
What Happens After Amazon’s Domination Is Complete? Its Bookstore Offers Clues - rmason
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/technology/amazon-domination-bookstore-books.html
======
egypturnash
Shit, Amazon’s already doing this with other stuff. They have a giant
counterfeiting problem across the board, and internal systems that only make
it worse by fulfilling an order from one vendor with stock from a different
one if that happens to be closer to the customer.

I first started hearing about it around the 2017 eclipse, when people ordering
glasses designed to let you safely stare into the sun got fakes that wouldn’t
do the job properly, but it seemed to already be pretty widespread by now.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-
to-p...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-protect-
your-family-from-dangerous-fakes-on-amazon-this-holiday-season/#31bab2217cf1)

~~~
foobarbecue
The counterfeit climbing gear with fake safety logos in particular bothers
me...

~~~
FrojoS
That sounds extremely terrifying. Got a source, please?

A quick search resulted only in less safety critical gear like maps, clothing
etc.. Not saying that this isn't dangerous, too, but are their fake
carabiners, ropes and helmets?

~~~
foobarbecue
[https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/online_budget_g...](https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/online_budget_gear_-
_the_perils_of_the_bargain_buy-11904)

Which talks about fake safety logos and
[https://www.outsideonline.com/2073311/dangerous-climbing-
har...](https://www.outsideonline.com/2073311/dangerous-climbing-harnesses-
being-sold-ebay) which is about eBay rather than Amazon. My personal
experience is that Amazon suggests obviously sketchy, NON-UIAA / CE gear
rather than established brands. I've bought a lot of caving, climbing, and
mountaineering equipment on Amazon and haven't had a problem yet buying Petzl,
Elderid, BD etc.

------
vxNsr
I think it's very simple, amazon and all such stores should be held liable for
the fraud and lost business as if they themselves created the counterfeit
goods. macys wouldn't be given a free pass if it sold counterfeit nikes in
their B&M store. so why does amazon get one, they take a 15% cut just like
macys does.

~~~
whack
It is very hard to eliminate false-positives without introducing a raft of
false-negatives as well. If you held Amazon liable for anything bad a 3rd
party merchant ever does, they will react by clamping down on all unverified
merchants, and a lot of small/medium businesses will find themselves caught in
the crossfire. Especially those who don't fall under the umbrella of Amazon's
good graces. Is that really what you want?

More generally speaking, do we believe there's any value in having open
platforms with platform-owners who aren't trying to police every single actor
using the platform? There have certainly been many politicians who wanted to
regulate the internet as a whole, similar to how you've asked for Amazon to be
regulated. Would society be better off if ISPs were held liable for any
fraud/unlawful behavior that happens on their networks, and were expected to
police all internet traffic they were routing?

~~~
wukerplank
> Would society be better off if ISPs were held liable for any fraud/unlawful
> behavior

Not a good analogy, ISPs are dumb pipes. Amazon boosts and profits from bad
actors. None of them would have a chance to get the reach Amazon provides
them. Of course Amazon should be held accountable. I don't buy the "open
platform" angle when it comes to FB, Google, etc.

~~~
noego
Sure, but we're talking about directional shifts. Do you want Amazon to move
in the direction of being a laissez faire platform that is open to everyone?
Or do you want it to move in the direction of being a tightly controlled
ecosystem where all merchants are at the whims of Amazon's corporate
overlords? Your suggestion would move Amazon towards the latter

~~~
wukerplank
> where all merchants are at the whims of Amazon's corporate overlords

Very dramatic. If you don't want to be subject to Amazon, run your own shop.
It's easier than ever before. I really don't understand how counter-fitters
should be under any kind of protection by Amazon. And why Amazon should not be
held to a standard that does not make them accomplices to black sheep.

------
blunte
If you have a brick and mortar store and you repeatedly sell counterfeit
goods, you'll be repeatedly raided and probably shut down by some authority.

It's strange (ok, not really, and not surprising) that one of the biggest,
richest, smartest companies is given a pass on following the same rules that
little people have to follow.

Amazon has no legitimate excuse, period. And if Bezos is the high performing
micromanager that we've read about, then it's a certainty that he knows that
they are flagrantly selling (or facilitating the sale of) counterfeit goods.

Let's put this a different way: If some of the products on Amazon were known
to be hollow shells filled with drugs, you can bet that Amazon would suddenly
become capable of identifying and preventing the sale of illegal products.

