Amazon has a major issue with screening against knockoffs
and counterfeits, and the severity of the issues surrounding this grows every day. For instance, my friend bought a camera that looked similar to the Arlo, but it contained a telnet backdoor. Another would ping a strange AliCloud VPS over UDP that appeared to contain data related to network configuration without any explanation or ability to be disabled, short of router firewall rules. As knockoff vendors get more clever at disguising their devices as the one's they're trying to copy, an increasing amount of less-technical users become ever-more at risk regarding their security and privacy.
Fundamentally, it reminds me of eBay without the feedback score. I (and probably many of you) know / knew that when buying from eBay, the seller is really some person in Milwaukee, or a warehouse in New Jersey. I checked feedback ratings, history, and so on for each purchase. My mother knows this too.
In Amazon, I know to try to do this, but I don’t quite trust that what I bought came from who it claims to be. My mother has no concept of a “third party seller.” She just knows “it’s on Prime!”
IMHO the Amazon user experience tries to explicitly bury the 3rd party “bazaar” inside the “store,” and (some time ago) successfully managed to mingle them both into a single “marketplace.”
When I’m shopping for a 1978 printing of a book, I want the bazaar. When I’m shopping for a Chromecast, I want a “store.”
The problem on Amazon is that it doesn't matter which vendor you buy from. If it's Amazon or 'fulfilled by Amazon', all the goods are intermingled. It's like going to the bazaar and paying your money to the trustworthy vendor but when it's time to get your item, a dog goes and grabs your item from any random vendor he sees that looks like the thing you bought.
There's also the mixing of reviews, even across models, which makes it much harder for the uneducated user to weed out the bad eggs. The entire Amazon user experience is designed to hide the mixed source nature of their inventory and instead make it appear like a unified storefront.
It's interesting looking at the reputation and practices of amazon and ebay over the past 20 years. Ebay started out with random individuals, and slowly became more reputable as it attracted large sellers of knock-off brands. Amazon started out with decent brands, then slowly became less reputable as they picked up large sellers of knock-off brands. At this point, they occupy essentially the same space, despite starting off with completely different bases.
>Amazon has a major issue with screening against knockoffs and counterfeits
Does it ever! I refuse to buy expensive electronics or equipment on Amazon after getting burned with a knockoff Bose headphones and SWISSGEAR luggage. You don't even get the benefit of cheap prices as those things were within reasonable range of their typical retail price (and with luggage the price fluctuation is always high). It's insane.
I use to buy my electronic from specialty shops. Cameras from B&H and audio from Sweetwater. I switched because my purchases were less frequent and as much. My day to day work is education and I do side work and small videos for work. I know that B&H has had problems with ethical treatment of their workers and were fined $3.4 million by the labor department. One I heard things have been corrected and that things are different there but they actually were the only place I could go to get everything I needed. If you make a Purchase Order you don't want to fill out multiple of ones from new vendors.
Fast forward to last week I was given a budget of about $6,000 to purchase company equipment and I looked at Amazon for 2 minutes and went right to B&H. After I submitted my order to my company I looked up everything on Amazon to see what I was missing. Well everything was bundles or weird price ranges with only 1 or 2 items left for sale. After 45 minutes I realized that it was a mess and I couldn't come up with a clear answer of how much anything was going to cost unless I had a credit card (We do purchase orders) and just looking things up it was a whole $50 less. Glad I went to a single seller.
The last expensive electronic item I got from amazon was a surround sound speaker. It can beat up as shit in a box. I ordered another of the same speaker off eBay, came in pristine condition.
well one issue is that the counterfeit gear is pushing out legit items. it is a bizarre day when I resort to buying from Ebay sellers to get what I want.
now I have not see the issue in food products, I tend to buy certain condiments and garnish type items via Amazon as they are not locally available but given time and Amazon's looking the other way with the marketplace I expect it
Don’t buy name brands from 3rd party sellers on Amazon. Pretty simple. Purchasing on amazon isn’t about getting a “deal”, it’s about getting something at or around retail price without having to go to the store. If you are looking for cheap name brand items, go to TJMax or something.
That explanation doesn't make sense in the current case though. I'd imagine, the usual difficulty in blocking counterfeits is telling them apart from the real product - which you do want people to sell. However, if you already make a point of blocking the real product, shouldn't blocking counterfeits be even easier?
(I could imagine you still have problems with products that just "happen" to look almost - but not quite - like the original, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The link shows products that look exactly like a Chromecast, even though the actual Chromecast is blocked.)
