Amazon sues Alexaholic, everyone loses

http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=350

by pg • 19 years ago

14 12 19 years ago

blogs.zdnet.com

pg• 19 years ago

You know, there's something about Amazon. I keep noticing things that are just a little off, morally. First it was the one-click patent. Then I learned that their employment agreement forbids you from starting a startup with anyone else who has worked at Amazon, even if you didn't know them. (Don't worry, they'd never dare enforce it.) And now they sue someone simply for making a better UI to their lame site. There's starting to be a pattern.

If Alexa had a decent UI, Statsaholic wouldn't be a threat. Instead of suing this guy for doing their own job properly, they should just fix Alexa.

brett• 19 years ago

It seems pretty clear that you're right. What makes it hard to stomach though is that they're seriously on to something with S3 and EC2. Moral issues aside, should developers be wary of the poison spreading to the web services division that they've built their startups around?

It would make me feel better if the other shoe dropped and some other huge company released some competition for S3 and EC2 (I'm looking at you Google). That would provide some competitive protection from them screwing people over and another viable option. I would hope for a startup to fill the void, but this seems like as good a candidate as any for the type of problem where the big guys have some advantage.

jey• 19 years ago

It would make me feel better if the other shoe dropped and some other huge company released some competition for S3 and EC2 (I'm looking at you Google).

Sun has something similar to EC2 called "Sun Grid Compute Utility": http://sun.com/sungrid/

staunch• 19 years ago

Surely they will patent S3/EC2, if they haven't already, and sue Google when they release something similar.

Just like with their one click patent Amazon should be raked over the coals for this. It's just too pathetic for words.

andreyf2• 19 years ago

It's confusing to talk about Amazon as if it were a single acting agent. It seems to me as if someone there has just hired some overly enthusiastic lawyers, and top management/PR department hasn't realized how much it's hurting the company just yet.

This doesn't take away from the engineers that seem to have done a great job implementing S3/EC2 before the competition has much of anything comprable to offer.

ecuzzillo• 19 years ago

If top management were paying attention, it would notice that that's a dumb, bad, evil thing to do. So, either top management is evil, or it's not paying attention.

usablecontent• 19 years ago

The law suit filing is here http://www.scribd.com/doc/34365/Amazons-Law-Suit-Against-Statsaholic

mattjaynes2• 19 years ago

It's funny that so many big companies let their ego get in the way of good business.

I imagine that this lawsuit and loss of community good-will will cost them millions of dollars. Uh, millions of dollars that they could have used to just acquire Alexaholic. They would have gained good-will, great press, and a great developer already passionate about their product.

What a huge blunder - sad to see, especially since they're so innovative in other areas.

andreyf2• 19 years ago

It's hard to fire workaholic lawyers, and once you've hired them, they'll find people to sue, with or without good reason. Could the moral of the story be: don't hire in-house lawyers if you can, and make sure someone PR-competent holds a big stick over their heads if you do.

mattjaynes2• 19 years ago

Great point ;)

Benja• 19 years ago

What I'd like to see is companies hiring lawyers who spend their surplus time blogging. Being involved in the community should prevent them from being as seriously out of tune as this, and if they spend some of their time explaining tech law to the unenlightened (like me), that'll reflect back on the company.

mattmaroon• 19 years ago

Seems like they should have just hired the guy.

Amazon sues Alexaholic, everyone loses

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