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Comment by lbacaj | Hacker News Reader

Honestly using Amazon is like tip toeing around a lion to get something valuable. Knowing that at any moment they could wake up and and absolutely swallow you whole.

If you use their cloud products, ala Netflix, they may decide to compete with you any moment. Netflix may have been too far along to be beat but the next product won’t be. If you sell products on their market place and if they do well you run the risk of them copying you. If you do anything in their ecosystem you are living with the fear that the lion may wake up and swallow you whole at any point and time.

Edit: Maybe I’m a bit paranoid but this feels like a great way for them to get to know exactly who your customers are and what their behavior is. All the while training their own personalization to get much better.

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They also like to buy shares in smaller companies or outright acquire them. Not always competition.

Candidate for business school case study, what factors influenced Amazon decisions to invest/acquire vs clone?

Right, like with the YC startup Scaphold turning into aws appsync:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelparis1/

sorry if this is a stupid question, why would amazon only copy things hosted/using aws?

AWS can see traffic and usage. They can predict the "next big thing". Facebook allegedly did the same with their VPN services that analyzed what apps people were using on their phones.

Not that I disbelieve you, but it would be interesting to see a source for that claim.

The Wikipedia article about Onavo[0] has multiple articles linked about it.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo

There's probably no way for me to convince you otherwise, but I'll say it anyway:

This isn't how the world works.

Gathering intelligence and moving into their partners/supply chains territory is literally the DNA of Amazon. I know of no other company that does it as verociously as Amazon, who went after every partner that helped them grow (fulfilment, delivery, third party sellers, manufacturers).

And the example of Facebook with Onavo is also not plucked out of thin air[0].

Sure, it's not how all of the world works but for the big players, it's a important tool in their toolbox.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo

"verociously": a portmanteau of "ferociously" and "voraciously". ;)

Whoops! I'll stand by it :D

Industrial espionage is a real thing, if you believe it or not.

AWS knows more precise numbers than the public, and they may know an app or a service is really popular before it crests in the public zeitgeist, but I don't believe they would know earlier enough than the rest of the public to make competitive product roadmap decisions.

Does Amazon allow human employees to review the analytics of client sites? If I was a big customer like Netflix, I would demand that a restriction like this be written into the contract.

Of course, Amazon could lie, but now if Netflix has a reason to suspect wrongdoing, they could sue.

> Edit: Maybe I’m a bit paranoid but this feels like a great way for them to get to know exactly who your customers are and what their behavior is.

You are not paranoid. That's exactly the business model of the retail website when hosting independent merchants.

The lion waits until you finished eating dinner...

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