~~~
wool_gather
> drugs, you can bet that Amazon would suddenly become capable of identifying
> and preventing the sale of illegal products.

Although they probably still wouldn't face any legal liability, going back to
your parenthetical comment "not surprising".

------
proxygeek
Honest question: With so many alternatives to Amazon (direct brand retail,
Walmart, Target, regional competitors) probably offering lesser fake products
and still failing, doesn't it mean that the overall consumer base is not as
concerned about the fake product issue?

It could be because:

1) Fake product issue is not as widespread (per user, seller or per
transaction)

2) Fake product cases are usually resolved in a satisfactory enough way to
dissuade the consumer/seller from seeking alternatives

3) The annoyance of getting a fake product is outweighed by other conveniences
offered

If any of the above is true, well, there is not a real problem for Amazon to
address.

Of course, the assumption is that there are theoretical alternatives to Amazon
for getting stuff you need, minus the convenience perhaps, but with higher
degree of trust in product quality.

~~~
bitexploder
I suspect a lot of people just have no idea they received a fake item.

~~~
ptah
this! 100 times this! In a totally unregulated market consumers have very
little access to information to make a proper decision. some markets should
not be free EDIT: alternative is to limit size of companies so there is proper
competition

~~~
davidgrenier
If the consumer has no idea it received a fake product how is the proper
decision not getting the cheaper conterfeit?

~~~
lkbm
I commented something similar on an article here about a year ago, and people
had some good points[0]:

> Heavy metal poisoning may take years to show effects.

> Shoddily made laptop chargers may be a fire/shock hazard that kill in
> 100/1,000,000 instead of 1/1,000,000 cases.

> Not every dangerous counterfeit is immediately obvious as such.

> If you're slathering it all over your body but you have no idea where or how
> it was made, do you suppose that you might suffer from deferred regret at
> some point in the future?

So, yeah, if the counterfeit is just as good, then fantastic. If it's not,
that's a problem. If it's not in a non-obvious way that affects health or
safety, that's a big problem.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17526538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17526538)

------
kgwxd
Maybe a good indicator for other IP/copyright centric business models. Where
"product", a.k.a. data, is artificially made hard to access. That is going to
die as a business model at some point, including for Amazon, and that day
can't come soon enough. If you're heart is still in that business, you had
better enjoy lobbying, because that's your purpose, and you better not care
about improving society, because you're not making the world a better place
when you succeed.

I don't think books are a good indicator of what will befall real products.
There's no doubt Amazon is causing major pains in that area, but I don't think
they'll ever "complete" that domination.

~~~
SquishyPanda23
> Where "product", a.k.a. data, is artificially made hard to access. That is
> going to die as a business model at some point

I actually see a different future. Artificial scarcity becomes easier with
improvements to cryptography. I think the future is full of artificially
scarce goods, such as music, video, crypto kitties, etc.

~~~
jbay808
Cory Doctorow argues that you can't encrypt people's media and also hand them
the decryption keys they need in order to consume it, and not expect those
decryption keys to leak.

[https://corydoctorow.miraheze.org/wiki/DRM_and_MSFT:_A_Produ...](https://corydoctorow.miraheze.org/wiki/DRM_and_MSFT:_A_Product_No_Customer_Wants#DRM_systems_don.27t_work)

~~~
the_pwner224
This is only possible if the user can examine what their computers are doing.
These days we have restricted boot ("secure boot") and "trusted platform
modules" (which can be used for good though) that allow computers to do
decryption without the user being able to see it.

For example my Galaxy S9 phone has a locked bootloader. It only boots software
signed by Samsung's private key. Google makes DRM software, Netflix and co.
sign on, Samsung puts the DRM in their phones because they're useless without
Netflix.

The only way to find out how to decrypt the video is to crack the hardware.
And some companies might make shitty hardware, but Apple has shown that it's
very possible to make a locked down device that takes millions+ of dollars to
hack.

Intel iirc had special paths in their processors for video DRM. Google's
Widewine DRM is available in all the major browsers. MS has been pushing
restricted boot for a while. All that's left is for them to make it mandatory.

Of course none of this matters because you can just record the screen or the
speakers... If you're serving content into Bob's eyes or ears then he can use
fake eyes or ears to record it.

