Hacker News Reader

Comment by ConfusedDog | Hacker News Reader

As a person have actually used TaoBao, JD, and Amazon.cn, I can tell Amazon.cn was far behind them on both execution and product variety. I only have a vague impression of China's rules imposed on business, if they did, for sure Amazon was screwed so badly it didn't move a single inch over the past few years. Literally done nothing at all to compete. I'm not surprised they gave up.

View on HN

Never used z.cn but saw a few neighbours ordering from them in Shenzhen. Probably recent tech books in English I guess. I did try AWS in China and it was absolutely shocking. Clearly they never prioritized China and the inevitable happened. I run a business in China, it's not easy but it's interesting.

I heard AWS works in China, just not sure how well. Considering the GFW, I wouldn't have chosen it for projects serving Chinese users. Likely same consumer mentality is also playing a part against Amazon.cn and other foreign tech giants.

A local company bought a franchise for AWS from Amazon in China

In amazonaws.cn there's no KMS and they only gave the ability to use virtual MFA devices at the end of 2017 [0]

All of this is to say nothing of the additional restrictions imposed by the government -- I agree with contingencies that it's "not easy" to run a business in (AWS) China, but I think that at this point everybody who's seriously thinking about doing so knows what to expect.

[0] https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/new/2017/now-add-additional-prot...

They offer KMS literally every region except China. No point in running a security/encryption service in China when they're just going to steal the keys.

The tragedy here is that the government isn't the only adversary. Without encryption, users are being left exposed to black hats who can get at the backend storage, either through hacking or through failure to securely decommission physical storage media.

AWS in China is not run by AWS:

"To provide the best experience for customers in China and to comply with China’s legal and regulatory requirements, AWS has collaborated with China local partners with proper telecom licenses for delivering cloud services. The service operator and provider for AWS China (Beijing) Region based out of Beijing and adjacent areas is Beijing Sinnet Technology Co., Ltd. (Sinnet), and the service operator and provider for AWS (Ningxia) Region based out of Ningxia is Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology Co., Ltd. (NWCD)."

https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/

It was when I used it in 2016. And they'd been there for years. And it was shit. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11209227

Yeah your company needs government licenses to do anything in China. That's nothing new. Don't blame Amazon for that.

As an active user of AWS China, let me tell you that don't take those words at face value. AWS China business actually is growing really fast for past several years.

Sorry, which words do you mean?

AWS in China is, like, doing the best job that the government in China allows them to do. It's not very good. Almost everything that might provide an inconvenient security barrier to inspection is absent.

>Literally done nothing at all to compete

You see that is the thing. Actually I was too afraid to type this in my another comment as it might anger man. But that is exactly what I felt.

And I don't even understand why, they didn't even try.

TMall ( Spin off from Taobao offering higher quality products ) was only established in 2014, and that was targeted as slightly premium segment where Amazon could or should have been. So it proves the market did exist, Amazon for what ever reason failed to capture it.

And the benefits of Amazon China prime members are way less than that of us

Reply on news.ycombinator.com