By accepting this offer, you agree that Amazon has the right to collect anonymized web traffic data. This helps us improve your customer experience and offer you more relevant product suggestions when you search on Amazon.com and other Amazon affiliated properties.
Edit:
More interestingly perhaps, this allows Amazon to bypass the tracking restrictions at the platform level (say enforced by Apple, and has harmed Facebook).
Dropping to the network infrastructure level may make attribution and tracking on Amazon Advertising best in class across not just Amazon.com, but other properties? I don't know enough about the space so just musing, but I can't help feel this is a major development that's a bit more than Prime members now get more free stuff.
Seeing as how all ISPs and mobile service providers already do all that and more, It really doesn't mean much to me if its AT&T or Amazon doing the tracking
AT&T is selling your phone calls and text messages to marketers, how to opt out
I work at AWS so I'm not neutral here, but how would this even work? Now that web and app traffic is encrypted, mobile providers can "see" what websites and app you access via your DNS lookups and destination IPs, and only some of the time, but that's about it. It doesn't get to the level of specific product purchases or much that you could put into a recommendation engine.
Man all that data is over rated and worthless. Monitoring ppl 24x7 is like keeping tabs on your cat 24x7. Nothing that interesting is going on. That doesn't mean the data isn't over priced and over sold to schmucks. But that game has been going on for so long everyone playing the games knows how useless the data is.
I love it. Just keep jamming more random stuff in there and periodically saying, “you know, we give you so many amazing benefits that we just have no choice but to raise the membership fee again!”
Or split it off like they did with music storage (and deleting all but 250 of my stored songs), then peppering me with requests to upgrade to prime music 24/7.
I use prime because I have enough need for the shipping aspects of it that it works out favorably. Prime video is a very nice bonus.
Beyond that, there is a lot of hassle to being connected to Amazon. All their e-readers and audible can't help but advertise incessantly. These are apps where I want to open to the same place maybe a hundred times in a row as I read or listen to a long book. Yet, every time, it opens to the store page and I have drill down through my library to find my current book. If I'm on to my next book and search for it while in the library section of the app, it will pull up results from the store as well.
Amazon employees had unrestricted access to all stored and live Ring video? Just one employee they mention used it to watch 50,000 videos of women in their homes… And they paid just $5.8mm to settle.
If privacy of users isn‘t forced on these companies, there will be a future where watching nude photos and videos of their customers will be a corporate benefit for Amazon executives.
The last 3 items I ordered were obviously dirty used items missing parts, thrown loose in boxes without the factory packaging, and no padding. Like you said, it seems they are selling things that were found in the garbage, or at thrift stores/garage sales as new items.
At this point I am willing to pay 2x for an item I can trust from anyone but Amazon.
If they can take over my monthly phone bill that’s a huge gap. Prime is what $150? What almost 10x cheaper than my phone bill. Of course, the odds that it will offer an equivalent feature set is probably minimal so there will be a switching cost.
the funny thing is that one of the reasons I keep my prime is because it's a flea market where I can find stuff that I have an extremely hard time finding locally or need to pay exorbitant shipping, for 5-7 days delivery, from others.
The problem with bundling is it becomes harder to justify the more stuff you do not use. Prime Video already caused this for those who just wanted shipping.
Amazon's appeal is that any one of its services would be a decent price for what you get for the whole bundle. I pay $10 for my Prime membership when to get the same 4k video streaming on Netflix it is $20. With that $10 I also get free shipping and all these other features that I don't care if I use or not because just the video and shipping is a deal. If the prime price was $30 it'd be totally different math, but it's not, it's a deal any way I cut it.
I expect you are in the minority in terms of rationale. For most people, the more you get in the bundle, the greater the incentive, the faster the flywheel spins for Amazon. This is why bundling is both so powerful as a strategy and is also often the target of anti-competitive complaints.
The flip side is that this makes Prime much more sticky - if you want to cancel Prime you need to find a new mobile provider and port your number over.
There's no way they keep Prime at the same price while also adding mobile service, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. Or maybe they do and start raising Prime prices in a year or two, knowing that said sticky-ness will keep people on Prime even if it starts costing close to the amount you'd pay for individual mobile service anyway.
