(Mis)Uses of Technology

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick




Amazon: Shop Elsewhere, Pay At Our Site

from the expanding-efforts dept

Amazon is continuing their plans to become the backend e-commerce operating system for everyone. The latest move is that they're going to let other sites tie into Amazon's payment system. This way, you could let anyone pay for goods on your site, via their Amazon account. This sounds like an extension of their current "tip jar" technology, except with actual products being sold instead of just good will. The article points out that this is probably competitive with PayPal, which is true. However, the more interesting thing is that it shows that both companies are increasingly striving for the same basic goal. Each wants to be the e-commerce operating system. Any transaction you do as a buyer or a seller, they want to go over their technology.

2 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments

(Flattened / Threaded)

    Jul 19th, 2003 @ 4:26pm
  • Paying Amazon

    by Harry L Lee

    having just gone through a very painful experience trying to get a refund for a non-delivered product from an amazon marketplace vendor. this sounds a very bad idea to me.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  • Jul 20th, 2003 @ 11:38am
  • I wonder how this interacts with Single signon eff

    by Sniffy McNickles

    It looks like the MS Passport, Liberty alliance, and various AOL efforts are a different take on this sort of thing - be infrastructure for other people's transactions.
    I wonder if we'll end up with a four-way fight between Ebay, Amazon, MS and AOL. Sun just falls out - they don't market well. AOL probably loses, but I'm loath to discount them. Other than that, Ebay looks a little weak, but still, I can't call a winner in this scenario. MS, as usual, is the wildcard - the grand, sweeping, Longhorn-is-everything-to-all-people trick is something to watch, although I'm sceptical about how that's going to work.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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