So: amazon manages a fairly... unmanaged marketplace. There's a lot of cruft and some fraud. I get the impression it's not quite as bad here (amazon.de) as the reports make amazon.com sound, but deception is a huge problem; and quality in general is variable.
But having said all that - this is such a poor example to start complaining about. Nothing in the product description sounds like a counterfeit; it's simply yet-another possibly poor-quality competitor to the chrome cast. And sure, the supplier made the really dubious decision to include a chrome-logo-shape in the actual device. But the seller isn't amazon; and the description doesn't use anything to hint at it being a chromecast - so it's unlikely people looking for a chromecast will be mislead (or indeed even manage to find this thing).
All in all: this sounds like the seller is possibly counterfeiting, but it's not a great example of amazon tolerating counterfeiting, because it's easy to imagine a reasonable middleman might never have noticed.
Re: "All in all: this sounds like the seller is possibly counterfeiting, but it's not a great example of amazon tolerating counterfeiting,"
Less than ideal example? Possibly. But still valid.
Amazon. One of the few 800 lb tech terrors. And they're doing what to solve this problem? Tolerate is being too kind. When you're making the choices they're making you're an enabler.
All the revenue. All those resources and...that gets them a free pass? That's disturbing.
The way Amazon handles disputes and poor quality goods is beyond frustrating. I bought a security camera with a motion sensor that was supposed to text me if there was movement (I was traveling through some less savoury countries and wanted to know if anyone was checking through my room) and the thing broke in the first day or two. Of course the buyer refunds me a token dollar and Amazon's refute process somehow doesn't work.
My new strategy with Amazon is simple: If it's a book, sure. Otherwise no way, I can't trust anything there. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit against them by now for all the counterfeit / poor quality goods / spyware.
I used to only have a policy against ordering food items from amazon but after I ordered a couple bottles of Neutrogena face wash (standard stuff we've always used) and it made several people in my family break out immediately after using it I won't order any soaps or toiletry products either. If Amazon could guarantee there was no comingling I'd pay extra for some things for it.
They've actually been proactive in removing items that are reported as dangerous. I had my eye on a juicer, but a review had posted that they noticed some plastic shavings showing up in their juice.
The next day, the product was listed as no longer available.
Amazon already sells OTC drugs, including allowing third party sellers. Fake OTC drugs are almost as dangerous as fake prescription drugs (fake prescription drugs are more likely to be dangerous just by not being a good drug, but either is equally dangerous as a bad drug.)
It would help if vendors used serial registration. And perhaps they could include some signature item in the package that is difficult to copy. Electronic products would be perfect to hold a signature.
Excerpt: "The way it works is roughly like a serialization or UPC code. The brand buys the codes from Amazon and puts a unique code on every unit it creates for sale on Marketplace. All the codes are serialized; Amazon will not accept items without codes."
Just buy an Alexa / GoogleHome / Nest / SamsungSmartTV and wave your privacy goodbye. It's a free-for-all out there for invading your privacy, and the big players are in the lead. No need for obscure knockoffs.
The elephant in the room is rather "why does Amazon not sell Chromecasts?" - The answer is rather obvious but it's an illegitimate business practice when you are in the business of selling pretty much everything else. The Amazon line of products should sell based on their merits only, not because its competitors' are not available.
These companies are moving into the same market, and if they don't fight as hard as possible, they're letting their shareholders down.
I don't know if it's illegal and the DOJ is asleep at the wheel, but Google isn't going to stop: They're not content with selling people's personal data and even that they're losing to ad blockers. They're getting desperate.
Amazon isn't going to stop either, fuelling consumerism is their bread and butter, so they need to be in the middle of every shopping transaction. No market is out of bounds, but they're really struggling with media and product. These were big investments and Amazon is simply not very good at either, so they too are desperate.
We consumers are surely the collateral damage in the meantime, but besides "voting with our wallet", what else could we do? Regulation would be likely required to even allow Google and Amazon to cooperate without violating their obligations their shareholders, but what shape would that take?
Edit: I did some googling and it appears that amazon pulled both Apple TV and Chromecast because they didn't offer Amazon Prime. Which is clearly abuse of their position in the market to me but I'm just a layperson.
Then int 2017 they were slated to come back but now in 2018 I can't find chromecasts anymore. Only peripherals for it and clones.
Edit: Lol I just noticed they're selling the "fire tv stick" instead. What a stupid name.