~~~
vnorilo
There's also the analog loopback, which for audio, has way less signal
degradation than the compression consumers readily accept. For video, they
already tried to restrict any analog outputs with DRM, but for audio, that
would hurt much more.

~~~
isostatic
Give it 30 years - iphones done have 3.5mm jacks any more, apple have patents
on shutting down cameras with certain invisible patterns on a screen

~~~
vnorilo
Presumably the people who siphon media out from a walled garden on a large
scale wouldn't do it on mobile, but given your timeframe of 30 years, who
knows if we even have general purpose computers then.

------
TheRealPomax
tl;dr: because they've already won, Amazon has zero reason (financial or
moral) to fight counterfeit products. Nothing the consumer says or does can
meaningfully impact Amazon's bottom line, and no regulation exists (nor is
likely to exist in the future) to force them to "fix their shit".

Unlike banks, Amazon is now simply too big to fail.

(Because unlike banks, Amazon has a million and one services that all more
than compensate for each other. Amazon, the website, is barely a fraction of
Amazon, the corporation)

~~~
whyenot
> Unlike banks, Amazon is now simply too big to fail.

A generation ago, you could have said that about Microsoft. Somebody can
indeed force them to "fix their shit" \-- government. ...and they will. You
can already see some ripples on the pond. Watch out, though, because the
government can have a heavy hand and often the cure is worse than the disease.

~~~
marcosdumay
Well, wake me up when Microsoft get to fix their shit.

~~~
vnorilo
You may not like MS products, but I think their capability to seek rent is
much, much lower than the antitrust days. The story looks like the competition
did it instead of regulation, but who knows if an undeterred, ruthless
Microsoft would have fought back better and dirtier.

~~~
marcosdumay
> their capability to seek rent is much, much lower than the antitrust days

Well, I do agree with that, with two large caveats:

\- their capability to seek rent is still enormous, they are still one of the
most powerful companies in the world on that;

\- and I have no idea how much of that loss comes from government intervention
and competition, instead of previous bad management.

------
ceejayoz
> An Amazon spokeswoman denied that counterfeiting of books was a problem,
> saying, “This report cites a handful of complaints, but even a handful is
> too many and we will keep working until it’s zero.” The company said it
> strictly prohibited counterfeit products and last year denied accounts to
> more than one million suspected “bad actors.”

If it were just a handful of cases, you wouldn't have a million "bad actors"
getting caught. You'd have a handful. A million people a year aren't trying
this because it's _un_ profitable.

~~~
foota
I believe they're saying there were a handful of cases where they didn't catch
it.

~~~
ceejayoz
Sure, and I'm saying that doesn't pass the smell test.

A million accounts a year being banned means folks are seeing all that trouble
(it's not anywhere near as easy a process as just signing up for a consumer
Amazon account) as worthwhile.

~~~
ses1984
A million accounts can be made by a handful of bad actors.

~~~
mcv
Maybe Amazon should know more about who their sellers actually are.

------
bfdm
Honestly I don't understand why this is so hard to solve, unless amazon is
willfully ignoring it.

If the item is shipped by a third party directly, tracing the counterfeit
origin is easy.

It's the comingling at the Amazon fulfillment centers that muddies the water.
However, why not just tag each individual item with the supplying vendor as it
arrives? You must of course credit them with stock, so just assign a code for
that unit or box or pallet connected to that seller. They can still cross-
fulfill (though I don't think they should) and record the origin code with
each order as it's packed. Don't tell me this is too complicated for Amazon.
It's an extra code like a second SKU per item, not conceptually challenging.
Of course there are process issues to solve, but this should be a huge
internal priority for Amazon. I see it as a weak spot that leaves room for a
competitor to do better.

