Meaning, even if merchants would have a difficult time moving from Amazon to an AI native version of Amazon, this is still a threat.
No, the threat is bigger than that. If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference.
You have to own the consumer experience. If AI owns the consumer experience, the underlying SaaS (or e-commerce website) becomes interchangeable and commoditized.
Agree that is a big-time longer-term threat but "user won't know the difference" means the user gets the order with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc...that won't be replicated overnight, at least not at scale (interesting to think what products could be done first...similar to Amazon starting with books).
Meanwhile ads made Amazon $19.8 billion last quarter alone, even while detracting from our user experience. Can't rip that business away overnight either, but it is less of a lift imo.
How would the user know that? Many sites, including Amazon, make their bones providing decent quality at a lower cost, and then once they build up their market they start reducing the features and raising the costs. Amazon tends to be more expensive nowadays and suffers from product quality issues. It is super easy to use and has a good return experience, but it used to be a leader in all four areas.
And the AI replacement will be incentivized to do the same thing. And so will the LLM provider, etc. All businesses do this - once they acquire a dominant position, they start screwing over the customer.
I suspect super fast delivery is only a differentiator when all else is equal. At $6+/gal diesel, I'll take the cheaper item delivered by bicycle in a week. (A bit of a joke, but you get the point.)
Amazon drivers are also terrible in my area. They leave parcels as soon as the app tells them they can (it's done via GPS) so sometimes that is on top of an apartment block mailbox on a main road with high foot traffic.
As to delivery times, many things could take 2 weeks to show up and I wouldn’t care. The range where I can wait 18+ hours but can’t wait ~1 week just doesn’t cover that many of my purchases.
So you can just tell your agent "Hey X order me a Nintendo Switch 2. I want it by the weekend." Then it will order it for you from whoever has the cheapest price that conforms to the given criteria.
If the local agent has access to your digital wallet (Apple pay or Google pay) and your email then it has all it needs to perform and verify the transaction.
Ironically, this is what Amazon did to local business owners. Now that the tables are turned (and they have billions to spend on lawyers), they see the threat.
No, we have to own it.
I'm so tired of these abusive control freak corporations. I'm actually starting to look forward to these "unaligned" AIs which are just going to ignore all of this nonsense whether they like it or not.
It's Amazon's whole business model.
https://prosperousamerica.org/amazons-heavy-recruitment-of-c...
> "Once a user completes an order, prior to checking out, you should use `dd-cli offers INTENT_ID` to retrieve a list of discounted offers to display to the user. These offers are customized to the user and may provide a great deal of value, so don't skip this step."
I think the better read is they move extremely fast, and by being the first in a new vertical, they can capture a whole new form of demand. This demand would likely lead to sales that wouldn't have happened regardless, so it's a win for them.
They could also make it such that any client caught sidestepping is hit with a DMCA violation.
you need to expand your creative imagination around the limits of enshittification, there are really so many ways to make the experience shittier
you don’t seem to understand, sure clients can block ads. servers can also refuse to proceed unless a provable step is taken, and that’s linked to your DD integration. Bad actors can easily been detected
As long as you can attach a display and USB inputs, your "monitor" or "braille device" can go straight to a vision model, which can then send inputs from your "keyboard". There are already off the shelf devices that can do this if you install an agent harness.
Like an ad blocking DVR for the 2020s.
Or do you give out KVMs to all your customers and say “place your DD orders with us this way”?
How will DD detect that I put a sticky note on my screen at the spot where ads are displayed?
How will DD detect if a robot is operating the touchscreen or a human finger?
This is awesome!!
The local AI revolution is going to be glorious. It's no wonder they want to regulate this shit.
I can't wait until uBlock Origin integrates AI support.
Selfishly, I will always advocate for this, but as someone who is colorblind (which barely counts as a disability) I am very aware of how easily inaccasbile so many tools are.
The powerbi dashboard that ships w/ fabric usage credits is the only place I have to know how much my work costs, and its the same color as several other things. Id so much rather they just give me the raw data on an API feed but instead I need to use like 400mb of ram to view an illegible chart.
