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Comment by yid | Hacker News Reader

> They are destroying their most valuable component of their brand, for a relatively weak one (Prime Video).

This is why it almost seems like Amazon's Google+ moment: one underperforming product area somehow manages to convince leadership to change the company's underlying principles in its advantage to the long-term detriment of overall brand perception.

Edit: 32 points in 19 mins for this comment. I really hope someone from Amazon is reading.

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That's an interesting point. When Google started pushing G+ social networks in general was all the tech media were talking about. Now it's the death of cable and the rise of streaming services. And just like Google wanted it's piece of the buzz-worthy social media space, Amazon wants a piece of the growing streaming market.

It's certainly not a good precedent to set banning competitor's products from their store. I could come up with a dozen different slippery-slope scenarios.

It's slightly different in that selling media was originally Amazons core business. First books, then DVDs, then Kindle.

Streaming (music or TV) is just a new distribution and pricing mechanism for the same product. For Google, social media is a fundamentally different product to search. You can argue that they are both ways of 'finding things' but there are still huge fundamental differences.

‘Search’ isn't a product by Google, user impressions are.

Not to mention that it's completely Amazon's decision not to offer streaming apps for AppleTV or Android in general release. Do they really make that much on their hardware that they're willing to continue alienating most of their customers?

So they offer it for game consoles, "smart" TVs, Roku, and handheld devices of all sorts… but not Apple TV or Chromecast? And that's by their choice, not Apple or Google's? Huh.

They don't offer it for Android at all (even though their own fire devices are based on it), and I'm guessing they opted out of AppleTV (since iirc, they offer it for iOS devices)

G+ is vestigial at best and creepy at worst, but at least there's something to be said about a giant sprawling octopus of a tech company managing to wrap everything into one, centralized platform.

Amazon on the other hand seems to be subscribing to the amputation school of thought. I don't know a soul that's ever bought an Amazon gadget that wasn't exclusively named "Kindle." If people truly preferred Amazon's devices to those from Apple or Google, they would have bought them.

I'm one of those souls, and really like both the Kindle Fire and Fire TV I have. This move has really soured them to me though - Amazon have a great product in Prime Video and their Fire lineup, a product which doesn't need these sort of shady tactics.

I'm interested in why you consider it shady for a retailer not to sell a product. I don't see Google or Apple selling products from anyone but themselves (mostly. Apple does sell a few accessories and Google has some pure editions which they have a hand in). Pick any retailer, and there are brands and products they don't sell.

I could see it being shady if you were talking about denying people access to things they need, but we're talking about selling on the Internet here. It's not like people will have a hard time buying Apple TVs or Chromecasts because they aren't on Amazon. They just have to type the name into their address bar.

I would guess they got a lot of complaints from people who said they couldn't get Instant Video to work on their streaming devices, someone calculated the cost of customer service vs profits of selling those devices, and decided it wasn't worth it... how is that any different form any other retailer choosing to drop a product because it isn't working for them? Customer service costs and returns are probably the most common reason for anyone dropping something.

I know Amazon has a bigger selection than pretty much everyone, but does that give them a moral imperative to not discriminate on products? Seems like people are considering Amazon as if they were a public utility, which seems like a pretty impressive achievement for them.

>I'm interested in why you consider it shady for a retailer not to sell a product. I don't see Google or Apple selling products from anyone but themselves (mostly. Apple does sell a few accessories and Google has some pure editions which they have a hand in). Pick any retailer, and there are brands and products they don't sell.

That's because google and apple aren't the Walmart of the internet, they make electronics. Amazon specializes in selling stuff, google and apple make stuff and also happen to sell them on their website, or you could buy it from somewhere else (in google's case)

> I'm interested in why you consider it shady for a retailer not to sell a product. I don't see Google or Apple selling products from anyone but themselves (mostly. Apple does sell a few accessories and Google has some pure editions which they have a hand in). Pick any retailer, and there are brands and products they don't sell.

I think the equivalent for Google would be deliberately not listing duckduckgo or bing in search results for "duck duck go" or "bing".