Of course identifying fakes is still a challenge, manufacturers have long had
systems for verifying authentic units. If a $20 webcam has a unique serial
number I don't see why we couldn't have one for an $80 board game.

~~~
secabeen
They do already offer this, but it's not free, and you have to re-label each
item with your barcode, and cover up any UPC codes, if possible.

The base problem is that UPC. Amazon wants to use it to identify everything,
as it's already there, and easy to use. However, it's also easy to counterfeit
along with the item.

It would also be a significant technical challenge, as it would increase the
size of Amazon's item database by at least an order of magnitude, and would
increase the amount of unique bins they need to maintain in the warehouse by a
lot too.

They clearly need to do something, but understand why they don't want to go
down the road of tagging per-vendor if they can avoid it. On more expensive
items, they seem to be trying the alternative of allowing vendors that control
their supply chains to also exercise control of the amazon supply chain. It's
starting to hit for more prominent vendors. I can no longer sell used Canon
lenses on Amazon anymore. To do so, I need approval, which consists of "At
least 1 purchase invoice for products from a manufacturer or distributor, 1
letter from Canon authorizing you to sell their products". (Note, this is for
selling used gear, not new, or like-new. Just normal, used camera lenses that
I bought and no longer need.)

------
joering2
Slightly OT but I just won a bet with a buddy of mine who works at Wholefoods.
Somewhat knowing Amazon for huge variety of products, he assumed Amazon will
even add more products to Wholefoods palette. I told him to the contrary -
Amazon is a hard core analytics company with simple website [todays standards]
and incredibly rich physical delivery network. We bet $100. Yesterday I
visited him at work. Year later Amazon hs cut off its 365 brand of awesome
organic stuff unique to Wholefoods and is on plan to cut 20% more products
according to internal email he received. Whatever didn’t hit “moving average”
high enough is getting sliced - no more 25 types of meat, just one vacuum
packed not even prepared at Wholefoods. Amazon is on its path to destroy the
brand. Soon there won’t be anything there that you canmt buy at Wallmart at
10% discount. / rant

~~~
p1necone
You can please 80% of customers with 20% of products, but that 20% is
different for every customer.

~~~
SeanBoocock
Sure but there is always a tension between being able to address as much of
the potential customer base as possible and profitability. On one end of the
spectrum you have grocers like Aldi or Lidl that have slashed prices and
margins by reducing SKUs (among other cost saving measures). Whole Foods
probably has some room to shed unprofitable inventory so long as it preserves
its upscale, ecologically conscious brand.

------
nazgulnarsil
I'm confused how there isn't a huge opportunity for an online dept store with
100% vetted goods here. Does such a thing exist? If not why not? If so how can
one find it? What keywords point to it? They win if they can get that keyword
into the minds of the general public.

~~~
bm98
Walmart. I've been Amazon Prime for years, but whenever I need to buy
something with a high risk of being counterfeit (printer ink is the most
common one for me), I use Walmart - and it's free shipping from them anyway.
Really the only difference is that Amazon usually gets it to my door faster.

~~~
didibus
I don't know the details, but Walmart is also moving towards more of being an
online marketplace:
[https://marketplace.walmart.com/](https://marketplace.walmart.com/)

Is the inventory commingled, are the sellers better vetted, is it obvious that
you are buying from a 3rd party and not Walmart, all that I don't know. Just
pointing this out.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Target.com is okay for now, but supposedly they are going to start going that
way also. These days, I look to purchase on the official brand’s website
first, or whichever seller they link to on the brand’s website.

------
kerkeslager
Yet another problem that hasn't been solved by letting companies run
unregulated to do whatever is most profitable. What a surprise!

~~~
roenxi
Your point stands regardless, but Amazon famously _doesn 't_ do what is most
profitable. Their profits as a business (ignoring AWS) are woeful.

~~~
kerkeslager
That seems like a fairly short-sighted view. Much of Amazon's strategy seems
to be giving up short term profit to establish a monopoly for much larger
long-term profit. They aren't perfect, and have certainly made some
unprofitable decisions over the years, but I think that their overall strategy
is VERY profitable, even if it hasn't yet yielded all the profits it is going
to.

~~~
roenxi
Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994. They have yet to produce an impressive
profit margin (outside web services which isn't really relevant to this
specific thread). How long sighted are we talking here?

The raw numbers are impressive, but they clearly aren't in the game of profit
maximisation as we knew it back in the 80s. That is why nobody is really
managing to compete with them.

