https://archive.is/CHgpq (bit tricky to get to this, the most recent capture showed the paywall, had to go to an older capture, figured this might not be intuitive for even a lot of HN users)

This "Big River" program seems like a proper use of classic "dogfooding" techniques (bastardizing that word to say testing your competitor's food, rather than its established meaning for eating your own food). It doesn't seem so different from a widget company testing and dismantling a competitor's hardware device. It's scaled up a lot, but anything related to global logistics has to be to get any good info.

The difference perhaps is that hardware is occasionally / often (depending on the widget) protected by patents. In logistics it's less likely to be (but still possible, especially given the existence of "business process" patents). Part of that scale here is also how many people they have working on it to get a super detailed picture of how their competitors are doing what they do.

I definitely have a cautious reaction about it, but I was expecting something that might violate regulations and statutes around trade secrets, and I don't see anything that obviously does. It's a bit creepy due to the nature of what investigating logistics involves, but it doesn't seem improper. There are plenty of practices Amazon perpetuates that I do believe are improper, but this didn't immediately strike me as one of them - but I'll keep an open mind if other people here make a strong case for it.

One of the things I don't think belongs in today's economy is someone who runs a platform/marketplace to also compete on that platform/marketplace. That is something I strongly criticize Amazon for doing.

-------Edit---------

Response to a now-deleted reply: Yes, it's an issue if Big River is helping Amazon compete with its competitors, but it wouldn't be an issue if Amazon wasn't participating in its own marketplace. I'd propose the remedy to be "stop doing the bad thing" rather than "stop doing the thing which appears to be mostly fine on the surface but also may be dual-purposed to assist in doing the bad thing".

Where my own argument falls apart is store-brands for supermarkets. I like buying affordable, quality products under the HEB, "Great Value" (Wal-Mart), and "Kirkland" (Costco) brands. I also don't think it's appropriate to make a law that prevents Amazon from doing it while exempt these other companies - or else both self-enforcement and enforcement by the government both get too difficult. Business managers would rationalize that they're more of a "Costco/Kirkland" than an "Amazon/Amazon Basics" and no one within the org would be able to push back with "No, I cannot do that clearly illegal thing."

So I'm not sure what the right answer should be - whether that's Costco needing to divest their Kirkland to a truly independent third-party and maybe have a rigorous quality testing program they can say "We recommend this brand because we know they meet our highest standards at a great price", or if there's some other way to regulate it.

There is precedent for the general concept, if not the exact implementation I propose. The SEC has a wide range of strictly-enforced regulations controlling what companies can do on markets they operate (or anyone who acts as a broker-dealer) that it mostly created a "de facto" ban on companies which run a stock/commodity/FX/etc market from also participating in that market. They can afford rules that slice the concept very close to the bone because they have very strong, harsh, and vigilant enforcement. For the SEC paradigm, see Fair Access Rule, Regulation of Broker-Dealers / Duty of Best Execution, Market Maker Rules, Anti-Manipulation Rules, and Conflict of Interest policies. It's really very illegal for an exchange or a market operator to prioritize its transactions or its affiliated participants’ transactions over those of others.

I'm not sure the FTC/etc can afford that same luxury, as they haven't demonstrated an ability to enforce rules aggressively and universally.