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Comment by danielheath | Hacker News Reader

I mean, at a minimum, their habit of using customer data from their platform businesses to inform development of their own competing products is pretty sketchy.

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That's SOP in retail though. Walmart/Target/Home Depot/Best Buy/Whole Wallet, knows exactly what sells and use that to inform their own brands. And they kind of need to be tracking and analyzing those things in order to do their job.

Any store that uses a rewards, loyalty card or phone number when you checkout does the same. I'm not sure why Amazon is the bad guy when grocery stores have been distributing private brands of mainstream products and shopper loyalty has been used to optimize revenue streams. Amazon does it on a bigger scale, not sure the scale makes it right or wrong though.

Your theory is that if other large companies do something, it must be morally acceptable?

Even if that's true, which I'm not persuaded of, Amazon's enormous market power makes a big difference. As a consumer, I don't want Amazon to "optimize revenue streams" when that reduces the reward to market participants to be innovative and deliver high quality.

> Your theory is that if other large companies do something, it must be morally acceptable

You left something out, "as long as it doesn't effect me (yet), and large companies do it, it must be morally acceptable." I don't know why we defend them. Without Google we still go on. Without us, or support for their practices, they dramatically change or they disappear.

To be fair, these are generally the companies that have got us through the pandemic relatively unscathed.

From GP: <Without Google we still go on.>

> Your theory is that if other large companies do something, it must be morally acceptable?

Why did your comment single out Amazon and not the practice of 'immorally' tracking customers?

From their marketplace business, not their platform business

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