But as an Apple user, I already know they are hypocritical control freaks who don't respect their users.

But this is literally the first time that I've seen Amazon play that way. So it may not be different from any other retailer, it's different from how Amazon used to be. (Or at least was perceived to be, which amounts to the same thing.)

Are you familiar with Primecast? A third party reversed how Amazon authenticated its movies and for a day, you could actually cast the movies that your Prime subscription allowed, including rentals. It was no different than if you authenticated on the website. Amazon quickly scrambled to shut that app down and still hasn't answered with their own method for Chromecast. It isn't even a technical issue, it is a control issue.

Now I don't know the licensing terms they have with the content providers, but they certainly aren't fulfilling the consumer demand.

No, I wasn't familiar with that. Still, the present issue seems one step worse than that.

Digital music sold used to have DRM, because it just couldn't be avoided since the licensing terms of the content required it. The Primecast seems likely to be the same.

It's more like them saying, "Sorry, user, we can't let you do that."

Where as this (and what Apple does) is more like, "What's that user? You want <competing thing>? Well, fuck off!"

Thinking on it though, massively slowing down deliveries of books from publishers Amazon doesn't like was actually the first time I've seen Amazon do something like this. So this actually isn't the first time; now its a pattern.

Side rant: Amazon Prime's media crap is also especially annoying to me personally, since I spend most of the year outside of the US, where it doesn't work at all. (Go Netflix!))

I consider it an issue of confidence in a product to also sell the competitors' versions. It's one of those things that makes Amazon a great company. I hope they rescind the ban.

Amazon have pitched themselves as a place to buy "anything" (with varying definitions of anything, granted). Apple and Google have never pretended that's what they were.

The analogue would be Google not showing Facebook pages in their search results. Google has pitched themselves as the place to find anything on the web.

(But it's perfectly fine for Amazon's search to only show Amazon stuff, because universal search is not part of their claim.)

The particular thing I find shady is their reasoning for it, that they don't want to sell devices that won't work with Prime Video. That's all very well, but the reason they don't work is because Amazon haven't put the effort in to make it work - there's nothing preventing them from adding Chromecast support, and I doubt Apple would reject support for Apple TV.

Ditto, though here's the problem with amazon: buying apple stuff on there is a shit experience.

Go there right now and type macbook pro in the search. You'll get a page of results with these top results:

   Apple MacBook Pro MF839LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (128 GB) NEWEST VERSION
   Apple MacBook Pro MD101LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop
   Apple MacBook Pro MJLQ2LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION)
   Apple MacBook Pro MB990LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop
   Apple MacBook Pro MJLT2LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop with Retina Display (NEWEST VERSION)

As a consumer, how the hell am I supposed to know what those are? I see a bunch of sellers called their listings "NEWEST VERSION" but is that true? What the fuck is a MF839LL/A?

The whole thing is a mess.

But yeah, I bought prime 4 years ago and amazon became my one stop shop for everything. This is their threat to google's business of taxing ecommerce via owning discovery. Amazon wins if search starts there and skips google; excluding items from prime dilutes that value.

But let's be honest: this is obviously amazon leveraging their ecommerce power to force apple to build amazon prime video into apple tv.

I feel like this is actually a potentially serious problem for Amazon, and it's getting worse.

The other day I went to buy a pair of standard issue Apple headphones. The same exact ones that come with the iPhone. Yeah they are slightly overpriced but I am really used to them and they sound good and my pair was getting ratty and I wanted another one.

It was literally impossible to do. Try it and see what I mean. I see "Original OEM iPhone Earbuds with Mac and Volume Control" as the first result, for $4.94. As a non-clueless person I know those definitely aren't real. But are the results for $24.99 or $29.99 real? It's really just impossible to be sure, you can look for "Sold by Amazon" itself but even that can be ambiguous. The day I went to do it I literally could not. I gave up and went to apple.com where it took 30 seconds.

That's not an uncommon experience. I typically buy Apple stuff from the Apple online store, or from B&H, as a rule, because this is such a problem. And I'm noticing it more and more with other products, things like USB hubs or IP Cameras and the like.