I think distinguishing consumer and producer monopolies might be valuable here. Google and Amazon can only be monopolistic and predatory towards producers on their platforms - the sites they rank in search, the ads they sell, the videos uploaded, the sellers of things. Because they have all the audience, anyone trying to get views online, buy ads, upload videos, sell things etc are throwing out a huge majority of the market by not using these two. There can definitely be a case against them there.
But those are just because they made products consumers want to use. There is no opportunity cost to switching search engine or store website. It takes a line of text to move to duckduckgo, bing, startpage, etc from Google. It takes a moment to move over to walmart, target, ebay, overstock, newegg, etc from Amazon. Neither can be overtly predatory towards the consumers of their platforms because they have no way to lock them in without taking over the whole Internet (and yeah, Google is trying that with AMP, but I doubt they will ever have enough of the Internet under their control to start restricting / banning non-AMP sites in Chrome - if they ever did that its the most blatant monopoly abuse case since Comcast).
Speaking of Comcast, they are the other side of the coin. Comcast has sheer market dominance, uses their size to buy out and kill competition and bribe politicians, and leaves their "customers" with no alternatives while they abuse them. For about 95% of Comcasts market base your options are Comcast or move somewhere without Comcast. That is a blatant, consumer harming monopoly.
Online, Facebook is damn close to that. You cannot easily switch to Facebook competitors because social networking is defined by network effects - Facebook is infrastructure as much as search is, but one requires the people you want to be on it while the other just needs to index the sites you want to find. Anyone can index websites, only Facebook can have everyone in your extended family on it. And Facebook surely uses its monopoly position to exploit and abuse its consumers.
I just like making the distinction between the two. Both are dangerous, but for most of us the threat of Google and Amazon isn't direct, its to the businesses and services we want to use that we access through them. But it remains our choice to give Google and Amazon that power, choices you don't have with Comcast or even Facebook. As long as I can have a voice in the efficacy of their monopolies I simply feel less threatened by them.
Does Google actually sell our personal data? I know they use it to advertise more effectively but I see this claim thrown around a lot but I'm not sure I've ever seen evidence of it. I'm sure they have a treasure trove of data and use it liberally but selling it is something else entirely.
> Google is a predatory monopoly that is leveraging their existing power in search to move directly into consumer goods.
How is their search dominance coming into play here? I see leverage of youtube, and leverage of android. Plus plain-old mass media advertising campaigns. Not search.
Yeah, this sounds ridiculous if you extend it into, say, grocery stores.
"Store X has come up with their own Macaroni and Cheese that market tests show to be extremely successful, so they stop carrying Kraft"
In that scenario, should Store X be forced to carry Kraft? Of course not, people who want craft will go to any other myriad of different stores. Amazon doesn't even close to resemble a monopoly on online shopping.
I though there are strict laws against counterfeiting? It isn't even slightly different, it has the chrome logo on it!
With all the mishaps lately like sending out stones and bricks [1] instead of cameras I am worried this will carry over into other Amazon owned companies like Whole Foods.
It's not straight-up counterfeiting, since they own up to not being Chromecast, but it may not survive legal action. It's a weak defense. Google may have already started legal action. The trademark infringement is certainly there.
A lot depends on where it's made. Does Google have patents on the form factor in that country, either by treaties or by actually registering in the country? It can shut down the reselling by American companies at least.
As for food, counterfeits are unnecessary. There are already store brands which offer mostly or entirely the same food stuffs but with a derivative name (like Miracast vs. Chromecast, or Crunchy Nuts vs. Grape Nuts) and knock-off packaging.
There's also the bit where 3rd-party sellers don't exist in grocery stores.
>"It's not straight-up counterfeiting, since they own up to not being Chromecast, [...]"
I'm certain it doesn't work that way in the UK.
Small suppliers get _all_ their product confiscated in raids by Trading Standards when they sell knock-off Nike, or whatever.
Everyone knows it's knock-off (counterfeit, branded sports wear, like trainers and tracksuits). The sellers don't get let off for admitting it's fake; sometimes they go to prison, always they have goods confiscated.
By rule of law Amazon warehouses should be shut by the police until all inventory that's counterfeit can be removed by Trading Standards. Presumably they lack resources to effectively police traders larger than market stalls.
Most of the knock-offs come from China, and in China it's acceptable business to plagiarize, perhaps even encouraged if you're plagiarizing from non-Chinese companies. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9loDBwp5ST0
They can get away with selling internationally either by selling directly from China, or just playing whack-a-mole. Often companies in the west will pop up to sell the products to domestic markets, and by the time the law comes chasing after them they've already disappeared. Usually the law isn't interested in what they are selling, but only bothers to chase after them when they don't pay their sales taxes.
