
Amazon May Have Misled Congress, House Judiciary Chair Says - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/amazon-may-have-misled-congress-house-judiciary-chair-says
======
dang
Massive related thread from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22956182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22956182)

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crazygringo
> _“We strictly prohibit employees from using non-public, seller-specific data
> to determine which private label products to launch,” a company spokesperson
> said in a statement._

So employees can use non-public, aggregate seller data? Or non-public
manufacturer data?

Yeah. The "seller-specific" part makes the statement meaningless.

~~~
huy-nguyen
The distinction between aggregated and non-aggregated data is moot. From the
WSJ article:

> Some executives had access to data containing proprietary information that
> they used to research bestselling items they might want to compete against,
> including on individual sellers on Amazon’s website. If access was
> restricted, managers sometimes would ask an Amazon business analyst to
> create reports featuring the information, according to former workers,
> including one who called the practice “going over the fence.” In other
> cases, supposedly aggregated data was derived exclusively or almost entirely
> from one seller, former employees said.

> Amazon draws a distinction between the data of an individual third-party
> seller and what it calls aggregated data, which it defines as the data of
> products with two or more sellers. Because of the size of Amazon’s
> marketplace, most products have many sellers. Viewing the data of a product
> with a number of sellers wouldn’t give it insight into proprietary seller
> information because the figures would show lots of different seller
> behavior.

> Amazon said that if there is only one seller of an item, and Amazon is
> selling returned or damaged versions of that item through its Amazon
> Warehouse Deals clearance account, Amazon considers that “aggregate”
> data—and hence is permissible for its employees to review.

~~~
thoraway1010
It's not moot at all.

Uber employees (and some cities) can get access to aggregated data showing
where uber is driving.

The same employees should not be able to have access to where YOU are driving
(rider specific).

This is particularly key for sellers with a unique product. Chairs are selling
well? No problem. But detailed transaction detail for a specific seller and
product and their decisions there - a problem.

~~~
xoa
If I'm not misinterpreting, the post you're replying to wasn't claiming that a
general aggregation in principle was the same as individualized statistics,
but rather saying that Amazon's definition of "aggregation" effectively mooted
the normal argument for it. In particular that last bit, where Amazon would
count it as "aggregated" even if the only "other seller" were _Amazon
themselves_ in the form of reselling returned/damaged/refurbed goods. In
practice that would probably be pretty close to having individualized analysis
generally available, if not identical (because employees could separately get
Amazon Warehouse Deals alone, since that's "in house", and then simply delete
it from the "aggregated" sales and have both).

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LatteLazy
If your product is actually new, patent it. If its actually better quality,
trade mark it. If its that complicated to make, use trade secrets.

But if its not, you don't get to own the market just because you got there
first. Otherwise the only cars allowed would be Ford and we'd all be eating
hydrox cookies and wearing Wellington boots.

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

Yes, your landlord owns the building you live in, but they promise not to go
through your door as long as you pay rent. Similarly, yes, Amazon owns the
platform you sell stuff on, but they publicly promise not to use your sales
against you. It's not fair competition if one of your competitors can view all
of your sales and related metadata while you can't view any of theirs.

~~~
LatteLazy
>It's not fair competition if one of your competitors can view all of your
sales and related metadata while you can't view any of theirs.

Why not?

I can get a pretty good idea of my competitors sales figures just by reading
their accounts if they are public companies. I can get a good estimate of the
sales if they use amazon by using reviews as a proxy for sales numbers. Amazon
are doing nothing that retailers have not done for 100s of years. Walmart were
pulling the same thing when amazing was a twinkle in Jeff B's eye.

Also, sorry to be a dick but... "fair" is a very hard arguement for you to
make.

Fair is entirely subjective. And fair isn't actually what markets are about
(markets are meant to be efficient companies are meant to be profitable,
industries are meant to be productive). If you think this behaviour is a bad
thing, you sort of have to explain why it's harming innovation or making
markets inefficient or some other way it hurts consumers. Companies aren't
people, and even people don't have to be "fair"...

Personally, as I said above, companies already have a lot (maybe too much)
control of interlectual property. If you are inovating, you have nothing to
fear from people copying you. If you're not inovating then you don't get a
monopoly just because you really really like making easy profits and gouging
consumers.

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ABeeSea
You’re telling me employees who are compensated based on relative performance
and have access to a massive central data warehouse wrote queries that went
against something buried in a policy document? Shocked, shocked I say.

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youeseh
Are anti-trust laws strong enough / enforced to prevent market operators from
competing with vendors?

Why should Amazon be penalized when Costco, Target, Safeway etc.. get a pass?

~~~
cwhiz
People in the US seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding on what
constitutes a monopoly. I have seen numerous people say that Apple is a
monopoly despite having less than 20% market share.

Amazon isn't anywhere near a monopoly. There are many HUGE competitors in the
retail and online retail space. Walmart, Costco, Shopify, Target, Best Buy,
Newegg, Home Depot, Lowes, Macy's, Staples, Alibaba, CVS, and dozens more.

