Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by mangeletti | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

mangeletti

Amazon will likely begin competing with many of their AWS customers.

Step 1: develop a Trojan horse to gather growth and profitability data (QuickSight).

Step 2: roll out home-grown apps to compete with their most profitable AWS customers.

This is exactly how Amazon.com operates[1].

I can only imagine how the conversation went:

    Bob:   We need to diversify!
    Earl:  You're right! Let's do some research.
    Susan: That'll cost a ton...
    Ed:    Eureka! We'll just let everyone give us their data.
           It'll be a quick sight into all the markets!
    Becky: Ed... You're a genius!
    Ed:    I am?
    Becky: Yes. We'll call it QuickSight!

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot...

View on HN

This is irresponsible conjecture. AWS has very strict privacy and data safe guards in place. There are a number of laws (particularly in the EU) that forbid such practices.

https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/

The reason AWS is successful is because Amazon takes privacy and security seriously. Why does Netflix trust AWS when there's Prime Video? Because Netflix knows that they have legal recourse against Amazon if they tried to do anything underhanded. I suspect Amazon would quickly fire anyone who breached customer data.

Sincere question: how are such clauses enforced?

Curious - what stops an Apple employee working on the App Store from personally investing in an early stage startup that has seen tremendous growth on the App Store? Or similarly from insights on traffic from a Google team member? AFAIK, there is nothing legally that precludes you from doing so...

They sign a contract stating they won't do it when joining Apple.

Needless to say that doesn't work, especially given the number of enforcement officials at the SEC and the capacity there, and the fact that Apple would have to sue it's own employees (plus the fact that you wouldn't want them to be heavy-handed at all).

So SOX means that very few employees can have access to such data. The more enterprising amongst them still do of course - as do the ones that you really don't want to have access to it. The ones that would both "need" the data (not really), and would know exactly how to profit from it - general and financial management.

Yeah, it seems like if you are building a business on AWS, they are either going to buy you (Twitch) or compete with you (Netflix), and I don't see how you beat them when they're taking x% of your profits off the top.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com