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Amazon Sues Alexaholic

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Apr 19, 2007 06:57 PM
from the at-last-it's-time dept.
Government The Courts Businesses The Internet News
theodp writes "ZDNet reports that as Jeff Bezos tap-danced out of a cringe moment at Web 2.0 Expo prompted by Tim O'Reilly's questioning of why Amazon couldn't get along with Alexaholic (now Statsaholic), Amazon had already filed a lawsuit to legally spank the tiny company into oblivion."
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  • Thanks Tim (Score:3, Funny)

    by cyphercell (843398) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:05PM (#18806531) Homepage Journal
    Keep up the good work.
  • Why does that name sound so familiar?
    • You're either thinking of an excellent line of tech books, or you're thinking of a far-right-wing Fox pundit infamous for cutting the mic of his guests, his sometimes uncontrollable temper, his misinformative Talking Points, and his outrageous, illogical, irresponsible, and despicable "opinions", showcased by, for example, his blaming immigration policy for a drink driving incident and his general insensitivity and partisan agenda-pushing.

      Either is good.
      • That oughta teach me to pay more attention to subject lines.... Whoops ...

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by iminplaya (723125)
        Nope, now I remember after reading farther down. Toolbar...Spyware. Didn't know they were still around. Or maybe I just used to pay more attention when I was removing them manually, before I started using Adaware.

          • And Alexa's TOS tells you up front what they're doing; Google calls it "advanced features."

            I've only installed Google toolbar once (didn't do much for me), but the installer was very clear that if I enabled the page rank indicator and certain other features, that it would send usage data back to Google to help them rank pages and do other data-mining. I'm not sure how it was possible to miss it unless you're one of those Skinner monkeys that just hits Ok on every dialog that appears without reading it.

            Of course, maybe the installer has changed.

    • Can you say, "malware"?
      • Yep, caught in the article too. Surprise, surprise...Spyware company tries to stamp out anything even closely resembling competition. I find spyware to be very educational. It taught me a lot about the Windows Registry.

  • another GoogleClick moment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:15PM (#18806603)
    Another generation learns the old truth... the upstarts always seem to start as the Good Guys taking on the Big Faceless Corporate Machines. Their CEOs are hip and appear smiling, sharp but casually dressed, on magazine covers. Even after they go public, they maintain that halo for awhile, give lip service to idea of making the world a better place instead of just making a buck. Why not make a little less, and give something back to the people?

    Then one day, the upstarts turn into the Big Bad Guys. There's just no way to tell the difference. The need to dominate the industry is overriding, and the end justifies every means.

    • Another generation learns the old truth... the upstarts always seem to start as the Good Guys taking on the Big Faceless Corporate Machines. [..] Then one day, the upstarts turn into the Big Bad Guys. There's just no way to tell the difference. The need to dominate the industry is overriding, and the end justifies every means.

      Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

    • This is an ancient story, my friends, that existed long before the internets. A lot of grteat entrepreneurs start off as idealistic young types with a idea and a dream. And pretty soon the money, and power gets a hold of them and they end up paranoid, dictatorial, vicious businessmen. One day you're a curious young inventor named Thomas Edison, but pretty soon you're a wealthy shark trying to personally destroy Tesla and Westinghouse to defend your giant corporation.

  • Reasons to like Alexa? (Score:5, Informative)

    by drgonzo59 (747139) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:20PM (#18806651)
    From an excerpt in the article titled "Reasons to like Alexa" a response to the claim that Alexa's data is not representative was Statistical significance is attainable with only a small subset of the population - ask a pollster or a high school math teacher..

    That is a mistake, or rather a mistaken response to the claim. Yes, statistical significance is attainable but only if the sample is representative (i.e.) is random. The critics' claim is that Alexa's data is not representative, in other words the sites that choose to give Alexa their data are somehow don't represent a random sample of all the websites out there. It isn't a question of size but rather of quality.

    • Re:Reasons to like Alexa? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Assassin bug (835070) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:47PM (#18806895) Journal
      True, representation is reliant on how the samples are obtained and the response variable used for the estimate. However, representation and the randomness of the data are not necessarily related. There are different "kinds" of random-sampling techniques (e.g., systematic or arbitrary). Also, the data itself has its own measure of randomness [wikipedia.org]. You can have a non-random, representative data set. You can even have non-random data with heterogenious variance and have it be representative. What matters, in statistics, is that the assumptions for whatever statistical test is used are checked and that corrections to the analysis are made to accomodate for violations of the assumptions.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The critics' claim is that Alexa's data is not representative, in other words the sites that choose to give Alexa their data are somehow don't represent a random sample of all the websites out there. It isn't a question of size but rather of quality.

      AFAIK, Alexa statistics are generated from the browsing habits of Alexa Toolbar users and from nothing else.

      In other words, the sites browsed do not talk to Alexa or Amazon.

      Read what Alexa has to say in their Disclaimer [72.14.209.104].
      I'll give you the quick version: Sites wit

    • Re:Reasons to like Alexa? (Score:4, Informative)

      by suv4x4 (956391) on Friday April 20 2007, @01:17AM (#18809021)
      Yes, statistical significance is attainable but only if the sample is representative (i.e.) is random.