Looking at the first page of search results for "Chromecast" on Amazon:
Top result is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.
Second result is Amazon's Fire TV stick.
Third result is Roku Express.
4-7 are counterfeits with logos on them that don't precisely match the Chrome logo, but are clearly designed to falsely evoke Google's brand.
8 is a generic with no Google-related logo on it.
9-11 are counterfeits with almost-but-not-quite Google logos on them. 12 is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.
13-14 are accessories "for Chromecast.
15 is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.
Amazon correctly identifies which product category Chromecast is, and puts an add for Fire TV above the search results, indicating that they exercised some amount of direct (non-algorithmic) control over that page. I'd say Google has a pretty open-and-shut case for trademark infringement here.
To be fair, a Miracast device is not a Chromecast counterfeit. Miracast is older than Chromecast, and while Google's Android phones dropped Miracast support around the time Chromecast came out, Chromecast is not compatible with Miracast.
In the larger picture, this whole affair is nasty and wouldn't have to have happened if everyone supported the standard: Miracast.
Miracast is a standard, not a product. There is nothing wrong with selling a Miracast device, however this particular device is blatant Chromecast rip-off, designwise.
I was very excited about Miracast when I first came across it in 2012, but all the implementations were crap, and the Chromecast blew it out of the water when it came to ease of use.
Amazon is super weird if you don't live in a country where they have an official site. Half to two-thirds of the products can't be shipped to where I live, for Reasons, but I can't filter out those unshippable items. It's to the point where I have given up using it for anything but books.
It's the same in Ireland (inexplicably, Amazon employs tons of people here). The solution is that several businesses have popped up to reship things from the UK. There's no legal reason you couldn't. One nice thing is that when I buy from Amazon I can compare all the EU Amazon sites for price and get the cheapest.
Yep, Amazon has a massive warehouse in Poland, but doesn't have a Polish website at all. The best you can do is purchase stuff off Amazon.de, but not everything ships to Poland, despite being dispatched from a warehouse in Wroclaw.
I was reading today Amazon is going to stop carrying Nest products. It does seem odd to not carry competitors products for a store that sells everything.
Walmart has its own phone cell phone service, yet it still sells other phone brands.
I guess maybe because Amazon is getting more into hardware is maybe why they are dropping certain products. Like I wouldn't expect Apple to sell me a Dell laptop. However I view Apple more of a electronics company than a general electronics store. I view Amazon more like the online version of Walmart.
Google has a website full of garbage, knockoffs, fraud and spam too, that they make ludicrous amounts of money advertising and shield with fake customer support and email loops. It's an anomaly that these companies are allowed to keep the profit without tax or liability.
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In Amazon, I know to try to do this, but I don’t quite trust that what I bought came from who it claims to be. My mother has no concept of a “third party seller.” She just knows “it’s on Prime!”
IMHO the Amazon user experience tries to explicitly bury the 3rd party “bazaar” inside the “store,” and (some time ago) successfully managed to mingle them both into a single “marketplace.”
When I’m shopping for a 1978 printing of a book, I want the bazaar. When I’m shopping for a Chromecast, I want a “store.”
Does it ever! I refuse to buy expensive electronics or equipment on Amazon after getting burned with a knockoff Bose headphones and SWISSGEAR luggage. You don't even get the benefit of cheap prices as those things were within reasonable range of their typical retail price (and with luggage the price fluctuation is always high). It's insane.
Fast forward to last week I was given a budget of about $6,000 to purchase company equipment and I looked at Amazon for 2 minutes and went right to B&H. After I submitted my order to my company I looked up everything on Amazon to see what I was missing. Well everything was bundles or weird price ranges with only 1 or 2 items left for sale. After 45 minutes I realized that it was a mess and I couldn't come up with a clear answer of how much anything was going to cost unless I had a credit card (We do purchase orders) and just looking things up it was a whole $50 less. Glad I went to a single seller.
now I have not see the issue in food products, I tend to buy certain condiments and garnish type items via Amazon as they are not locally available but given time and Amazon's looking the other way with the marketplace I expect it
(I could imagine you still have problems with products that just "happen" to look almost - but not quite - like the original, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The link shows products that look exactly like a Chromecast, even though the actual Chromecast is blocked.)