My default has always been to buy almost everything I can from Amazon as the first preference, but it's getting harder and harder to do in entire categories of products. I hope someone there is paying attention to this problem, it's real.

I have this experience probably about half the time I'm shopping on Amazon (which I do a lot of). If you look in the comments/reviews for many items there will be dozens of people saying e.g. "product shipped was not the product pictured", "only buy if the seller is so-and-so if you want a genuine product", "received a used/returned product", and on and on. I've taken to spending more and going out of my way to buy some things in retail stores, where I can at least be reasonably sure I'm not getting a counterfeit.

yes. I've felt this way lately. The overall quality of Amazon has gone downhill sharply. It's resembling eBay or even Craigslist today. I was considering getting Prime a few days back when it was on sale. But I remembered that the majority of things I buy today aren't shipped by Amazon even. Never mind their whole "Prime day" fiasco (which Amazon never owned up to).

From an ethical standpoint, I'm also starting to wonder if Bezos is one of the most unhinged, corrupt people on this planet. Stories from their top tech employees down to their warehouse workers have been nothing short of horrifying.

Also true with non Apple products eg Samsung accessories are all fake on Amazon.

It's a big problem when you know exactly what you want but can't find it because of all of the noise.

AFAICT, that problem is general to buying anything through Amazon except things sold directly by Amazon.

Yeah, it's becoming annoying. Batteries are more likely fake/offbrand than not, even when the ad claims otherwise, and last at best 3 months instead of 24 in my car's key fob. I got frustrated and eventually bought them at a local hardware store. Replacement chargers are chinese imitation shit. I've had an increasing number of purchases that don't match their descriptions. Amazon has been very good about it, and always refunds my money, but I'm still left without the plant mite spray or battery or whatever that I needed in the first place, so that only helps so much. I would have thought amazon would be working to get a handle on this but maybe their analytics tell them it doesn't matter.

Yeah I've bought bad batteries from Amazon (they were recharged AAs being sold as new), of course from a third-part seller.

Amazon doesn't care; thousands of people complain, and they keep letting it happen.

Amazon Subprime.

Bought some LED kitchen track lights on amazon that uniformly burned out in < 2 months

Yes me too. Never thought to blame Amazon. Do you have a recommendation for a more quality product?

Honestly I'm not sure stuff sold directly by Amazon is an exception.

But at least you'll be able to return it without hassle if it's not right

That's not the point. Who cares if it's expensive or confusing. They are banning products that are competing with their own products.

Amazon is simply a store for majority of the people who shop there.

If Google banned Amazon from search results you would probably be outraged.

Based on the news article, Amazon isn't banning competitors. Roku competes with Fire TV, and the Netflix app it bundles competes with Prime Video. The article says Amazon will still sell Roku. Indeed, Amazon's Fire TV also supports Netflix and Hulu and HBO and ESPN and whatnot, not just Amazon Video.

The news article says that they're banning video streaming devices that don't support Amazon Video. So if that's true, it's not that they're banning competitors, but that they're forcing streaming devices sold on Amazon to support Amazon Video in addition to whatever else they support.

I don't know what the primary motivation is, but I could genuinely see some customers being confused. Imagine you're a customer that's just signed up for Prime. You don't have a TV stick to watch it on, so you shop around the store and find a streaming device that's highly reviewed. You buy it and plug it in, only to find that Amazon Video does not work on it, or works poorly. This is plausible; this kind of thing happens, especially with unsophisticated, less computer savvy buyers (the kind of people who think the Google search box is the Internet). I could easily see my parents making this kind of mistake.

Whether that's the primary motivation, I wouldn't know. It seems like you could also deal with that problem by changing the way the product is displayed, for people who have Prime Video, and show a big warning like "This product does not support Prime Video" on the side so they can't overlook that fact when buying it. (Though this could lead to other complications - I could imagine there being weird legal or anti-competitive issues with making claims like that about competitors' products in a way that they can't control, that's not part of the product description. Banning them might be the simplest way.)

> The news article says that they're banning video streaming devices that don't support Amazon Video.

