It's fun to bash on great accumulations of power, that's my instinct too.
But despite all the controversial things Amazon has done, they still seem to live up to their #1 leadership principle [0]:
Customer Obsession - Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
Since the first result of the WF acquisition is lower prices for customers, it looks like that tradition continues.
If Amazon makes good on their third principle, "Invent and Simplify", they'll fund lower prices with higher efficiency and greatly expand the number of people who can afford WF quality.
> Customer Obsession - Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
Oh yes? I never asked to be reminded 10 times a day to become a "Prime Member", every single time I purchase something via Amazon using evil dark patterns (make the "skip" option appear as a text link and not a button).
This and the whole concept of selling certains items to Prime members ONLY, and the fact that their prices are far from being as good as they were just 2-3 years ago, I can tell you the obsession now is clearly with profit margins than anything else.
As a paying Prime customer, I've never asked for Amazon to restrict Prime Video to only tablets, phones, and specifically Sony Bravia Android TVs. They eventually added AppleTV support, I guess? But I have a friend who doesn't have an AppleTV and so she can't watch Prime Video on her TV.
If Amazon is trying to use Prime Video as a bonus selling point, I don't see any point in restricting their own 'TV' shows to 'anything except a TV'. Pretty sure my friend didn't ask for that.
I haven't seen a major brand smart TV made in the past ~4-5 years without an Amazon Prime Video app.
My LG, Samsung, and Sony TVs have it.
Apple is an Apple problem, they usually want a cut of all sales, since Amazon Prime Video offers subscription, pay per view rental, and digital purchase of content it would mean that Amazon would have to pay Apple a share of the proceeds which might be a problem since the margins are already pretty low.
Also last time I've checked Amazon Prime Video works on any device that can accept Chromecasts so this means any Android TV even if it's doesn't have an Android app (I don't know if these even exist) if you have an Android phone, tablet, or laptop can be used to watch the content.
And lastly lets not forget that a Fire TV stick costs 40$....
> Amazon would have to pay Apple a share of the proceeds which might be a problem since the margins are already pretty low.
Not true. Amazon can still have an app on Apple TV, and Apple won't get a cut, if Amazon sells subscriptions through their website instead of the app. That's what they're already doing on iOS at least.
> And lastly lets not forget that a Fire TV stick costs 40$....
This is the problem, not the solution. Nobody wants one device per service. I don't want an Apple TV for Apple stuff, a Fire stick for Amazon, a Roku for something else, and so on. It's annoying, and my TV doesn't have that many HDMI ports.
It's not about the subscriptions it's about the rentals and the purchases, it could've changed since then but Prime Video doesn't support purchasing on mobile which makes it irrelevant for the TV.
>This is the problem, not the solution. Nobody wants one device per service. I don't want an Apple TV for Apple stuff, a Fire stick for Amazon, a Roku for something else, and so on. It's annoying, and my TV doesn't have that many HDMI ports.
Isn't it funny that this is an Apple problem always?
Yup. I have a fire stick, it's fantastic. It does everything, and if there's something it doesn't do then I can likely make it do it somehow, because it's just an android device that I'm free to sideload regular APKs on to.
I love the damn thing, best £30 I've spent in a long long time. It does Prime video, it does netflix, it does spotify, it does plex, kodi, it does sonic 2 for fuck's sake.
Yup, you can get Sonic 1, 2 and CD on the amazon store, IIRC you'll have to sideload kodi though, not a massively difficult task. It's as simple as turning on developer mode in the settings and then using an app on your phone to adb install the kodi APK to the fire stick. You can also just use adb in a terminal on your PC or whatever, up to you - but there's some apps on the play store that make it super easy.
I watch all my video over Chromecast. Making the TV just a screen controlled by my phone is a model that works really well for me. Alas, I've never watched any Amazon video because of that. You'd think Amazon would be more interested in really hooking me on prime instead of pushing their fire products.
Does the Prime Video app support the Chromecast protocol now? Or are you referring to a full screen cast from an Android device, that's just mirroring the device screen?
Newer Vizio TVs use what's essentially an embedded/modified Chromecast as their smart tv OS, which works really really well. But since Prime Video on iOS (last time I tried) doesn't support the Chromecast protocol, I can't watch anything from Prime Video on my TV.