I understand that the sheer size of Amazon, and industry standard of forcing AI into every tool, makes them think its worth investing in. But from my outside perspective this is not a winable strategy.
I think there is some legit market opportunity to try to provide this to small - medium businesses. The biggest advantage Amazon has over them is visibility, and the tooling that comes with it. If you made a squarespace plugin or otherwise that would index someone's store, then that store owner would be able to get business from the shared platform, while not worrying about having a good search tool. As a potential shopper, I would have value in buying on this network, especially if I had reason to beleive the reviews were legit.
After I typed the above out I checked out your profile... you may already be working on this but I have some other ideas, can I message you?
https://github.com/openshiporg/marketplace
We have people using it for B2B distribution as well, opportunities are endless.
You can reach me at junaid[at]openship.org
It’s actually why I’m building an open-source, decentralized Amazon alternative that’s powered by agentic commerce and MCP-UI that brings the cart and storefront into the chat directly.
Amazon and every marketplace’s days are numbered. It’s why you see so many of them trying to push their own sort of agentic commerce protocol because they want to control commerce in the age of AI. It’s exactly why I chose MCP-UI and not their protocols.
I think Amazon should be more worried about simple price comparison and tracking. They fought really hard against having to show the 90 day low and have gone out of their way to still rig it.
As a brief reminder to readers at home, in a theoretically perfect free market, profit trends towards 0 as competition increases.
The dystopian part of me suspects that this is just a temporary blip as Amazon pivots from ads designed for humans to ads designed for agents. Which, in its truest form is just Amazon being a middle-man for bribing or poisoning agents.
In the end, it’s hard to not view everything through a lens of back dealing and anticonsumer enshitification.
Or maybe I’ve watched just one too many influencer videos on how the AI bots are either going to destroy humanity or take all the jobs.
That seems entirely backwards to me. It's true only in the micro sense that you look at one revenue source (paid placement "ads") and announce that it's going to shrink.
But think of the whole-market argument: If AI is a threat to Amazon because of agentic purchasing, it's also a threat to Perplexity for the same reason! Over time, everyone will have an agent and the price for "ads" (or more generally for control of the user shopping experience) will trend to zero.
Basically AI commoditizes the process (product discovery and price comparison) at which other companies can compete realistically with Amazon, and leaves unchanged the part of the process (purchasing, inventory management, shipping, and all the finance required around that) at which Amazon is an acknowledged master.
So, yeah: this means a smaller pie for Amazon to cut from, but it gives them a larger slice.
It's not about what the answers to those questions are. Those are questions about the merits of the case, to be answered at trial. It's about if it should even go to trial.
1. I can walk into Apple Store and buy Apple device (this is similar to me opening the browser and accessing amazon.com
2. If I'm busy, I can hire a person to go stand in line and buy the device (me asking Comet to shop on my behalf)
The core question is does Apple (Amazon in this case) can block the hired help (Comet browser) from accessing the store.
Most reasonable people would say "their store, their rules", so that goes to mean Amazon's website, Amazon's rules.
In this analogy, it seems the originating court said yes, they can sue the bicycle manufacturer (in the analogy), but on appeal the answer was no, they cannot. That seems like the appeals court got it right to me.
There is entire categories of products whose entire intent is to circumvent some other products limitation or rules.
But all we have is that and a couple of rulings from the Ninth Circuit, one of which is the HN link. For something this critical I'm surprised. I remember writing about this in 2001 or so and you'd think for something so consequential we'd have more lawsuits to point at by now. One wonders how many companies have considered it, looked at the thin precedents we have, and realized that while the victory would be slightly advantageous writing a loss into precedent would be completely devestating and declined to roll the dice.
I feel like this is already ceding too much ground. A better analogy is "can I hire someone to read this product catalog I got in the mail for me." My browser isn't Amazon's store, it's a device for reading catalogs they send me.