The only reason the devices don't support Amazon Video is because Amazon has chosen not to build apps that support those devices.

But you need to go deeper. Amazon hasn't built apps that support those devices because those devices manufacturers want a cut of their profits off of subscriptions or rentals because those device manufacturers (Google / Apple) want people to use their own services instead.

That's only for in-app subscription purchases. You didn't think Apple was getting a 30% cut off Prime video subscriptions just because there's an iPad app, right? Or Netflix for that matter.

This is a problem entirely of Amazon's making. And I don't understand it. No one makes money on the devices, they make money on the subscriptions. It's in their best interests to be on as many devices as possible.

Or because they don’t support the specific DRM system used?

If it were the primary motivation to avoid confusing Prime members they could easily just add a bold description field: DOES NOT SUPPORT AMAZON VIDEO. They could also just drop it from Prime-eligible rather than drop it from the store entirely. Many Prime members filter things by Prime-eligible (for many different reasons) and that would possibly be more effective than dropping it entirely.

Google is a monopoly or near monopoly in search. Amazon is not a monopoly or near monopoly in general ecommerce (excluding ebooks.) Seeing as amazon is not a (near) monopoly in general ecommerce, I can't be bothered to care. If you don't like amazon's policies, patronize walmart, target, newegg, apple.com directly, or a dozen other competitors. I personally think amazon is wildly overestimating their ability to extract concessions from apple.

A couple more Amazon problems:

They obviously treat their vendors like red-headed stepchildren; they know they have to be on Amazon to make sales, but the margins have to be tiny. Ever notice how when you order something from an Amazon "partner", the tracking information is magically worse than worthless? And of course, if you have a problem they'll correct it immediately at their own cost, because Amazon threatens to turn off the sales faucet if they don't make the Amazon Experience pleasant for the consumer.

Don't get me wrong, I still shop there. Particularly for electronics -- 3% cashback on my Amazon card is nothing to shake a stick at.

But it's feeling worse and worse to do so.

This is half Amazon's problem, and half Apple's problem for not giving their computer models unique names. Type iPhone 6s and you get much more clear results.

No, it's that these listings on Amazon are kind-of-like "eBay" just without the auctioning part. The seller can write whatever he wants. Amazon just evaluates the complaints of the buyers.

There is a standard naming convention with Apple products though that they and everyone else uses:

MacBook Pro (mid-2015)

GradeAUnderA brought out some really good points https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_osrpU9UWrc

This is more about Roku vs Google & Apple than Amazon vs Google & Apple. Roku has been the market leader by far up until 2015.

One problem is that Amazon is now inviting consumers to open a direct relationship with Google or Apple. If a user makes a purchase of an Apple TV or Chromecast directly, Google or Apple now know exactly who they are.

Generally speaking, making it hard or cutting off sales channels for specific products can work to divert sales. Big retailers do it. However, if it is a product the consumer really, really wants they are going to jump through the loopholes to get it. I imagine Apple TV will eventually fall under that category.

Alternatives? Let Apple TV and Chromecast continue to be sold but place large warning messages and suggest buying a Roku or Amazon whatever device instead.

I have a Roku, and I bought it for the exact reason that they don't (at least from what I can tell) have their own streaming service. I wanted a device where the makers have a direct stake in making the best experience for all streaming services possible, and there are no second class citizens.

I didn't want a device coming from a company participating in multi-sided markets. It just ends up with an internal conflict of interest and it's always not clear to the customer what side is the win.

Roku was spun off from a Netflix project:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3004709/inside-netflixs-project-g...

While I agree (and own a Roku myself) I'm concerned that the end game here is all the content owners removing their stuff from Roku and forcing us to buy a dozen HDMI sticks.

If I understand the news article correctly, streaming video players will be allowed as long as they support Amazon Video too. If that's a correct understanding, then it implies that Amazon would sell Chromecast or Apple TV again if those companies add support for Prime Video.

I could be wrong though - this is based on the limited info in the article.

Amazon claims it's removing Apple TV and Chromecast because they don't support Amazon Video... but Amazon was the one who decided not to support Apple TV and Chromecast in the first place.