But having said all that - this is such a poor example to start complaining about. Nothing in the product description sounds like a counterfeit; it's simply yet-another possibly poor-quality competitor to the chrome cast. And sure, the supplier made the really dubious decision to include a chrome-logo-shape in the actual device. But the seller isn't amazon; and the description doesn't use anything to hint at it being a chromecast - so it's unlikely people looking for a chromecast will be mislead (or indeed even manage to find this thing).
All in all: this sounds like the seller is possibly counterfeiting, but it's not a great example of amazon tolerating counterfeiting, because it's easy to imagine a reasonable middleman might never have noticed.
Less than ideal example? Possibly. But still valid.
Amazon. One of the few 800 lb tech terrors. And they're doing what to solve this problem? Tolerate is being too kind. When you're making the choices they're making you're an enabler.
All the revenue. All those resources and...that gets them a free pass? That's disturbing.
My new strategy with Amazon is simple: If it's a book, sure. Otherwise no way, I can't trust anything there. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit against them by now for all the counterfeit / poor quality goods / spyware.
The next day, the product was listed as no longer available.
N=1, but there does seem to be an effort.
It's reasonable to expect that they won't even allow other pharmacies on the platform.
Excerpt: "The way it works is roughly like a serialization or UPC code. The brand buys the codes from Amazon and puts a unique code on every unit it creates for sale on Marketplace. All the codes are serialized; Amazon will not accept items without codes."
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Perhaps Google hasn’t registered their products with Amazon? It could even be intentional on their part.
> it's an illegitimate business practice when you are in the business of selling pretty much everything else.
Google is a predatory monopoly that is leveraging their existing power in search to move directly into consumer goods.
Amazon is also a predatory monopoly that is leveraging their existing power in shopping logistics to move directly into consumer goods.
This is tit for tat.
https://www.recode.net/2017/10/12/16464132/google-target-ret...
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2975731/software-games/youtu...
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16371292/google-youtube-a...
These companies are moving into the same market, and if they don't fight as hard as possible, they're letting their shareholders down.
I don't know if it's illegal and the DOJ is asleep at the wheel, but Google isn't going to stop: They're not content with selling people's personal data and even that they're losing to ad blockers. They're getting desperate.
Amazon isn't going to stop either, fuelling consumerism is their bread and butter, so they need to be in the middle of every shopping transaction. No market is out of bounds, but they're really struggling with media and product. These were big investments and Amazon is simply not very good at either, so they too are desperate.
We consumers are surely the collateral damage in the meantime, but besides "voting with our wallet", what else could we do? Regulation would be likely required to even allow Google and Amazon to cooperate without violating their obligations their shareholders, but what shape would that take?
Edit: I did some googling and it appears that amazon pulled both Apple TV and Chromecast because they didn't offer Amazon Prime. Which is clearly abuse of their position in the market to me but I'm just a layperson.
Then int 2017 they were slated to come back but now in 2018 I can't find chromecasts anymore. Only peripherals for it and clones.
Edit: Lol I just noticed they're selling the "fire tv stick" instead. What a stupid name.
But those are just because they made products consumers want to use. There is no opportunity cost to switching search engine or store website. It takes a line of text to move to duckduckgo, bing, startpage, etc from Google. It takes a moment to move over to walmart, target, ebay, overstock, newegg, etc from Amazon. Neither can be overtly predatory towards the consumers of their platforms because they have no way to lock them in without taking over the whole Internet (and yeah, Google is trying that with AMP, but I doubt they will ever have enough of the Internet under their control to start restricting / banning non-AMP sites in Chrome - if they ever did that its the most blatant monopoly abuse case since Comcast).
Speaking of Comcast, they are the other side of the coin. Comcast has sheer market dominance, uses their size to buy out and kill competition and bribe politicians, and leaves their "customers" with no alternatives while they abuse them. For about 95% of Comcasts market base your options are Comcast or move somewhere without Comcast. That is a blatant, consumer harming monopoly.
Online, Facebook is damn close to that. You cannot easily switch to Facebook competitors because social networking is defined by network effects - Facebook is infrastructure as much as search is, but one requires the people you want to be on it while the other just needs to index the sites you want to find. Anyone can index websites, only Facebook can have everyone in your extended family on it. And Facebook surely uses its monopoly position to exploit and abuse its consumers.
I just like making the distinction between the two. Both are dangerous, but for most of us the threat of Google and Amazon isn't direct, its to the businesses and services we want to use that we access through them. But it remains our choice to give Google and Amazon that power, choices you don't have with Comcast or even Facebook. As long as I can have a voice in the efficacy of their monopolies I simply feel less threatened by them.
