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Comment by mmastrac | Hacker News Reader

Alright, but the question is "why would someone want to log in with Amazon"? There's no social network attached to your Amazon account. It seems like it would be an odd choice of identity provider, unless you are a store and already using Amazon's fulfillment services.

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For some reason it strikes me as a pretty good idea. Upon further reflection, I think it has something to do with:

- Trust -- people increasingly distrust sites like Facebook or Google (privacy concerns), but Amazon still has pretty much entirely "positive" feelings for consumers. And if they can run AWS as well as they can, then you assume you can trust them with your password too

- Micropayments -- your credit card is already linked to your Amazon account, presumably, so it suddenly enables you to pay for content, etc. on a wide range of sites where you might not otherwise, due to friction and trust issues

It's funny... for some undefinable "fuzzy" reason, I feel much more willing to log into a site using Amazon credentials, than I would with Google, Facebook or even Apple.

That's probably because you're a paying customer rather than a pair of eyeballs to them.

Right. You're the customer, not the product.

Absolutely agree - I'd love to be able to use my account on other merchant's sites without having to enter cc info.

> "why would someone want to log in with Amazon"?

> There's no social network attached to your Amazon account

I think you answered your own question.

This. I avoid accidentally posting some garbage to my facebook wall.

I'll finally start using "Log on with" if I can use Amazon.

Assuming Amazon's endgame is optional integration with their payment/delivery platforms, there's certainly the hypothetical possibility of accidentally purchasing from confusingly designed sites you'd never give your cc details to though.

Since chargebacks - unlike social spam - cost money, Amazon has every reason to be more cautious about their permissions and confirmation screens, but the wary user probably isn't unjustified in hesitating when asked to sign up for a free service using a login they normally use to buy stuff with.

But might you now have to put up with Amazon targeting even more ads and recommended products to you based on the various sites you've logged into using their service? :/

So your complaint is that the ads you see will be more relevant to your interests? Really?

My complaint is the payment for the login service through the use of my behavioral data I'd rather keep private. I have never clicked through an ad to purchase anything. I dislike seeing ads that are clearly based on my behavior but don't understand the intent of that behavior (i.e. showing me ads for generators because I looked at a few on Amazon to compare the stats to the one I already own). I also dislike seeing ads in general because they are not a useful feature to me. I'd prefer to pay for features in a more direct and favorable (to me) manner. I also dislike the concept that targeted ads are in some cases specifically designed to influence my attitude toward brands and provide me with information that may not be absolutely true but which they will hope I internalize to influence my future purchasing decisions.

Obviously, this is my personal preference, and I do understand that ads can be a useful revenue stream for companies targeting other users with different profiles from mine.

There's not a social network, but there's a "money" network attached to your Amazon account (i.e. your credit card) From the article:

>> "over 200 million active Amazon customers"

That's 200 million verified credit cards of people who are comfortable with ecommerce. There's arguably some value in that.

Why? Because there isn't a social network attached to it. I don't have to create another username/password and I can possibly avoid entering credit card details into another site if I decide to do business with them. Why not is a better question.

What does a social network have to do with it? I thought that logging in using a third-party account was simply a way to ease signups and limit password/account explosion, nothing to do with "social" anything. Certainly that's how I use it.

Have a quick look through the comments of the letsbeamigos.com show HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5781313

All of which seem to be saying the opposite of the comment I'm responding to: not having a social network is a bonus.

If I was selling something I would want to use Login with Amazon. This press release doesn't specify, but potentially they could add a one-click purchase API, which would be very nice.

This is the sort of thing I was assuming as well, if it let you tie in to doing purchases via amazon's payment API (though I'd still expect another request for password during purchase, but it would pre-assume account) could be useful, if leveraged correctly.

amazon wants you to do so for advertising purposes, and this is particularly important given the implications of firefox's 3rd party cookie policy / dnt. Amazon is actually quite a large ad vendor: they allow you to retarget based on purchases and because they've run out of inventory on amazon proper, they buy on exchanges. Running a login system means they can track you around the internet, and this nicely dovetails with ff's new cookie policy since amazon will most likely be on of the sites you've visited and hence a permitted 3rd party cookie. This is a valuable dataset for an advertiser, and even more importantly, will allow 3rd party targeting to continue to work.

This is also why fb / twitter / G run 3rd party login systems.

Personally, I don't like "login with facebook" everywhere, because every site wants permission to "post to your wall" even when not logged in, etc... Personally, I find this unconscionable. I find the same thing happens with Google these days for single-signon... I'd much rather have a common/popular oauth provider that does NOT have a social integration piece. I don't want invites to every game you play, and don't want them sent out to my friends.

Google was really close to this for me before the Google+ thing. At least with amazon, acting as a purchase gateway is an additional bonus.

I don't have up to date addresses and payment methods anywhere else, besides PayPal, but I'm far more active on Amazon. That's a great way to turbo charge sales.

on second look, it's just a login system, no payment integration https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/lwa/dev/...

At the same time though, a login system offered by an e-commerce company is a huge step toward one-click payment integration.

I hope payment integration is at least on the burner, though. It seems like an obvious addition -- if the customer is already logged in to your site through Amazon, why not let them bill their Amazon account for stuff on the site?

Amazon certainly isn't averse to third-parties using their infrastructure; in fact, they've encouraged it. Kindle Direct Publishing, their third-party seller program, all of the AWS offerings...

Naturally, Amazon is going to want a cut (which is a perfectly reasonable thing for them to expect, don't get me wrong).

I think you have to integrate that separately:

https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business/asp

I'm not too sure, for my purposes. I was trying to think of some ways we could use this, but I'm just not seeing it. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, though.

Can anyone provide some neat examples for cases in the context of web applications? Their mobile app examples didn't really speak to me.

Login with Amazon. Now the person has one-click purchasing power. Or most likely, a credit card on file, which is more valuable then a Facebook profile without any CC on file, especially in the context of a web application.

That makes more sense. That would be pretty neat.

Because it's not Facebook.

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