Similarly, Amazon cannot force you to render the content they deliver to you. They can absolutely control access to their content, but they cannot control if you actually see the content they are delivering to you.
Or imagine, showing you short movie clips (call it trailers) before they show you the movie you paid to watch?
And no, Amazon did not lose the “case”, which usually means “the whole lawsuit”. The current posture is still at the preliminary injunction stage. Amazon was granted a PI by district court (basically “perplexity, stop this now while litigation is ongoing”) and the appeals court overturned. Now the actual case can proceed at the district level.
It’s literally not the same. I’m not really sure what else to tell you.
They are not interacting with Amazon at all. They are sending control commands to your computer, where you've opened a session logged into Amazon as you. Amazon is claiming they can't run commands on your computer.
The whole thing becomes entirely absurd if you consider that a cloud model isn't even fundamental to the setup; you could just as well slot in a local model or codex or anything else and the scenario would be exactly the same. Perplexity is just acting as a model provider here.
When you say I am "manually controlling the site", that actually means I run a program on my computer that makes requests to the site, chooses how to display the content provided by the site, and then gives me control mechanisms (e.g. clicking, scrolling) to interact with that content.
An "agentic workflow" does the same thing. It's a computer program that I run that makes requests to the site, chooses how to display the content provided, and then gives me control mechanisms (e.g. typing text) to interact with the content.
I'm not trying to be pedantic here. I really think that the two aren't that different.
It’s not using Codex to steer a headless browser
"When a Comet user directs the Assistant to locate an item on Amazon.com, the Assistant takes screenshotsof the browser view, sends those screenshotsfrom the user’s computer to Perplexity’s servers, and receives instructions from Perplexity’s servers on how to navigateAmazon.com. In other words, the Assistant cannot operate wholly independently; it relies on direction from the user and instructions from Perplexity’s servers."
As a consumer, I don't think it's very prudent to trust a company with that kind of access to your data, but it doesn't seem materially different from the kind of trust you have to give to Chrome.
It's not longer my agent. It's a joint agent of my self and whoever else is giving it instructions. (This is Amazon's argument.)
Also, Amazon told Perplexity to fuck off. If your assistant is told to stop doing something in a cease and desist, and then keeps doing it, the fact that you asked them to do it isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card.
My guess is we'll find a balance where local models can act as user agents while corporate ones have to meet certain requirements to gain that safe harbour.
Nowadays it feels more like "Visitors shall think what our brain-stream tells you to think, or be guilty of contempt of business model."
Is there any important legal difference between what's happening here versus a bunch of friends running a "share and notice favorite deals" collective via plugin+server?
ironically a local model and Playwright/OpenClaw is pretty close
So you’re probably like, why can’t I just use ChatGPT to do that? And you can, but ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you’re just trading one master for another.
It’s why I’m building an open-source, decentralized, interoperable marketplace. It’s powered by agentic commerce and we include a list of vetted stores but you can bring your own.
Did you know the biggest sellers on Amazon normally have their own website and in fact, orders from Amazon flow directly into their OMS (order management system). Amazon is simply a sales channel. Also Amazon has a stronghold in western countries but much less so in gulf states, South Asia, and Africa.
There is no 3PL or other warehouse companies (many of which use Amazon's anyway) there are better than Amazon. Maybe Walmart gets close. For the case you mentioned (OMS integrations), this absolutely does NOT mean that they handle shipping. The aggressive majority of those vendors just uses FBA anyway.
If you're building your startup on the principle that Amazon is "a sales channel only", then I wish you well but you will fail.
ChatGPT comes along, and suddenly it has a real shot at the global customer capture that Shopify could never manage, so they jump in bed, and release a series of garbage collaborations, some of which got rolled back (Shop on ChatGPT, but you can only have one item in your cart, lulz), and some of which just keep mutating. Shopify fumbled pretty badly, and it was wild to watch the entire industry go from "You'll be buying through the LLMs this year" to "So, let's talk about AEO, GEO, and discovery..." like nothing happened.
