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Comment by kumarm | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Stores doesn't sell competitor products. Try buying Google Home on Amazon. Whats worse? Searching for Google Home returns results for Amazon Echo.

You can find amazon apps on Google PlayStore though.

Amazon is definitely the next Microsoft.

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That's definitely stupid and childish behaviour on Amazon's part, and will not help them one bit in winning this argument, but if that's the main piece of evidence that they are "definitely" like Microsoft, then, no, they are nothing like Microsoft was in the 90s.

If I'm not mistaken, it was Google who started blocking Amazon's Echo from serving YouTube content on devices with screens, so this type of anti end user behavior isn't exclusive to Amazon.

Amazon kicked this off, delisting Chromecast and Apple TVs, and lying about it.

Googles reason was "Amazon’s implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience."

I don't pretend to know what that broken user experience was.. ads blocked? No auto play next? No subscriber button? But anything along those lines would be a poor deal for YouTube. Im not a fan of either as they both engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior I just feel it isn't one sided in this case.

This started even before the echo and home devices. it started at least as far back as the chromecast and firetv stick. Possibly with devices before that too.

Amazon Stores doesn't sell competitor products.

Were Amazon like Microsoft, as you claim, Amazon would sell competitor products that have an Amazon product built in, whether you want it or not, and it will be priced into the product.

(Disclaimer: this analogy to the 90s MS falls apart quickly. But unlike 90s MS, I am not yet forced to do business with Amazon if I don't want to.)

Or, the next Safeway? Try buying another grocery store's brand of milk at Safeway! The bastards only sell theirs.

No wait, the next BMW! I tried to buy a Toyota and no BMW dealership would sell me one, can you believe it?

- Safeway and BMW don't tout theirselves as, "Earth's biggest selection of books, magazines, music, DVDs, videos, electronics, computers, software, apparel & accessories, shoes, ..." like Amazon does. They don't even claim to be the biggest selection of groceries/autos.

- Safeway and BMW aren't known as "The Everything Store"

- You can buy Toyotas at a BMW dealership. They will be used, but they're there.

Do you claim anyone actually has a bigger selection of "books, magazines, music, DVDs, videos, electronics, computers, software, apparel & accessories, shoes, ..."?

Nope. That quote was lifted from Amazon.com meta tags.

If I were to guess at what companines might rival Amazon in having the biggest selection, my top 3 would be: eBay, Alibaba, Rakuten.

Right; so you're bothered by the fact that there are substitutions of x which make true the proposition ∃x:not(sells(Amazon, x)). These are counterexamples to their outrageously false marketing claim ∀x:sells(Amazon, x).

To what extent would you say this eating you alive?

(BTW: that marketing claim comes from the "Everything"; a collection which is "biggest" isn't necessarily exhaustive; just bigger than others.)

Did you just learn a little bit of logic and feel the urge to parade it everywhere? Heck, it just made your phrase longer, didn't provide anything useful that couldn't be said in plain English and marginalized anyone who doesn't know those symbols.

Whoosh ...

Not all of us have a strong grasp of logic theory, although we probably would be much better off if we did. Mind dumbing it down for your audience?

So you'd also definitely agree that if you're running an ecommerce (or video streaming, or food delivery, or grocery delivery or anything really) business on AWS, Amazon is in the clear for terminating your instances? Just making sure you thought your analogy fully through.

Maybe I’m having a brain fart but are you saying that if you run an ecommerce store or food delivery service on an AWS instance, Amazon can terminate their service without prior warning?

Yes. And the free market is in the clear for choosing other cloud providers.

Most of what they carry is not their store brands. They sell many different brands and labels of goods, so it's not a really apt comparison.

Most of what Amazon's marketplace carries is not Amazon branded stuff.

The BMW dealer will sell you 80 different brands of carrot juicers though

So what? That Safeway also sells plenty of things that are not their house brand (in addition to the house brand, or not).

Nobody requires them to; they probably do that because it's profitable to them not because they are worried that someone will regard them as the next Microsoft in the pejorative sense.

The fact that Amazon sells their device that is similar to Google's and not Google's is perfectly sensible, if they regard that as a strategic thing which is reasonable given what it is.

Not that I think they should be required to carry everything, but it's stupid from a consumer perspective. All the home streaming and "smart speaker" devices have important differences in what they can do and what they're compatible with. They're not interchangeable.

It'd be more like Safeway refusing to sell Mission brand tortillas because they have Safeway brand tortilla chips and that's basically the same thing, right? It's made from flour into thin layers and you eat it.

> They're not interchangeable.

While that is true, more importantly, they are their respective purveyors' spyware devices using which they intend to claw their way into people's lives to an even greater extent.

And claw you into their ecosystems.

Amazon is more than happy to sell you other brands of USB cables or clothes, despite having their own "Amazon Basics" brand.

But they draw the line at other brands of eBook readers and media players.

I regularly buy Darigold milk (a local PNW brand) at Safeway.

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