[losteric]

Amazon does not trawl customer data.

However, metrics like AMI popularity is Amazon's data... and that definitely informs first-class AWS product development. Once the company identifies a business opportunity, different teams often investigate "build" and "buy" options simultaneously.

Same goes for retail - Amazon works backwards from high-margin categories to identify opportunities, then pursues investment in existing brands versus spinning up products under the company brands.

This all feels very monopolistic to me, but regardless it's worlds apart from the accusation of stealing private information through faux investment offerings.

[jacquesm]

I don't think the difference is all that large. Legally, yes. But ethically they are pretty close. After all, any product launched like that will be at the expense of those already operating in that niche including Amazon's platform users.