
Amazon sues Alexaholic, everyone loses - pg
http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=350
======
pg
You know, there's something about Amazon. I keep noticing things that are just
a little off, morally. First it was the one-click patent. Then I learned that
their employment agreement forbids you from starting a startup with anyone
else who has worked at Amazon, even if you didn't know them. (Don't worry,
they'd never dare enforce it.) And now they sue someone simply for making a
better UI to their lame site. There's starting to be a pattern.

If Alexa had a decent UI, Statsaholic wouldn't be a threat. Instead of suing
this guy for doing their own job properly, they should just fix Alexa.

~~~
brett
It seems pretty clear that you're right. What makes it hard to stomach though
is that they're seriously on to something with S3 and EC2. Moral issues aside,
should developers be wary of the poison spreading to the web services division
that they've built their startups around?

It would make me feel better if the other shoe dropped and some other huge
company released some competition for S3 and EC2 (I'm looking at you Google).
That would provide some competitive protection from them screwing people over
and another viable option. I would hope for a startup to fill the void, but
this seems like as good a candidate as any for the type of problem where the
big guys have some advantage.

~~~
jey
_It would make me feel better if the other shoe dropped and some other huge
company released some competition for S3 and EC2 (I'm looking at you Google)._

Sun has something similar to EC2 called "Sun Grid Compute Utility":
<http://sun.com/sungrid/>

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mattjaynes
It's funny that so many big companies let their ego get in the way of good
business.

I imagine that this lawsuit and loss of community good-will will cost them
millions of dollars. Uh, millions of dollars that they could have used to just
acquire Alexaholic. They would have gained good-will, great press, and a great
developer already passionate about their product.

What a huge blunder - sad to see, especially since they're so innovative in
other areas.

~~~
andreyf
It's hard to fire workaholic lawyers, and once you've hired them, they'll find
people to sue, with or without good reason. Could the moral of the story be:
don't hire in-house lawyers if you can, and make sure someone PR-competent
holds a big stick over their heads if you do.

~~~
Benja
What I'd like to see is companies hiring lawyers who spend their surplus time
blogging. Being involved in the community should prevent them from being as
seriously out of tune as this, and if they spend some of their time explaining
tech law to the unenlightened (like me), that'll reflect back on the company.

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mattmaroon
Seems like they should have just hired the guy.

