alt Hacker NewsOdd story. If you strip out the "Amazon" and "AI" stuff, the core seems to be that there's a tech company offering a service called Buy For Me which crawls various merchants who operate their own storefronts, lists the products they find for Buy For Me's users, and have a button the users can press which...buys the product.
Which is a little odd, and the value is questionable, but fundamentally seems...fine? You're a merchant, you're selling pencils on the internet, people are buying your pencils from you. And historically the way this might have been built would be something like a desktop application that users install, and which then goes and loads websites, displays them, fills in payment info, etc. Which of course is exactly what the web browser does already.
And all of the complaints about how it should be opt-in also feel odd. If you install WooCommerce and put a storefront up on the public internet, you've pretty obviously opted in to "selling your products on the internet". You don't need to tell Firefox that it's okay for people to use it to buy your stuff!
Of course, this isn't a desktop app, it's agentic AI run by Amazon, which certainly makes it feel different, but I'm not entirely sure how different it should make our analysis.
But also, the story raises a bunch of interesting questions and then doesn't answer any of them:
> Chua also received at least several orders for products that were either out of stock or no longer existed on her website.
How exactly did this happen? The story is that the orders are being placed through the normal storefront, right? So how exactly?
Or:
> Gorin sells wholesale through a password-protected section of her website, where retailers must submit resale or exemption certificates so orders are properly exempted from sales tax. She said she was still able to complete a “Buy for Me” purchase of a product pulled from her wholesale site despite never opting into the program — a scenario that could expose her business to tax liability if individual shoppers were able to place tax-exempt orders. Gorin also worries that surfacing wholesale pricing could undermine profit margins, allow competitors to undercut her prices or bypass minimum order requirements designed to keep wholesale sales viable.
That's just begging for an explanation. Is Amazon is somehow using stolen credentials to obtain price information? Or is Goren mistaken and the info isn't password protected at all? (And if not, why not?)
I'd also be interested in unpacking a bit more the legal and contractual implications of agreements like Mochi Kids has signed. The brand apparently doesn't allow its products on Amazon, and doesn't allow partners like Mochi Kids to sell on Amazon, but...Michi Kids isn't? Mechanically someone is buying the products at retail and effectively relisting them. Which...I dunno, feels legal? Is any agreement actually being violated here? Does the brand have a course of action? Does Mochi Kids have an actual legal obligation to opt out? Does Amazon have a legal obligation to let vendors opt out? Is Amazon legally buying anything from Mochi Kids, or is the customer the person using Amazon? Given the payment info being used is the customer's, I'm not sure Amazon has a commercial relationship with the brand or the vendor?
And so on. It feels like too much of the story is being carried by it being about Amazon and AI, which means the author felt fine just glossing over the details.
Replies
> Which is a little odd, and the value is questionable, but fundamentally seems...fine? You're a merchant, you're selling pencils on the internet, people are buying your pencils from you.
Why not apply your exact "its fine" standards to Amazon too ? Standards go BOTH ways, after all.
> In November, Amazon sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity over its new Comet browser, which lets users ask an AI agent to find and buy items on Amazon. In a statement, Amazon said third-party shopping agents should “operate openly and respect service provider decisions” on whether or not to participate.
These people want Amazon to "respect service provider decisions" - just like Amazon demands of other people.
>Which is a little odd, and the value is questionable, but fundamentally seems...fine?
1. Brand management is strict for a reason. You don't want some third party pretending to represent you and suddenly they become malicious or simply get hacked and have their customers (and indirectly, your customers) assosiswte you with frustration and danger. Or even something completely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things but a PR nightmare. Like having Nintendo products in a list next to some Magnum condoms.
2. There's subtle issues with making things "too convenient" to buy. Trackers and affiliates get frustrated, so it might make you less money in the long term. You might have related items to tempt buyers to buy more so spending goes down. Less users accounts (be it an email list, curation algorithms, or following on social media) weaken outreach for future holiday deals.
And those are 2 points when not considering a trillion dollar tech giant and the Ai concerns.
What you described in the first bit is essentially what the Shop app does (but in clear partnership with the retailers).
If I were a merchant and I was bothered by this, I’d start figuring out how to exploit it. Ask your developers to code in the ability to detect the AI buyer (email address is a dead giveaway for now) and give them higher prices. Oh, you have an automated buy-bot? I smell opportunity.
If you strip out the Microsoft and Internet Explorer there was just some rando tech company giving away a free as in beer browser license. No biggie.
Yeah, this is structurally no different than hiring an assistant to shop for you.
The complaint isn't a moral one. It's fundamentally a trademark dispute. Manufacturers of goods want control about how their products are presented to consumers. Hermès doesn't want their stuff on the shelves at TJ-Max because it "dilutes their brand" or whatever.
Unfortunately trademark law doesn't speak to AI Agents, which is why there's a tech angle here. This is likely going to need to be solved with legislation.
Thank you for this careful comment.
"Fundamentally fine"? How do you think Amazon would react to someone scraping their marketplace and posting the inventory under their own service? Unless the answer is "they'd be perfectly happy to have to opt out individually in each case", that's a double standard. The only reason they wouldn't actually need to care about this is because they have comparatively inexhaustive resources to be able to shut this sort of thing down with a sledgehammer without having to risk meaningful consequences rather than what they're telling sellers to do, which is to ask nicely to stop being included, and that's a sign of an unhealthy ecosystem where competition is non-existent.