Amazon spokesperson was just quoted denying this. "We're always exploring adding more benefits for prime members but we do not have plans to add wireless at this time."
This is interesting. I hope it grows in scope cuz AT&T needs to go die already.
I dont know how big Telcos havent been gobbled up by larger groups yet. They are such a slow moving gigantic revenue generating juicy targets. Big tech (advertising/media/cloud) is not big enough to do the gobbling. But big retail Walmart/Amazon are most def large enough to take out AT&T. And hope they do so cause I prefer dealing with them than the telcos.
ATT/Verizon/T-Mobile are dumb pipes subject to lots of regulation. The only one with decent profit margin is Verizon, and they are already the most expensive.
ATT is loaded up with debt from stupid attempts to not just be a dumb pipe, and I do not see much upside from buying any of them. Any future cash flows are surely already priced in since they are all basically utilities, and I do not see where the efficiency/synergy gains would be for another business to merge with them.
Big tech would much rather commoditize the telcos and treat them as dumb pipes. You don't have to eat everyone upstream of you, as long as you capture most of the value and leave some bits to the commodity suppliers it's fine.
On the internet, most of the value (ads, shopping, socia etc.) is captured by tech cos. The pipes (despite the net neutrality reversal) continue to stay dumb pipes.
Telecom industry isn’t that attractive a target because they have high capital costs, actual competition, minimal moats, and are stuck on an endless upgrade treadmill 4g, 5g, …
AT&T is specifically a poor option because they are loaded up with so much debt.
I think you have your numbers wrong. Big tech is in some cases 10-20 times bigger than AT&T (market valuation). Big retail is just around double if you look at Walmart and everyone else much smaller (if you remove Amazon which I count as big tech).
I'm not quite sure it would be a benefit for the end users to have big tech also own the wireless networks.
Amazon is not going to go out and build towers. They are going to license capacity from one of the three remaining infrastructure-providing carriers left (probably AT&T).
I would just be happy if there was a way I could simply buy and download audiobooks
instead it’s some kafkaesque kabuki dance/rube Goldberg machine required to listen to an audiobook without getting into a long-term monopolistic audible subscription
This would almost surely cannibalize big parts of existing business for whatever carrier signs on and just transfer the margins to Amazon. I'm pretty curious if Amazon really has the leverage to make that happen.
the kingsmen movies are... such an uncommon niche. It's got aggressively american populist plots, but its written in a classic hollywood style that glosses over in a way that people don't seem to notice that it's so unusual. People remember the action scenes. They don't remember the main plot points about the elites and the government actively conspiring to kill off the poor as a popular class-wide mentality.
the advertisements do this too. They're very much just showing the cool action scenes. very strange.
This would be perfect for my work phone (i.e. a semi-disposable line), especially since my phone is connected to my home network through Tailscale (i.e. WireGuard) pretty much 24x7
For a while, and maybe still now, you could buy Motorola phones on Amazon for a lower price, but with the lock-screen ads that the Kindle Fire range uses. No thank you!
[+] [-] ctvo|2 years ago|reply
By accepting this offer, you agree that Amazon has the right to collect anonymized web traffic data. This helps us improve your customer experience and offer you more relevant product suggestions when you search on Amazon.com and other Amazon affiliated properties.
Edit:
More interestingly perhaps, this allows Amazon to bypass the tracking restrictions at the platform level (say enforced by Apple, and has harmed Facebook).
Dropping to the network infrastructure level may make attribution and tracking on Amazon Advertising best in class across not just Amazon.com, but other properties? I don't know enough about the space so just musing, but I can't help feel this is a major development that's a bit more than Prime members now get more free stuff.
[+] [-] shmatt|2 years ago|reply
AT&T is selling your phone calls and text messages to marketers, how to opt out
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24756042
[+] [-] colmmacc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gsatic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xnx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wintermutestwin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fisherjeff|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LanceH|2 years ago|reply
I use prime because I have enough need for the shipping aspects of it that it works out favorably. Prime video is a very nice bonus.
