Jeff Bezos defends Amazon’s treatment of Alexaholic at Web 2.0 Expo
Posted at 5:44 pm on April 16th, 2007 by Ron in Statsaholic |Thanks to a conference blog post by David Berkowitz, I now have a pretty good idea what Jeff Bezos thinks about the Alexaholic/Statsaholic situation.
Bezos takes the stage. Intro remarks: all about Amazon Web Services, which is exhibiting here. The roster includes SQS, Mechanical Turk, S3, EC2. I still like Amazon for books. Is that so wrong? His gist: you can use web services to scale backend operations like hosting at a fraction of the cost of building it yourself. And ultimately, what Bezos is reminding us is that Amazon’s a software company, not an online retailer. But do you want to be #1 in online retail, or another web services company competing with Sun, Microsoft, IBM, HP, etc? Yet Bezos aims to make the case that his take on web services isn’t just like any other company. Time will tell.
Interesting question from Tim O’Reilly: What’s up with the controversy over Alexaholic, especially now that it’s Statsaholic?
Bezos: Alexaholic’s domain still is there, but it redirects to the new site. [Actually, it hasn't redirected for a couple of weeks now. -R.]
Tim: You should all get along.
Bezos: There’s no open API for Alexa graphs. [True, but I've offered to pay anyway. Alexa can easily shut off the hotlinking of their graphs to the world, but they don't, and most likely won't -- I'm guessing they see the marketing value of having their graphs (now with large watermarked logos) spread all over the web. -R.]
Tim: That was true for Google Maps at first. Come on, kiss and make up. Play nice, kids. Everyone loves Statsholic.
Bezos: This is a business decision. We’ve got trademarks to protect. Talk to the hand, and talk to the lawyer. So there.
[Note: those were not exact quotes]
Props to Tim for calling me earlier today to get my side of the story, and for broaching the subject with Jeff, but his answers certainly douse what little hope I was clinging to that Jeff Bezos, champion of Web 2.0 services, was willing to direct his subsidiary towards an amicable resolution. I met Jeff at FooCamp last summer and had a nice, cordial conversation that included Alexaholic and BookCrossing. This was right during the time Alexa was letting my fledgling Alexaholic website grow, with their blessing.
Ah, those were the days.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:02 am
What an unfortunate turn of events, but I am still amazed your particular case got the attention of the highest levels at Amazon and other media outlets, kudos for sticking out the storm.
I had actually heard of another web API usage scuffle with amazon, called Amazon Light which integrated with Netflix and iTunes, the circumstances were somewhat different being commercially orientated, but its essentially the same ‘anyone can use it’ and ‘will tell you later if its ok’.
There is definetly a certain reluctance from every provider out there on the use of web services, API’s and mashups — some more than others of course — I believe everything boils down to the clash of not being able to control the unfettered creativity which web API’s provide and aligning them with higher-level business goals.
Many want to have the cake and eat it too, to the extent of a picking and choosing who can and can’t be consumers if the data/service/API was used for something it was not intended for.
Best of luck with the future of statsaholic.com
April 19th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Daniel, thanks for your support. Besides appeal to public opinion, there’s not much else I can do at this point; Amazon doesn’t seem to want to come to the table and work this out.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
I called Alexa, who at least up til now is answering phones. I told them how sick I am over the situation and how I will actively refuse to use their stats for any purpose now or in the future. I figure if Amazon realizes how badly this reflects on their organization, they may back down. Alexa’s number: 415-561-6900
April 19th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I’m glad the coverage was helpful - they might not be exact quotes, but they’re close enough. It was the only time during the Q&A that Tim asked Bezos anything that made him remotely uncomfortable. Thanks for clearing up your take on all of it.