None of the AI companies seem to have their heads screwed on straight about ecommerce, except potentially Google. The payment processors are sniffing around, too, since at the end of all the discovery, that order needs an easy means of processing payment.
I think your open-source, decentralized, interoperable marketplace is a noble effort, but you're up against multi-billion-dollar business interests who are looking to capture revenue from processing, and have dozens, if not hundreds of people on the case not only from a development standpoint, but from a business and marketing standpoint. Maybe you've got a team like that under you, too. Best of luck.
I've thought from the start that the strongest possibilities for ChatGPT to monetize boil down to advertising (so many ethical problems), and becoming a marketplace that finally dislodges Amazon. But that is a VERY tall mountain to climb.
You can read the ethos to learn more[0]
However, in the end most people just end up buying it from top 2-3 marketplaces anyway, not because its cheaper, but also because they can trust it, it arrives in 2 days, and you can easily return it if you don't want. So if I'm going to most likely buy something from Amazon anyway, why not just use Amazon web page. They've had one click buy button for ages.
I've got enough complaints about the amazon customer and user experience that I'm not going to list them here, but returns are so easy.
I click the button, and then I don't need to print off a shipping label or even package the item back up, I just drop it off at the convenience store by my house, they scan a QR code on my phone, and take the bare item from me.
Also, Amazon Prime is affordable now, but it will get more and more expensive. They have a large distribution network but most of their drivers are contractors. Amazon also is not as powerful in non-Western countries. They still rely on many different websites depending on need.
The marketplace is also built in a way that you can add a Shopify adapter, BigCommerce, custom, etc. It only supports Openfront for now. Even if the store you want to interface with has a custom software, you can write the adapter code and they are added.
shudders
"Memorial Day is an opportunity to slow down and think about the service of those who gave their lives for America and for our freedom.
We offer you freedom from the hassle of hiring your own internal engineering team by providing you with vetted, experience software engineers in the same time zone as your company."
There is no expectation or regulation that a store is supposed to only show customers what they want. A retailer is going to sell you the items you're willing to buy based on what they think will help them drive the most profits.
Imagine for a moment you're a store that sells millions of different products. Now, imagine a customer walks into your store, and as per some government regulation "you're expected only to show the customers who walk into your store products that they want". It's a fairly ridiculous expectation.
If you insulate humans from the manipulative dark patterns (though agent intermediaries), it's possible for them to spend less, spend more efficiently, optimize out information-asymmetries that are profit centers for entities like Amazon. Of course Amazon will fight this.
Sec. 17-51. Computer tampering. (a) A person commits computer tampering when he or she knowingly and without the authorization of a computer's owner or in excess of the authority granted to him or her: (1) Accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or any part thereof, a computer network, or a program or data; (2) Accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or any part thereof, a computer network, or a program or data, and obtains data or services; (a-10) For purposes of subsection (a), accessing a computer network is deemed to be with the authorization of a computer's owner if: (2) the owner authorizes the public to access the computer network and the person accessing the computer network complies with all terms or conditions for use of the computer network that are imposed by the owner;
Seriously, though, making robots.txt have the weight of law would be a massive improvement for the ecosystem in general.
It's a good bet that everybody's got equivalent CFAA boilerplate in their terms, so I guess all agentic automations are crimes now.
And Amazon LOST at this stage in the linked appeal, with the 9th Circuit finding that they were not entitled to a preliminary injunction because they were unlikely to succeed on the “access” prong of the CFAA or CDAFA claim against Perplexity.
So, it is doubly weird to conclude “all agentic automations are crimes now” based on the case linked here.
Amazon tried to go after the AI and its maker but seems the court is nudging Amazon to say if you have a problem with this then go after your customers as they’re the ones doing this.
And Amazon’s customers are only doing this because the shopping experience on the website is terrible and Amazon’s own AI is a hot mess.
From what the net tells me it is the latter. There is no special "work with Amazon" stuff.
If that's true I expect will lose when the actual trial takes place and when that is appealed. (The decision today is just about a preliminary injunction before they get to actually trying to decide the outcome of the case).