Chromecast and Apple TV are more than popular enough to warrant app support, so it can't be a question of platform marketshare, either. (Chromecast support is so simple that the idea Amazon can't do it is laughable.) Android TV is not as popular, but Amazon already has an Android TV app, except it's restricted to Sony TVs: http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/05/16/amazon-disables-the-...

This is not a retaliation. Amazon's suggestion that this is Apple or Google's fault is simply false.

Chromecast support is not really simple, considering Amazon probably uses a different DRM system than the one Google implemented.

But for a day you could use Primecast. Amazon deliberately disabled that, so there isn't a technical reason they couldn't have resolved it.

That's what I thought it sounded like too, which made me think of the strange part - as far as I know, any Android app provider can make their video app Chromecast-compatible. It's up to the app provider, not Google. Amazon already has a Amazon Video Android app, which last I checked, they only provide over their proprietary app store. So it's up to them to make Prime Video work on Chromecast, they just have to put their Video app on the Play store, and set it up to Cast.

Great point. Don't they also earn money from each AppleTV and Chromecast sold through Amazon? Unless they were doing it at a 0 gain seems stupid not to profit from sales of competing products. They must really be banking on the increase in Prime sales making up that difference.

Perhaps they were relying on cross-selling purely on these products.

This is a really good point.

One difference here is that Amazon can quietly go back on their decision if it doesn't work and they see people aren't viewing the Apple TV, Chromecast and Fire as substitutes- since it is just a few listings.

Google integrated everything with Google+ the vestiges are still all around.

Sort of, except Amazon loses some cred with everyone who tried to buy it from them during that time, and from press like this story where now I'll be a little hesitant to check Amazon first for Apple products in general (because who knows where else they're trying to compete). Which is a terrible impression to give.

For example, it still isn't possible to create a YouTube channel without Google Plus.

Get over it already, single signon is here to stay a n d it is (now) easy to create a bunch of different "pages"-identities that are hard to trace back to your main account.

Or am I wrong?

Here is what I am referring to:

>> So in the coming months, a Google Account will be all you’ll need to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel and more, all across Google. YouTube will be one of the first products to make this change, and you can learn more on their blog. As always, your underlying Google Account won’t be searchable or followable, unlike public Google+ profiles. And for people who already created Google+ profiles but don’t plan to use Google+ itself, we’ll offer better options for managing and removing those public profiles.

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/everything-in-its-ri...

This was published on July 27, 2015

Honestly, Amazon seems like they're in a bit of a panic to get into digital consumption. This is slightly reminiscent of Fire Phone.

I was just thinking about how they have buried a great product, google hangouts, inside a me too product, google+, and neglected it bc it doesn't have a business model attached. What a waste! Hangouts is much better and more reliable than Skype, but very difficult to find and sign up for. All it needs is its a stage of its own and a business model and it could destroy Skype, which needs to be destroyed imho. Combined with some business features it could rule the meeting room worldwide, then expand into consumer from there.

http://hangouts.google.com no longer requires a G+ account.

Of course each iteration of hangouts/voice/contact makes it harder to send an SMS message to someone in your contacts... you now have to type in the number, and if you happen to do it on your android phone from a contact, it tries to send an advite to use hangouts... It's really annoying as a fan of Voice/GrandCentral for years.

Actually, no. This seems more like when Apple stopped allowing Kindle books to be sold through an iPhone: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-cant-buy-kindle-books...

Wasn't that because Apple wants 30% off all sales? Microsoft had a similar clash with Apple over Office for iOS. The apps were free, but if you wanted to buy a license to use them, you would have to purchase that license directly from Microsoft because Apple wanted a slice of the upsell. This would have added a 30% tax on top of the universal service fee Microsoft was selling, even if it was just a link to the website from within the apps. I don't know how that was finally resolved, but this is just how Apple conducts business.

Not sure why i got downvoted without an explanation. Must be some annoyed Apple fanboy.

Well, a notable difference is that the only party preventing Amazon from streaming to Chromecasts is Amazon.

That's precisely what it is.

Hey, maybe we know where Vic Gundotra went!

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