is one of the best companies for consumers to
buy from.

~~~
chriswarbo
> huge value for membership (Amazon Instant Video included)

Forcing customers to support their unwanted video service by bundling it with
the next-day shipping service was a completely transparent move, and every
Amazon customer I know a) saw straight through it, b) doesn't use it and c)
would like to stop paying for it.

~~~
vidarh
The vast majority of time we spend watching TV is via a FireTV box, with a
good split between Amazons own video service, the Netflix app (which is very
well integrated - Netflix results show up in the normal FireTV search
results), and the BBC iPlayer app. With the addition of additional "channel"
subscriptions I suspect we'll use it more and more.

~~~
slowmovintarget
Aye. I got Prime when we needed diaper subscriptions.

Later when watching TV on the big screen would keep the little one up, Prime
Video was the only way to watch a lot of things (on the PC).

Want the shipping, want the video.

------
droithomme
Is the use of "vendors" in the title misleading? The title suggests it refers
to people who are supplying WalMart with pickles and paper towels to sell.

But it seems to refer to tech contracting firms who are implementing software
services for WalMart. WalMart is saying they do not want their proprietary
algorithms and information running on servers owned by their main competitor.
That is very reasonable and sensible.

------
opensourcenews
Wal-mart, with a large IT cost center, benefits from a diverse and competitive
cloud infrastructure ecosystem. More at 11.

------
EternalData
This seems more petty than anything. Though it's strange to see just how
complex Amazon has become as a company.

------
Cofike
I don't go to Walmart because of how they treat their employees, the nonsense
they pull with their vendors, and now this.

The thing is that I'm not actually sure if any of the alternatives engage in
this kind of practice as well.

------
Animats
Not product vendors. Vendors offering a service which handles Wal-Mart data.

------
zghst
This is a really bad tactic, even if it's just a rumor, it'd devastating.
Exerting a level of control only breeds contempt, Amazon now has free leeway
to gain more partners and give more AWS credits.

Not to mention Walmart already has a reputation for being the bottom barrel
brand, they can't compete with Amazon on price, Amazon even has leeway to
increase the value of its products and services and say "we're not Walmart".

------
dkarapetyan
This is how you know you've lost. When you are more obsessed with what your
competition is doing than worrying about what you're doing.

~~~
Spivak
Would you be willing to host your critical infrastructure on your direct
competitors platform? Wouldn't you be worried about them pulling the rug out
from under you?

~~~
dkarapetyan
Nope.

------
amatecha
Huh, I feel like this story (and even moreso the comments on this post) are
good reminders not to shop at Wal-Mart, at least for me.

------
petraeus
Americans lol, want a $29 lawnmower and then turn a blind eye to the supply
side of said economics.

------
laurentoget
Being aws only is probably a risky strategy for any Saas vendor anyway so at
least this requirement is forcing vendors to make an investment (porting their
app to gcp or azure) which would make sense anyway.

------
mdasen
It looks like Morningstar has the same article, non-paywalled:
[https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-
jones/retail/TDJNDN_201...](https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-
jones/retail/TDJNDN_201706212496/walmart-to-vendors-get-off-amazons-
cloud.html)

------
losteverything
Walmart finds ways for vendors, suppliers, etc to cut their costs so they can
pass savings on.

Maybe an AWS price increase potential is a risk they dont want to take

------
sharemywin
This reminds me of when pepsi bought (Pizza hut, taco bell, KFC). Still hard
to find pepsi at pizza places and they spun it off in 97'.

------
gtirloni
Non-paywalled article: [http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/06/21/wal-
mart-to-v...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/06/21/wal-mart-to-
vendors-get-off-amazons-cloud.html)

~~~
elevensies
Also [http://archive.is/vJa0u](http://archive.is/vJa0u) [archived copy of the
WSJ article.]

------
mml
strange, but true: bought a tv on amazon, came delivered in a giant sam's club
box. walmart/sam's club are current amazon merchants.

