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Topic: Amazon's history should teach us to beware "friendly" internet giants (Read 589 times)

full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 101
What is appealing to Amazon.com from a consumer standpoint is they stand behind their products and they provide excellent, timely customer service.
Amazon figured out early in the game that most consumers were not keen to buy things from cyberspace, so they made the process friendly and non-threatening. They made it easy to return a purchase with no arm bending. It is not an accident they have grown as big as they have.

full member
Activity: 149
Merit: 100
Solar Bitcoin Specialist
There is one key difference between, say, Google, and a titan of industry such as the WW2 aviation firms whom I won't name here because I don't want a be at ground-zero of a drone strike.

Before the founding of Google, its probable consequences in society and necessary ethical considerations to set up a "don't be evil" culture there were given as much consideration as the $ side of keeping the business out of the $hit.  A particular manifestation of evil to avoid was carefully articulated in the specification for a computer game "singularity" from emhsoft

If you think that the friendly internet giants are in fact just as evil as the rest of industry, then here please say why you think that.
legendary
Activity: 1049
Merit: 1006
Amazon's history should teach us to beware "friendly" internet giants

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/22/amazon-beware-friendly-internet-giants-google-facebook

"Despite their superficially user-friendly ways, the titans of the net, such as Google and Facebook, are no different from the big names of American corporate history."
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