Jeff Bezos. Such a genius entrepreneur I'm thinking.
Yes. I've been waiting for them to do this. It's the next logical step for them. The only thing that concerns me is the fact that it will now be much easier to track the purchases you've made. Just like how Google now tracks you as you search, email, and watch and delivers relevant ads to you based on that, this Amazon payment will do the same thing. They will be able to better judge the things you buy and want to buy for a wider range of sites. It will also be easier to see your overall researching and purchasing patterns and find a way to make money off of that data. I'm sure if you start buying a slew of chemicals and nunchucks, the NSA will be all over you. Other than that, this is great. I would use this for sure as well. I hate re-entering my card. I hate researching to make sure this random site with an awesome hoodie will actually deliver my product. Most of all, I hate the auto account creations that come with a single purchase. I probably have 100 accounts with 6 different emails and 100 different passwords from random one-off purchases. The only time I visit the site again is to turn off the fucking email notifications.
Interesting. You see I really like the purchase tracking. Over time it makes my shopping easier, because the system knows what I'm likely to need. Things like re-ordering easily is also brilliant, because I can never remember what deal on batteries I got 4 months ago etc. I would probably never buy chemicals and nunchucks on Amazon for that very reason. :) The thing is, Amazon's strengths are in the sum of the parts, rather than any one single bit. Put it all together and you basically have an absolutely awesome retailing machine. I remember standing in a now defunct (!) camera chain shop in town to buy an SD memory card. It was something like £60 which seemed a little expensive to me, so I dragged out my phone and did a quick check on the Amazon app. It was £16. I was so outraged at the delta, I went over to the assistant and told him. He couldn't have cared less. So I went outside, stood on the sidewalk and bought the card from Amazon in 40 seconds using the app. It arrived the next morning. The camera chain went bust this year.
I agree it can be very helpful. But also scary. Just something to keep in mind so you don't walk blindly into a big data pool. If you are aware of what the companies are doing and choose to do it anyways, that is fine. Not knowing is bad no matter which way you cut it.
Hmm...I think the problem is the boat has already sailed. If you have a credit card, an email account and a mobile phone you're already fully integrated into the big data pool, and there's not much that cannot be tracked about you. Adding in an Amazon account is not going to provide any more raw data that isn't already easily and instantly available to anyone with the right connections. The only way off this vessel is to sign out completely, cut up your cards, delete accounts, go offline and ditch the mobile, with all the attendant inconvenience that entails. This is our world nowadays, good and bad.
That Jeff Bezos is going places. So, you will be able to use your Amazon account to pay for the entire purchase or just for the shipping? It's smart to control peoples wallets on other sites as well as on Amazon, very smart. Like you, I'm a loyal Amazon supporter because of customer service and the speed with which our products arrive. It's phenomenal. I have a 2.5 year old daughter and I've never, not once had to buy diapers/wipes etc in a physical store. They just magically arrive, right on time... all the time. Will we use our Amazon account to pay elsewhere online? Yep.
Yes, it's a rather awesome service. You will be able to pay for the entire product using Amazon, but the key is you'll then get the full Amazon features, including returns, fraud protection, order history (so so useful) etc. No matter which store you have bought from. It's a huge thing, and people are going to go nuts for it once they realize exactly what it means.
That's a tremendous amount of power for one organization to have. Imagine that the majority of online purchases eventually goes in this direction and then Amazon decided that it's going to charge the sites it represents 5% for each transaction. The sites cannot refuse because Amazon has become indispensable. At what point will Amazon be so big that they violate anti-trust laws? Obviously this is presumptuous, but not unlikely.
It's different for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the global nature of these internet behemoths. Increasingly these large organizations are seemingly stateless. Consider Peter Theil's (Paypal) proposed Libertarian Island (you can read mk's take on that here and it seems to me that they will eventually exist outside of regulation. That's a scary thing imo. While we all want a free and largely unregulated Internet, we also don't want a select few handling all the data/money. Bad stuff could come of such things.
Hmm...I would suggest that Esso and AT&T were (are?) essentially stateless in the same way. Any corporation of sufficient size has the capacity to overcome government regulation at some point surely? The difference now to then maybe that today's entities have a much more effective global reach due to the massive enhancement of communications, but I don't think we should ignore the fact that the big oil companies used to (still?) routinely overthrow governments which were in the way of (their) progress?
Nigel, I agree that they could've likely thought if a better name. You have any suggestions....?