No chromecast support. I don't own a smart tv so my chromecast is the life of my living room TV.
It's kind annoying since I can only watch it on computer or tablet.
My NVIDIA Shield Android TV box has the App.
I don't know what LeEco even is, I've googled it and it's a chinese brand do they even operate outside of China/India?....
No, it plays on all 4 devices. I said three of them played on my TV. Those three were the chromecast, fire tv and roku. Although I guess the laptop could display on my tv with an hdmi cable, so all 4 methods should work.
I have to question the morality of a corporate ethos like this. It sounds like the flip-side of "in the interest of shareholder value", which can result in collateral damage to the environment, communities, politics, etc.
Amazon has arm-twisted competitors like Zappos into sub-optimal acquisitions by selling goods at a loss, and it's a fair question to ask if less or no competition really benefits consumers in the long-run.
I'm starting to wonder if all large successful corporations are just a type of legal sociopath, driven to crazy extremes via corporate zealotry.
Capitalism is a pretty organic and free system. I think its just people who are exploitative. It the economy were even more free, it would be even worse.
Given that freer markets are associated with massive reductions in poverty and increased standards of living around the world, what makes you think a freer economy would be "even worse"?
Even worse as in "more exploitative". I was arguing that people, not the economic structure, are exploitative. So an economy where people are more free, there will be more exploitation (which isn't a fault of capitalism but of people). I'm very pro-free-market.
I agree they do that in many ways, but the pervasive issue of counterfeits on Amazon greatly erodes my trust of buying from Amazon, and has made me buy a lot of things off Amazon, even if it's a higher cost.
> Customer Obsession - Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
This seems like one of those "warm and fuzzy" things to frame and put on a wall somewhere, but I don't believe (based on my experience) that Amazon is far superior in this respect compared to others (though there are many companies with absolutely pathetic customer service). As an external observer, I see Amazon's primary and foremost principle as one to grow market share at almost any cost (to anyone) and crush competition through that route.
I wish Amazon would obsess over my shipping experience a little more. Where I live, they're beat by just about everyone.
With the problem of counterfeit merchandise that they have, there's virtually no reason for me to continue being a customer there, other than the convenience factor--and for that, eBay provides the same service.
My only question about the anytime number and worker treatment: with all the smart people working on the fire phone, how come nobody felt comfortable calling that number to say the phone was going on the wrong direction?
Someone (who worked on the phone) commented here the other day (sorry, I cannot remember which article it was on) that the phone was praised for it's technology, and bunch of those went into other products (I think the camera was called out specifically). They also said the phone's OS drives all their devices now.
I can believe that a lot of these engineers worked on a smaller thing, and some of them did call out that the phone wasn't going well. Just because they called it out doesn't mean they can override PMs gunning for a big promotion :) (or Bezos set on having his pet idea in the market).
Another famous Bezos tidbit which seems relevant to this WH decision: “There are two kinds of companies: those that try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.”
>If Amazon makes good on their third principle, "Invent and Simplify", they'll fund lower prices with higher efficiency and greatly expand the number of people who can afford WF quality.
This is nonsense. Whole Foods made a killing by convincing consumers that what they are buying is somehow magically "better" than regular grocery store items with clever marketing and presentation creating a false dichotomy between "natural" food and the rest. I've yet to see a single shred of evidence to back this up. I'd expect Amazon to do nothing less.
Not only do they have such a number, but at least the last time I called that number, there wasn't even a voice menu where I had to "press 0" to talk to an operator. I dialed the number and a human picked up the phone.
No but they have a ridiculously friendly refund policy. You can lie and say you saw someone stole your package from the front porch and they will give you a refund the next day.
People reading this: don't do it because from I've read you can get permanently banned from shopping at amazon.com for doing this "too much". Absolutely not worth the risk!
Yep: 1-866-216-1072 is the general line. You can find this by signing in, clicking on customer service and going through the menu options where they try to route you to a specialized call.
But despite all the controversial things Amazon has done, they still seem to live up to their #1 leadership principle [0]:
Customer Obsession - Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
Since the first result of the WF acquisition is lower prices for customers, it looks like that tradition continues.
If Amazon makes good on their third principle, "Invent and Simplify", they'll fund lower prices with higher efficiency and greatly expand the number of people who can afford WF quality.
[0] https://www.amazon.jobs/principles