I don't really see how they could maintain a monopoly and a margin at the same
time. If they had actual profit margins then other companies would compete
with them. The reason they look like a monopoly at the moment is because they
have no margins. If they change that, competition will spring up like
mushrooms.

Amazon is basically a web services provider by profit. All the other stuff
they do is a mysterious distraction. If you want a company making for-profit
decisions, look at how Apple runs itself.

~~~
kerkeslager
> How long sighted are we talking here?

As long as it takes to get the monopoly.

This can't be rushed. Their competition is from i.e. Walmart. These
competitors are big and a single major event isn't going to take them down. It
requires a series of major events for a company of that size to fall out of
serious competition. But it does happen: look at Sears. It took almost three
decades, starting with a pricing scandal in 1992 to declaring bankruptcy in
2018, with many mis-steps along the way, but they did eventually fall.

> I don't really see how they could maintain a monopoly and a margin at the
> same time. If they had actual profit margins then other companies would
> compete with them.

By that logic, monopolies can't be profitable, but they clearly are
profitable, so your logic must be faulty.

Once a company reaches a certain scale, it becomes very difficult to start a
competing company for a bunch of reasons:

1\. First to market advantage: name recognition. Amazon is a household name. A
new company isn't. A new company could overcome this with marketing, but
marketing costs money, and then they have to pass that cost on to consumers,
and Amazon will win on price.

2\. First to market advantage: pre-existing infrastructure. Amazon has
warehouses everywhere, so they can deliver to most places quickly. In places
like NYC or SF they can deliver something from a few miles away, so they can
deliver it on the same day. They have already spent this money, so they can
provide this speed at a lower cost. A new company could overcome this by
building out their own infrastructure, but this costs money which they have to
pass on to consumers, and again Amazon wins on price.

3\. Efficiencies of scale: Amazon is already huge. If it costs them $10 to
write a line of code or lay a brick, that cost is amortized across millions of
purchases that occur each day. A new company has to write the same line of
code and lay the same brick to provide the same feature or distribution
center, but that cost is amortized across only a few hundred purchases a day
when they're new.

There are more reasons, but basically, Amazon is well past the point where new
companies could pop up and reasonably compete with them based on profit
margins alone. They still have competition, but it's from the likes of Walmart
--other giant companies that already have some of the same advantages Amazon
does. It would be possible for a newcomer to compete, but it would require an
extraordinary innovation which is highly unlikely.

> The reason they look like a monopoly at the moment is because they have no
> margins. If they change that, competition will spring up like mushrooms.

They don't look like a monopoly because they aren't yet. They have major
competition with, for example, Walmart.

~~~
roenxi
> As long as it takes to get the monopoly.

They aren't going to get a monopoly. They are operating in a market that is
famously cut-throat and competitive that any motivated person can succeed in
by cutting prices far enough.

> By that logic, monopolies can't be profitable, but they clearly are
> profitable, so your logic must be faulty.

My logic is fine. They are a middleman in a free market - monopoly is
practically impossible. I don't see what is stopping anyone, including myself,
jumping in to the same market as Amazon except for the fact there is no margin
to be made because Amazon is the cheapest provider.

Monopoly (funny to say) isn't a reflection of number of providers in a market
even though that is the outcome. Monopoly captures the idea of how easy it is
for new entrants to move in to a market. Building a new company isn't easy,
but it isn't especially hard.

> Once a company reaches a certain scale, it becomes very difficult to start a
> competing ...

These points are all off topic for monopolies. Having economies of scale
(which is what you list) gives competitive advantages but it isn't going to
let Amazon take the market somewhere it doesn't want to go. If Amazon isn't
fulfilling a need, someone else will. If Amazon is fulfilling the need at a
low price, they aren't an abusive monopoly they are a success story we are all
grateful for. 'Monopolies' that brutally suppress the price of goods for
decades on end are a good outcome. More to the point, they aren't monopolies,
they are just effective competitors - because as you point out a monopoly
should be profitable.

Amazon isn't in a market where it is possible to build a monopoly, and if they
do the government can squelch it when they get there. And making sane
decisions to build a competitive advantage at scale isn't monopolistic, it is
an encouraged feature of most serious companies.