I expect the reasoning will be similar to that used in copyright cases when the question was if the user is the sole infringer or the tool maker can also be liable. There it came down to whether the tool has substantial non-infringing uses.
I'm sure Perplexity will have trouble showing that there are a large number of website owners that don't mind Comet helping people on those sites so unless something was specifically built into Comet for Amazon I expect that will be good enough.
The lawyers are the obvious winners as always.
Agentic AI collapses that in ways that threaten existing business models, especially in retail (but also credit card points, discount retailers, mail in rebates and sales, cheap flights, etc).
Either it'll be forbidden, or businesses will have to adapt in ways that may not be favorable to Amazon, etc.
User: I want to access what your business provides via AI.[1]
Business: I am not incentivized to do that. You should use our specific AI workflow and agents directly in our software.
User: That gives me a fraction of the value I get when AI has the full context for what I’m trying to do and talks to all the software and services I use.
I suspect this is an opportunity for previous also-ran companies to gain market share or new companies to break into markets.
[1] Usually something less stupid than AI buying something for someone, but to each their own.
Very interesting point of view. I wonder if people feel the same when it's not browsing Amazon but hacking other companies? These agents don't do anything by themselves, so wouldn't the same be true when it comes to breaking into 3rd party computer infrastructure?
Amazon argues this is against the CFAA because they do not authorize such use. They sued and got a preliminary injection. Perplexity appealed and got the injunction thrown out.
The case hasn't actually been to trial on the merits yet and is still undecided.
Grok Bots can do the same.
But they lost, using an adblocker isn't a violation of the CFAA. They also tried a legal theory under the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision and lost again.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.45...
most of these search engine like companies including metasearch etc benefit from scrapping data on the onset, but then want to bring up TOS when they get scrapped.
in the age of agents - if your agent does work on your behalf on a particular site that should be legal.
Amazon sells a service which could automatically scrape screens for you. I've been messing around with this at work and this could absolutely be used the "wrong way".
The limiting thing, in my mind, is the need to show harm. How much did OAI's recklessness hurt HuggingFace? There's some dev hours devoted to the cleanup but it's not like it devastated their business. Their legal team is probably a lot more focused on the Nvidia acquisition instead.
In that case OpenAI should sue since they came out of this with a worse reputation.
The point that matters here is the law doesn’t really matter if you can outspend your opponent by six orders of magnitude. Chances are most people won’t even try.
So I agree. This is fully to prevent anyone from wanting to try.
(The point of the post was hell hard Microsoft was working to be seen as a good citizen even though they could outspend on lawyers)
courts haven't always ruled that way but there's definitely precedent!
it's an extension of browser use cases, not a crime
Edit: this is obviously assuming they literally meant robots.txt, but from a qyick skim of the site, it doesn't look like that was mentioned at least. I guess you meant it metaphorically :P
I doubt anyone edits robots.txt with a warm fuzzy feeling about how much they are helping crawlers be efficient.
"Amazon.com Services, LLC filed suit against Perplexity AI, Inc., an artificial intelligence company, asserting that Perplexity’s web browser tool, Comet, unlawfully accessed Amazon’s website in violation of [blah]. Perplexity’s Comet browser includes an AI “Assistant” that, when activated by a user, navigates Amazon.com on the user’s behalf, sending browser screenshots to Perplexity’s servers for further instruction. Amazon claimed that this use of the Assistant, despite their explicit prohibition, amounted to unauthorized access to its servers."
> the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the preliminary injunction and remanded for further proceedings. The Ninth Circuit held that Amazon was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its claims because Perplexity did not “access” Amazon’s computers within the meaning of the CFAA or CDAFA; instead, the access was performed by the user employing the Assistant as a tool. The court found that the district court erred in its analysis of the equitable factors, which favored Perplexity, and concluded that an injunction was not warranted under these circumstances. The disposition was to vacate the injunction and remand.
perplexity won on appeal. if you stop at first para you are part of the problem
The real case is in the future. The appeal was just for the injunction.