~~~
basch
The argument isnt that they are a monopoly, its that they are either violating
antitrust law, or antitrust law is currently unsuited to handle what amazon is
doing. People just mistakenly use the word monopoly to mean antitrust or
anticompetitive. It's also less about amazon just being an ecommerce box
store, and more about having captured aspects of horizontal and vertical
integration across many markets.

[https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-
parado...](https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox)

>Amazon is the titan of twenty-first century commerce. In addition to being a
retailer, it is now a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a
payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a
producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer,
and a leading host of cloud server space.

Amazon is Microsoft, Sony, Visa, Fedex/UPS, Disney, GAP, and Walmart rolled
into one.

~~~
cwhiz
Amazon isn’t even as large as Microsoft. What an absurd statement.

~~~
basch
The comparison was by product offering, not market cap.

~~~
cwhiz
The fact that they are ankle deep in many different industries doesn't help
your antitrust argument. They aren't dominant in any single industry they are
in.

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mikejulietbravo
It's ridiculous to me that the assumption would ever be that a company would
not exploit data it has. Oh, there's clearly a market for this product, we
know its price, and we know all of the competitors' pricing?

It could be an argument that you should not be able to operate as a
marketplace and a producer of the goods your marketplace enables buying and
selling of, but this would mess with a lot of things - particularly in tech.

~~~
Nasrudith
I see a lot of furious arguing and talking points about domains as "should be
separate" but no real answers as to what harm it would prevent or even
precedents of it ever working "the way it should". It seems more like a
religious dogma at this point than anything as instead of answers or logic you
just get increasingly furious repeated assertions.

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cactus2093
I have a really hard time understanding what the problem is, even if Amazon is
prioritizing themselves over the sellers.

Who are the losers? Is it the brands & manufacturers that are losing sales to
Amazon Basics brand items? I don't really see how this is different than the
way any type of commerce works. If their brand is not differentiated and
valuable to people, it won't outsell competitors. For brands that are
differentiated, it doesn't seem like a problem at all. I can still easily buy
an iPad or Surface Pro on Amazon even though they constantly promote their
Fire Tablets to me.

Where I get the most value from Amazon Basics is for things like usb cables or
batteries - undifferentiated products where the brand is meaningless because
there are a dozen versions of the same cheap crap labeled under different
brand names. I really, really don't care if some of those brands go out of
business.

Is it a slippery slope argument? What if Amazon eventually stops just putting
the Fire Tablet banner at the top but stops showing any iPads altogether, and
I can only buy the Fire tablet? I don't really care about that either, I would
buy it from a different retailer.

Is the argument that it hurts the middlemen suppliers of these other brands?
In the last 5 or 10 years, there has apparently been a big market that has
developed for people to drive around to big box stores and buy stuff to resell
on Amazon. It's hard to argue that these business are anything other than
workarounds for inefficient distribution, I don't really care if the
underlying distribution is improved and they're no longer necessary.

Basically, what is even one practical thing I should care about with regards
to this issue?

~~~
feyman_r
>>> Basically, what is even one practical thing I should care about with
regards to this issue? >>> I really, really don't care if some of those brands
go out of business.

There is an immediate positive impact to the consumer, that you're getting a
good, cheap thing possible from a well-known brand on their own site - Amazon.
However, there are second-order effects to this.

How did those dozen-version-products actually come into being? Amazon didn't
discover in the beginning that, usb cables were high-demand products. Those
no-name-brands 'seeded' that idea. Amazon noticed that there was demand _and_
supply for something that they could easily scale; they discovered it without
being in the usb-cable-selling-business. Going forward, those no-name-brands
could either:

\- not risk coming up with such products (dont think this will happen, but bad
for consumer) \- move away from Amazon (they could, but at a huge loss of
eyeballs) \- continue operating at lower margins by making cheaper products
(bad for consumer) \- compete amongst themselves for being the Amazon producer
for rebranded product. (all your products are now mine)

>>> but stops showing any iPads altogether, and I can only buy the Fire
tablet? I don't really care about that either, I would buy it from a different
retailer.

You are comparing 2 known big giants (Amazon, Apple) in your example. What if
it was an unknown company that didn't have the budget to get ad space on your
Search results for 'best tablet'. (reviewers would look at amazon for 'best
tablets', those perpetuating the best-tablet-cycle)?

I guess my point is - if a single company 'runs' a marketplace, and wants to
win top products on it as well, its not a marketplace, its a casino from the
sellers POV - the house always wins. The game is skewed.

You, as, the consumer (and spectator in the casino), will, I guess, win?

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cies
> May have misled

...and sure have plausible deniability set up!

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sneak
Surely this will begin a criminal investigation into the richest man in the
world, the US being a country with equal application of the laws to all.

People in sports that compete at a high level are shamed and ridiculed for
being unsporting. There is no honor in winning at all costs; glory only comes
from winning a fair fight. Not so when it comes to business pursuits! Many of
the largest companies actively engage in anticompetetive behaviors, trying to
engineer the most unfair fight possible, as if their additional billions are
at that point in any way an accolade or achievement. Is it simple unrestrained
greed and lust for power that makes them seek an unfair fight? This isn't
rhetoric, I'm actually asking this question and would like answers.

This is a mentality and mindset that I think I may never understand.

Why cheat when you can compete directly, and actually be proud of your
accomplishments?