------
__MatrixMan__
Plot twist: the publisher is selling the counterfeits too. Why sell one good
book when you can sell one bad one through Amazon and _then_ one good one
directly from your site?

Ok, probably not, but if we're talking about the dystopian end state of a
system where the middlemen have gotten out of control then maybe we should
look out for things like that.

In _Anathem_ (a sci-fi novel) Stephenson describes a future where for every
authentic version of a document on the net there are millions of fake ones--
bogons, they call them. The history of how the bogons (and the defence system
that successfully ignores them most of the time) is somewhat left to the
imagination, but I imagined it like this:

\- Content creators set up special channels where they can get paid for access
to the content.

\- Parasites infiltrate the channels and resell access the content,
undercutting the Creators.

\- The Creators ban the Parasites from the channels, so they can't make copies
of the content.

\- The Parasites re-infiltrate without much delay.

\- The Creators stop banning the Parasites, and instead--after identifying
them--serve them slightly degraded content, so rather than having to compete
with themselves, the Creators now compete with a slightly shittier version of
themselves. They hope the Parasites don't notice the content degradation.

\- The Parasites notice the degradation and get new identities, and continue
reselling the original content.

\- There arms race between these parties produces better and better fakes, to
the point where there's so much fake news (or whatever content) that the only
way to verify its authenticity is to re-do the journalism yourself to see what
you find.

In my version, the Creators win by establishing an economy of trust (part PGP,
part cryptocurrency) where being a parasite is less profitable than either
making good content or helping distribute good content (in a way that benefits
the creator and gives the consumer reason to believe that they're not being
lied to).

I'm not sure if I think this will actually happen, but if it does then we'll
have to go through the pre-web-of-trust darkness (where the light of truth is
occluded by bogons) before things are reliably authentic again.

------
mysterypie
It sounds like there are a million deceived customers and cheated small
businesses, but no individual customer or small business can take on Amazon.
How about a kickstarter or other crowdfunding plan to raise money from
everyone who's suffered due to Amazon's apparent tolerance of counterfeits?
I.e., if you received a counterfeit product, or if your product or book was
counterfeited and sold on Amazon (like the Antimicrobial Therapy handbook)?

The kickstarter plan would be to either sue Amazon as class, or sue based on
the best individual cases in all available jurisdictions, or failing all of
that, to lobby the government to bring Amazon under control. Assuming it got
enough funding, is there any chance that the lawsuits or lobbying would work?

~~~
ilikepi
Well, I think lawyers in class action suits typically work on contingency, so
there wouldn't be any up-front cost to suing, and they would just take a big
chunk of the settlement or judgement instead as a fee.

However, as is the trend nowadays, Amazon's Conditions of Use[1] include an
arbitration clause, so that will probably make it rather difficult to bring a
suit anyway.

EDIT: clarification

[1]:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201909000)

~~~
swift532
It's such bullshit that they can do that, especially as they're so dominant.

------
Uptrenda
Unfortunately, I only see a way to solve this for fungible goods where you
would still need to get every actor involved in the supply chain to upgrade to
the same secure tracking solution. It could be done in theory with crypto and
tamper-proof packaging, but overcoming the network effect of today's archaic
supply chains would be a huge undertaking.

The article points out how sellers are creating unique, non-fungible goods. So
how does a customer even initially know that they're discovering 'the
original' and not something that has been re-branded? With a Lamborghini, re-
naming the car to another brand isn't a problem since the customer won't find
it (and a supply chain integrity solution might work.) But how would you solve
the Amazon problem?

I suppose you could have a time-locked escrow account where sale funds had to
be locked there for N days. That way there would be time to challenge
counterfeit sales and re-distribute the funds to the original authors (and /
or make customers whole) when fraud was detected. But I am pretty sure people
would hate that. Everyone would have to agree to use it for it to work and it
wouldn't stop the potential for brand damage from low-quality counterfeits.

If it were a short enough time-lock though, it might work? High enough that it
removes the incentive for fraud, low enough that it doesn't frustrate vendors.