Beyond that, there is a lot of hassle to being connected to Amazon. All their e-readers and audible can't help but advertise incessantly. These are apps where I want to open to the same place maybe a hundred times in a row as I read or listen to a long book. Yet, every time, it opens to the store page and I have drill down through my library to find my current book. If I'm on to my next book and search for it while in the library section of the app, it will pull up results from the store as well.
[+] [-] kmfrk|2 years ago|reply
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/...
[+] [-] zaroth|2 years ago|reply
Amazon employees had unrestricted access to all stored and live Ring video? Just one employee they mention used it to watch 50,000 videos of women in their homes… And they paid just $5.8mm to settle.
[+] [-] deutschepost|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon223345|2 years ago|reply
I probably would use Amazon cell phone service, but would be good if I could just buy that, not all of prime
[+] [-] UniverseHacker|2 years ago|reply
The last 3 items I ordered were obviously dirty used items missing parts, thrown loose in boxes without the factory packaging, and no padding. Like you said, it seems they are selling things that were found in the garbage, or at thrift stores/garage sales as new items.
At this point I am willing to pay 2x for an item I can trust from anyone but Amazon.
[+] [-] vlovich123|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yumraj|2 years ago|reply
the funny thing is that one of the reasons I keep my prime is because it's a flea market where I can find stuff that I have an extremely hard time finding locally or need to pay exorbitant shipping, for 5-7 days delivery, from others.
[+] [-] qgin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bombcar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SketchySeaBeast|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] next_xibalba|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bentcorner|2 years ago|reply
There's no way they keep Prime at the same price while also adding mobile service, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. Or maybe they do and start raising Prime prices in a year or two, knowing that said sticky-ness will keep people on Prime even if it starts costing close to the amount you'd pay for individual mobile service anyway.
[+] [-] rabidonrails|2 years ago|reply
Reported by CNBC at 9:40ET
[+] [-] ksey3|2 years ago|reply
I dont know how big Telcos havent been gobbled up by larger groups yet. They are such a slow moving gigantic revenue generating juicy targets. Big tech (advertising/media/cloud) is not big enough to do the gobbling. But big retail Walmart/Amazon are most def large enough to take out AT&T. And hope they do so cause I prefer dealing with them than the telcos.
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|2 years ago|reply
ATT is loaded up with debt from stupid attempts to not just be a dumb pipe, and I do not see much upside from buying any of them. Any future cash flows are surely already priced in since they are all basically utilities, and I do not see where the efficiency/synergy gains would be for another business to merge with them.
[+] [-] safog|2 years ago|reply
On the internet, most of the value (ads, shopping, socia etc.) is captured by tech cos. The pipes (despite the net neutrality reversal) continue to stay dumb pipes.
[+] [-] Retric|2 years ago|reply
AT&T is specifically a poor option because they are loaded up with so much debt.
[+] [-] flakeoil|2 years ago|reply
I'm not quite sure it would be a benefit for the end users to have big tech also own the wireless networks.
[+] [-] polski-g|2 years ago|reply
AT&T will never go away.
[+] [-] op00to|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsizzle|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refulgentis|2 years ago|reply
- unlimited service
- for free, maybe $10/month
- vague "increase loyalty/stickiness" claims
- Amazon fired 30K people in last 6 months due to "economic conditions"
Is it 2008 or 2018?
Alternatively, when are we unionizing?
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|2 years ago|reply
instead it’s some kafkaesque kabuki dance/rube Goldberg machine required to listen to an audiobook without getting into a long-term monopolistic audible subscription
[+] [-] tyingq|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tezza|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spywaregorilla|2 years ago|reply
the advertisements do this too. They're very much just showing the cool action scenes. very strange.
[+] [-] anaganisk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drtz|2 years ago|reply
"Free" shipping can easily turn into $6-$12 if you're not careful at checkout.
[+] [-] nunez|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nazgulsenpai|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karaterobot|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csense|2 years ago|reply
How exactly is mobile service "free" if Prime is a product you have to pay for?
[+] [-] stonogo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1letterunixname|2 years ago|reply
houses?
trains?
ships?
elevators?
airplanes?
pacemakers?
[+] [-] version_five|2 years ago|reply