------
anonacct37
Everyone seems overlook one sentence:

> they can't run applications for the retailer

Wal-mart doesn't really want it's data on Amazon servers. Amazon is pretty
aggressive about mining any available data on competitors.

~~~
cxseven
If Amazon mines data from AWS that its customers expect to be private, e.g.
hard drive contents or internal network traffic, that would spell its end.

------
iii_3candles
So the world's biggest capitalist economy is being reduced to two giants
battling each other, after they swallow everyone else.

Amazon buys Comcast. The End.

------
throwitlong
eBay owning Paypal.

Paypal owning lots and lots of revenue data of eBay competitors.

------
nebabyte
Whoever wins (spoilers: Amazon), big business wins! Story of America.

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snarfy
I can't read the article.

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empath75
If libertarians don't realize that the system they're advocating for is
essentially corporate feudalism, they're suckers. I'd rather have a powerful
government accountable to voters than a powerful corporate oligarchy that is
only accountable to shareholders.

~~~
mindcrime
_If libertarians don 't realize that the system they're advocating for is
essentially corporate feudalism, they're suckers_

In a purely Libertarian world, there wouldn't be any corporations, since
corporations are a legal fiction that depend on the State for their existence.

~~~
KirinDave
That's... Not... That's not how human cooperation and society work.

~~~
mindcrime
Sorry, but I really don't know what you're trying to say. Corporations are
actually a violation of the way "normal human cooperation and society" work,
since they break the connection between an activity and liability for that
action.

~~~
KirinDave
I don't agree with your larger point, but I realize I didn't know the specific
definitions and context you were using. I would have written a different
response had we pre-agreed upon terms.

So I agree with your statement here.

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pen2l
> Amazon's rise as the dominant player in renting on-demand, web-based
> computing power and storage has put some competitors, such as Netflix Inc.,
> in the unlikely position of relying on a corporate rival as they move to the
> cloud.

Oh yeah, Netflix is on AWS. Amazon is doing pretty much everything, I
expect/predict in another two years they will launch a music streaming site a
la Google Music/Spotify.

~~~
peteretep
I expect/predict in a couple of years that Netflix will be able to run just
fine on Azure.

~~~
rocgf
Not sure... is this a joke or... ?

~~~
ssharp
I'm assuming Netflix has a pretty detailed contract with Amazon, assuring them
service levels and preventing Amazon from doing anything nefarious. Still, I'm
sure Netflix has contingency plans in place.

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013a
I'm ok with this. I think the fear of important BI data entering a
competitor's platform is real. Yes, its a bit of a tinfoil hat, but if the
cost of using a different platform like Azure or GCP is roughly the same...
I'm fine with it.

Here's an analogy. Let's say Walmart rented out space on their trucks to any
company that needed it. Would Amazon be crazy to tell retailers on their
platform that they can't use Walmart trucks, or they don't want Walmart trucks
driving up to their loading bays? I don't think so. Corporate espionage is a
real thing.

Its just a bonus that Amazon is a garbage company who deserves as little
business as possible.

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perseusprime11
This is stupid! Walmart is loosing it. Generally happens when you are getting
ready to lose, you start becoming erratic. Everybody forgets how WalMart
single handedly destroyed the mom and pop shops of America putting them out of
jobs.

~~~
thrillgore
You're letting personal feelings about Walmart get in the way of rational
thought.

Remember: If not them, Amazon certainly would have done the same.

~~~
perseusprime11
I agree. Amazon would do the same. I am responding to all the articles that
are sympathetic to Wal-Mart.

~~~
remotehack
Emotions aside, it's hard to deny facts:

"Walmart employs an astounding 2.1 million people. In the United States alone,
the company employs 1.4 million people. This is a staggering 1% of the U.S.'s
140 million working population."

~~~
perseusprime11
Those jobs are not well paid compared to small businesses that used to thrive
in local communities.