------
saadalem
Also Amazon is increasingly painful to use. It's a good time to start the new
product search engine.

~~~
Tepix
I agree. There are some really great product search engines available in
Germany (geizhals.de and idealo.de) that allow you to search many many
articles by custom criteria (depending on their category) and then do a price
comparison.

Amazon lacks basic search filters. And it has a lot of other annoyances. For
example when I search for shoes in my size, Amazon won't display the price of
the shoes in my size until I click on the shoes. Instead of shows the price
range for all sizes in the list of shoes. Makes it a huge hassle to browse
through a lot of shoes.

~~~
aaron_oxenrider
Exactly. Anything with options on Amazon is a terrible user experience now.
One hack I found is the mobile app will give you the price along with the
option. Why the desktop site is now worse than mobile I don't know.

------
justinclift
> This is not really negligence on Amazon’s part. It is the company’s business
> model.

Still sounds like negligence. Obviously non-trivial to fix too.

Still, it's Amazons responsibility to do so.

~~~
oblio
Knowing that someone is breaking the law (with your support, even!) is not
negligence.

Amazing mental gymnastics over there :-)

~~~
justinclift
Well, it's either negligence, or active assistance. ;)

~~~
oblio
It can also be passive: they're making money from it, the threat of lawsuits
to counterbalance the money they're making seems to be low right now, so they
just turn a blind eye to it.

I refuse to believe that a company with these values:
[https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/principles](https://www.amazon.jobs/en-
gb/principles), a pretty thorough recruitment process, probably 100k engineers
(including many, many data engineers) on their payroll, etc. can't do better
about identifying fakes.

It's just not in their interest because $$$.

~~~
justinclift
> It's just not in their interest because $$$.

Meh, I'd call that negligence. They're knowingly allowing harm to come to
others, through putting in a token effort (CYA style) rather than instituting
meaningful change.

And it's their marketplace, so they get to set the rules, and they have
significant resources if they actually wanted to engage.

------
tomohawk
This is why the FTC should be taking a close, hard look at these guys. The FTC
has many tools it can use. They could force Amazon to institute fraud control
that actually passes a blush test, or face massive penalties for not
complying. Having a monopoly is bad enough. Having an unaccountable,
unregulated monopoly is intolerable.

------
airnomad
Idk how closely you guys are watching but industry around Amazon affiliates is
huge and getting bigger. Amazon is basically outsourcing discovery to third
party which means their AI can't keep up. I believe Amazon could be disrupted
by niche player who do discovery and quality right.

------
aeturnum
It's interesting to note that the screenshot of the review of Murder On the
Orient express is complaining about CreateSpace [1] an Amazon subsidiary that
does print-on-demand stuff.

[1] [https://www.createspace.com/](https://www.createspace.com/)

------
nelzya
Counterfeiting killed reliable brands. Try to find a good charger or surge
protector: on amazon they all are fake and nobody else is selling them - it's
impossible to compete with amazon's fakes.

------
Finnucane
Laissez-faire attitude toward counterfeiting + prescription drugs = what could
possibly go wrong?

------
amelius
Reminds me of this post by Richard Stallman:

[https://stallman.org/amazon.html](https://stallman.org/amazon.html)

And it looks like the list needs to be extended.

------
SubiculumCode
Anecdotally, I just cancelled Amazon Prime. Domination won't be --complete--
until they get me back.

------
gopher2
Yeah, don't buy it on Amazon if you don't literally want to purchase the
knock-off version.

------
NikkiA
The solution is pretty simple: stop buying stuff from amazon 'because of the
convenience'.

------
jumpinalake
Couldn’t read the article because NYTimes blocks my incognito browser mode.
Times are changing.

------
naringas
the digital nature of information removes the need of exclusive ownership. we
must find a way to make a marketplace function without exclusive ownership.

~~~
chii
Prepayment instead of post-payment could work.

An author asks for money upfront. This amount is going to fund the creation of
the work. Then a copy goes to the preparers to do as they wish (including
making copies to distribute). I foresee crowd funded prepayments to be the
norm in the future, and also sponsorships (like patreon) style payments would
be the alternative model.

