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Comment by whoknew1122 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon != AWS. As someone who has access to customer data in AWS, I'm very limited in what information I can access (to the point where it actively makes my job in Premium Support harder than it would be otherwise). I also have to provide a legitimate business reason for access to data.

Not only is there an audit trail for what I do internally, but any calls I make to review customer data is published in the customer's CloudTrail trail. So the customer can audit when their information is accessed.

This report has 0 to do with AWS.

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> This report has 0 to do with AWS

Same company, leadership and culture. If you compete with Amazon, or could compete, it would be pretty stupid to put your jewels on AWS.

On the other hand, it seems to be working out pretty well for Netflix.

On the other hand Apple competes hard against Samsung, yet relies heavily on Samsung to build a large part of it's competing products.

Although I admit that this might not be as true anymore as it was a few years ago.

Samsung is a much looser conglomerate than Amazon. Furthermore, their fab division is much larger than their handset division. I imagine all parties have weighed the pros and cons.

Apple continues to actively steer away from Samsung, anyway.

Probably because Apple has an army of lawyers to protect against any problems.

This.

Different leadership and largely different culture. Or are you just making assumptions?

Being on AWS works for Netflix, Disney+, and a lot of other streaming services I won't mention. ESPN and Fox Sports both use AWS. A lot of incredibly visible companies that offer cloud storage white-label S3. Tons of game studios use AWS.

A lot of successful companies are pretty stupid I guess. But I'm not going to spend my time trying to refute conspiracy theories about AWS. You do you boo-boo.

I suggest that your reply would be much better without the last paragraph.

hmmm, yes.

AWS profits appear in Amazon's annual report, AWS is an Amazon business unit. The CEO of AWS reports to the CEO of Amazon.

Interestingly enough Andy Jassy, who is taking over the reins from Bezos, is the CEO of AWS.

I was not aware of that, interesting indeed.

To me the only difference is that AWS biggest client base has the money and expertise to go after Amazon in protracted legal battles while simultaneously scrubbing AWS from their companies.

Most retailers, even big ones, don’t have the money or expertise to do this like that. Of the few who do (Apple for instance) Amazon is keen in making sure that those companies are heard and has direct relationships with them, but that’s few and far between.

That’s my take on this

I think there are enough retailers with at least some money, I think this is mostly an issue of business expectations.

If AWS were caught sharing your data, with anyone, for any reason, it would be a gigantic mess of a problem. Forget 'competing with Amazon on Amazon' - we're talking about sensitive data of all kinds in every single line of business. It would destroy them.

Selling on Amazon, and then having sneaky Amazon PM's use your data against you is bad, but the quasi-same thing would exist in other retailers. Best Buy doesn't sell '3rd Party' so obviously all of their sales data is theirs, and I think that the expectations between '3rd Party' and not '3rd Party' Amazon may just be a little bit blurred.

I'm suspicious frankly about the distinction, because Amazon may very well believe that that data is theirs to look at anyhow.

But AWS has to be a different story, if not, it's going to hurt.

An interesting thing to note is also that AWS sells pre-rolled HIPAA compatible services in a lot of their offerings. If AWS accidentally peaked into one of these services in an unauthorized manner it'd be a huge legal event and, I suspect that part of them working out that their services are HIPAA compliant involved being extremely transparent on how a number of things around those services operate with some department in the government.

Those servers, at least, should be free from any of the snooping concerns folks have.

Given everything mentioned in your comment, I don't see how it implies that amazon can't cast a dragnet at some level you're not aware of.

Let's put it in terms of business. What does Amazon gain reading the data of retailers in AWS that they don't already have? How much more money would this make them?

How much brand damage and lost of business to AWS (their most profitable organization) would they lose if this were to leak? The more prevalent their use of this AWS customer data, the higher the chance it gets leaked.

Why do you think Amazon, one of the most logical and data driven companies, would make such a bad business decision?

Info about what products sell well? Amazon has a thriving white label business and they can use it to decide what to make.

And we think they need to risk the lost of business of breaking into your data on AWS to get this information? They somehow have no other way to infer this? How much business is this thriving Amazon-made products line? It's a fraction of AWS's profits considering retail's overall profits.

> They somehow have no other way to infer this?

That's actually the point. So what if they're using "anonymous" or other indirect data? If "Amazon.com" might be benefiting from AWS data of any kind then it needs to be investigated as potentially anti-competitive.

When I say infer I mean from analysis of retail trends, pricing, and supply data. They don’t need to raid your AWS account to know that USB cables are profitable.

People have done worse for less. It may not be a significant fraction of Amazon’s income but it could be a significant fraction of a sellers income or a significant fraction of sales manager’s sales.

It doesn't have 0 to do with AWS. AWS funds the amazon beast they compete against. As a retailer you would have to be absolutely insane to feed money to the Amazon mothership via AWS so they can continue to fund undercutting you in the retail space.

All of that is ignoring the fact that any customer of size WILL be sharing details about their go-to-market with their AWS account team. Just because a random guy in support can't login to their systems doesn't mean their assigned architect doesn't know what their process workflow looks like and didn't help them design it...

It does though. That money being paid towards AWS will certainly be used to subsidize Amazon's undercutting. A retailer paying for AWS is funding their own demise.

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