Amazon’s top sellers aren’t TikTok Shop’s. “TikTok makes people want things. Amazon is where people buy things.” Only 498 sellers show up in both platforms’ top 10,000, so being big on one barely predicts being big on the other. ~ […]
Amazon’s “invented auction participant.”. The FTC and 22 states allege Amazon secretly jacked up ad auction prices for years, while telling advertisers it ran “second price” auctions where winners pay “one cent more than the next highest bidder.” The complaint […]
The ads make search worse. “The ads make the search worse.” Seth Godin argues Amazon search ads are a zero-sum toll: sellers pay to defend what they already earned, and customers cover the bill through higher prices and worse results. […]
Anthropic is the secret sauce this earnings season. “In plain English, the more they invest in Anthropic, the more profit they can report, without Anthropic ever having to pay them a dollar.” Nearly half of Alphabet’s record quarter and more […]
Does Amazon illegally price fix? “Yesterday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed for an immediate halt to what he says is a widespread price-fixing scheme run by the largest online retailer in America, Amazon.” The piece argues Amazon leverages the […]
Ring just showed the surveillance future. “a world where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices to identify, track, and locate anything — human, pet, and otherwise.” Amazon pitched “Search Party” as lost-dog reunions, but the ad also made […]
The next big food startup. Before the AI boom led to multi-billion dollar acquihires, there was Marc Lore. He sold a business to Amazon, left to start a competitor, and soon sold it to Walmart for billions. Now he’s in […]
Kids yell “poop” at Alexa and these musicians profit. Are you familiar with the song Poopy Stupid Butt? “For a while, the couple was making around $100 a month from the song – and then COVID hit. Kids were stuck […]
Hillbilly Elegy, with a twist. J.D. Vance’s book became an unlikely smuggling vehicle. “Siebert soaked the book’s pages with narcotics and mailed it to Grafton Correctional Institution disguised as an Amazon shipment.” ~ learn more
Thrasio cofounder on the Operators podcast. “What’s it like to build the fastest-growing company in American history… and then watch it all come crashing down? We sat down with John Hefter, co-founder of the legendary Amazon aggregator Thrasio, for a […]