~~~
robocat
Prepayment can't work for the first creation produced. By induction prepayment
can't work for new authors.

~~~
chii
> Prepayment can't work for the first creation produced.

why would this be necessarily true? And prepayment could work if the payment
is discounted enough for unknown creators.

------
_pmf_
From a product quality point of view, they have long peaked. From a customer
service point of view, I've yet to see something better in the consumer space.

------
jay_kyburz
I really don't see how Amazon is any different to Pirate Bay here.

I take it there aren't too many pirate movies being sold so that Hollywood
won't get involved.

~~~
gwern
An irony here is that it looks like you are increasingly more likely to get
the real book if you go to Libgen rather than Amazon.

~~~
wbl
The old Yo Ho has rarely gotten me anything not as described. The same cannot
be said for amazon.

------
ptah
sounds like there is a niche for a store with proper quality control

------
bubblewrap
So counterfeits are an invention of Amazon? Amazon's business model is
counterfeits, and they have no interest of curbing the practice?

What a bullshit article, in the usual fashion: collecting a bunch of
anecdotes, to convince readers "emotionally" that Amazon is the devil.

The reality is probably that at the scale of Amazon, some issues are bound to
happen. "Journalists" looking for "evidence" can always find some anecdotes to
relay.

Counterfeiting is big business in China and other places. It's presumably a
difficult problem. It would exist with or without Amazon. Article does not
give any indication that it would be easier for Amazon to fight it.

------
robertAngst
Darn I clicked the link, I gave NYT money due to my fear.

Although this doesnt change anything. Given how easy it would be for a
competitor Fortune 500 to dump resources and marketing into a competing store,
they could never 'get away with murder'.

FAANG has more to worry about the tech bubble, than the world with FAANG.

------
gubbrora
We've been told that the antidote to deep fakes is supply chain security. It's
troubling to hear that supply chain security is already broken and by fairly
unsophisticated attackers from the sounds of it.

~~~
valleyer
Is the term "deep fakes" commonly used to refer to counterfeit merchandise? I
hadn't heard it used that way before.

~~~
chii
I would not use deep fakes to refer to counterfeit goods. Deep fakes refers
only to artificially generated videos of a real person (usually face, but it
could include voice).

------
anon21286
> But Amazon takes a hands-off approach to what goes on in its bookstore,
> never checking the authenticity, much less the quality, of what it sells. It
> does not oversee the sellers who have flocked to its site in any organized
> way

Uh... this seems like an unsubstantiated claim. It's my understanding Amazon
has multiple team actively working on manual and automated anti-fraud
including for counterfeit.

I think there's more inherent problems to this:

1\. Making it easier for sellers to sell, mean it's also easier for fraudsters
to do so. 2\. Being so popular and central means all fraudsters focus their
energy on it.

------
lone_haxx0r
"Counterfeit" is a good thing in my book, as long as there's a way to know the
quality of the product before you buy it.

Saying that there's zero counterfeit implies that quality is always the same
(good quality, most of the time).

By not acknowledging the existance of counterfeit, Amazon doesn't allow us to
publicize and hence compare the quality of different sellers.

~~~
asveikau
The article talks about a medical handbook whose dosage recommendations might
be affected by OCR errors. You want that to come straight from the source and
not a scanned copy.

------
zxcvbn4038
I for one really enjoy Amazon’s dominion. If your old enough to remember the
Bell System before it was broken up, the airlines before they were
deregulated, Amtrak before they lost government funding, or the postal service
before they had to sell out to all the direct mailers to turn a profit — I’d
say every once in a while the economists and political scientists can step
back and take a break. Seriously. Fly Emirates, ride Eurorail, switch to
T-Mobile, burn your mailbox - I think that is about as close as you can get
these days. Since the US stopped subsidizing the dairy industry, the snap
crackle pop of my cocoa crispies cost as much as a real breakfast. Two
industries I’d love to see Amazon disrupt next are healthcare and car rentals.
They are both overrun with vested interests and old fogies that have forgotten
what a customer is. Amazon could be the first company to have an significant
and quantifiable interest in their customers not dying AND do something about
it. What customer would be more loyal then the one whose life you literally
saved? I’m also pretty sure the entire IRS could be an Alexa skill and I
wouldn’t shed a tear if it were. How is democracy working out for us these
days? I kinda think it’s been swirling since about 1963, give or take, maybe
Jeff Bezos should be King? Sure some people won’t be happy but no matter what
you do some people never will be.