How is their search dominance coming into play here? I see leverage of youtube, and leverage of android. Plus plain-old mass media advertising campaigns. Not search.
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Yep. This is how you get the attention of regulators. They should ask Microsoft how fun it was to be hounded by them for a decade.
No vendor should be forced to sell the products of its direct competitor.
"Store X has come up with their own Macaroni and Cheese that market tests show to be extremely successful, so they stop carrying Kraft"
In that scenario, should Store X be forced to carry Kraft? Of course not, people who want craft will go to any other myriad of different stores. Amazon doesn't even close to resemble a monopoly on online shopping.
Dead Comment
With all the mishaps lately like sending out stones and bricks [1] instead of cameras I am worried this will carry over into other Amazon owned companies like Whole Foods.
[1] https://fstoppers.com/gear/buyer-orders-6000-camera-amazon-s...
A lot depends on where it's made. Does Google have patents on the form factor in that country, either by treaties or by actually registering in the country? It can shut down the reselling by American companies at least.
As for food, counterfeits are unnecessary. There are already store brands which offer mostly or entirely the same food stuffs but with a derivative name (like Miracast vs. Chromecast, or Crunchy Nuts vs. Grape Nuts) and knock-off packaging.
There's also the bit where 3rd-party sellers don't exist in grocery stores.
I'm certain it doesn't work that way in the UK.
Small suppliers get _all_ their product confiscated in raids by Trading Standards when they sell knock-off Nike, or whatever.
Everyone knows it's knock-off (counterfeit, branded sports wear, like trainers and tracksuits). The sellers don't get let off for admitting it's fake; sometimes they go to prison, always they have goods confiscated.
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/8034060.Counterfe...
This seems analogous to the Amazon situation.
By rule of law Amazon warehouses should be shut by the police until all inventory that's counterfeit can be removed by Trading Standards. Presumably they lack resources to effectively police traders larger than market stalls.
They can get away with selling internationally either by selling directly from China, or just playing whack-a-mole. Often companies in the west will pop up to sell the products to domestic markets, and by the time the law comes chasing after them they've already disappeared. Usually the law isn't interested in what they are selling, but only bothers to chase after them when they don't pay their sales taxes.
> Special note:
> this isn't a Chromecast
Top result is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.
Second result is Amazon's Fire TV stick.
Third result is Roku Express.
4-7 are counterfeits with logos on them that don't precisely match the Chrome logo, but are clearly designed to falsely evoke Google's brand.
8 is a generic with no Google-related logo on it.
9-11 are counterfeits with almost-but-not-quite Google logos on them. 12 is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.
13-14 are accessories "for Chromecast.
15 is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.
Amazon correctly identifies which product category Chromecast is, and puts an add for Fire TV above the search results, indicating that they exercised some amount of direct (non-algorithmic) control over that page. I'd say Google has a pretty open-and-shut case for trademark infringement here.
In the larger picture, this whole affair is nasty and wouldn't have to have happened if everyone supported the standard: Miracast.
Miracast support was “dropped” only in that it, like Chromecast support, was provided by the Google Cast (now Google Home) app, not the base OS.
That's a weird business model
- searching for something
- selecting the most applicable category on the left, next to the results
- selecting Amazon.(de|fr|it|es|co.uk) on the bottom left (under Seller)
What is sold by Amazon generally gets shipped anywhere (within Europe?).
As a company, before Amazon Business, this also made sure you'd be able to shop without VAT.
Walmart has its own phone cell phone service, yet it still sells other phone brands.
I guess maybe because Amazon is getting more into hardware is maybe why they are dropping certain products. Like I wouldn't expect Apple to sell me a Dell laptop. However I view Apple more of a electronics company than a general electronics store. I view Amazon more like the online version of Walmart.
Presumably if I had more control I could rewrite the UA and Google would not punish me because they're having a tantrum over Amazon.
https://www.recode.net/2017/10/12/16464132/google-target-ret...
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2975731/software-games/youtu...
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16371292/google-youtube-a...
History here: https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/03/02/amazon-still-isnt-s...
Many users will type, for example, "facebook" into their address bar. The browser searches Google, and whoever bought the ads will be on top.
Facebook can't allow any other company to come up first, and so they pay.
Many, many ad clicks work this way, and I consider it to be a dark pattern at best, but similar to fraud at worst.
http://indianexpress.com/article/business/companies/abuse-of...
I think facebook feeling the "need" to buy those ad slots is their own problem.