      Actually "random" would be the opposite of "representative", as long as statistics are concerned. Represenative means the same proportions of the subgroups in the samples are the same as the whole. The subgroups should be carefully chosen to represent properly what could bias or change the outcome of the results.

      As an extremely simple example, you want in the sample to have the same proportions of age, gender, income, professions etc (some of those categories may not matter in certain studies).
      • To have representation you have to sample your population in a random manner. Otherwise you get all kinds of biases. For example, if a study a out illegal drug use in U.S. somehow only sampled college students, that would not be very random. The results would not be representative of the whole U.S. population. Contrary to common sense it is in fact very difficult to get a truly random sampling without having any cohort effect. A good way to do random sampling is to sample from a fairly uniform ID database t

        • But you're effectively pointing out that it isn't random. Only less savvy users will be included. More savvy users won't be tricked/forced into installing the software, so the user base isn't random. Instead, it is only including a subset of less sophisticated users who don't notice, AND would be willing to install those piggybacked applications, AND don't have something like SpyBot installed to remove malware.

          So, it's only "the market"? I think that's exactly the people they are after. Your "subset" is p

        • Alexa toolbar and IE/Windows are installed by the user voluntarily after they agree to the license. Same old, same old

          Well you acutally gave an example why my post is true. Exactly because "Alexa toolbar....." is insalled by the user _voluntarily_ the web statistics data it collects is not representative of all the website visits out there. Do you see why? -- Because somehow only certain kinds of people would _choose_ to install Alexa and those people in all likelyhood would choose to visit only certain

  • Everbody loses?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by iminplaya (723125) <iminplaya AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:22PM (#18806667) Journal
    The folks at Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe beg to differ.

  • The problem with Statsaholic (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:31PM (#18806753)
    It has been shown in multiple studies that statsahol use is a gateway to statsajuana and statsamphetamine. Good for Bezos!
    • But, Bezos is on benzos - and for good reason:

      Bezos's net worth:

      * 1999 - $10.1 billion, ranked no. 19
      * 2000 - $6.0 billion, ranked no. 23
      * 2001 - $2.0 billion, ranked no. 234
      * 2002 - $1.5 billion, ranked no. 293
      * 2003 - $2.5 billion, ranked no. 147
      * 2004 - $5.1 billion, ranked no. 82
      * 2005 - $4.8 billion, ranked no. 41
      * 2006 - $4.3 billion, ranked no. 147 (shared with others)
      * 2006 - $3.6 billion, ranked no. 70 (shared with 2 others)

      Poor frickin' bastard. And don't think it's "ok" because he has 3.6 thousand million dollars; it's not ok. Nothing could make it ok. Benzos for Bezos make it less not ok and that's a start.

      *I personally have no idea whether Bezos uses benzodiazepines. In the same vein, I should say that I don't know whether he shoots heroin. And because there's no smoke where there could be a very hot fire, I should also point out that I have no knowledge of his crack-rela

  • I've never been to Statsaholic until just a few minutes ago. There's nothing good about this site at all. I guess it might have been relatively better than Alexa before the Alexa redesign a few months back, but now it seems to be pretty broken.

  • He was screen scraping... (Score:4, Informative)

    by xENoLocO (773565) * on Friday April 20 2007, @01:15AM (#18809015) Homepage
    ...not using the APIs.

    He was "avoiding an API fee", but the data he wanted was not available through the API anyways, so he screen scraped alexa. If alexa had wanted that data available they would have made it available through the API.

    The guy (hornbaker) admittedly says he wants to turn this into a PR battle. And I remember him explicitly trying to stick it to amazon before he changed the site name.

    I don't really know who the hell to cheer for here, so I'm just gonna sit back and watch.
    • Yes and Tim showed him what it was like to be food on stage in front of an audience of wolves. Kinda nice when you consider the brow beating he gets over amazon's one-click patent. http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=230983&cid =18750539 [slashdot.org]

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by arth1 (260657)
        Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who still boycotts Amazon over the one-click patent. That O'Reilly sold out doesn't mean that I have to. Still, it's getting more and more difficult to avoid Amazon, especially when I have to explain to well-meaning friends and relatives that I can no more accept a gift bought through Amazon than I can accept a gift made through child labour.

    • data != articles (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mateo_LeFou (859634) on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:40PM (#18806811) Homepage
      At least according to US copyright law, raw data does not contain the expressive component necessary for copyrights.

      From the complaint:
      "Alexa seeks to force Mr. Hornbaker to stop infringing Alexa's trademarks and to stop pirating Alexa proprietary data."

      I don't know exactly what Alexa does, but the only thing protectable in a database is its *design and *structure -- and that only if those attributes exhibit creativity (rather than the ordinary constraints of the relational model).

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Jeffrey Baker (6191)
          I don't think you understand the issue. Statsaholic is just telling your browser the location of the image. Your browser fetches the image directly from Alexa, and Alexa generates the image. The Alexaholic guy is at no time in posession of the image, so how could he have possibly violated Alexa's copyright?

          The *only* service that Statsaholic provides is concatenating some strings into a URI.
            • How is he stealing their bandwidth? Alexa is serving the images/data directly to the client. If they do not want this made available to then general public then they should have a website that only servers the content to registered users.

    • Re:I'm not surprised... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2007, @07:54PM (#18806953)
      Alan Graham here...I'll answer you...since you actually don't get the thrust of the piece.

      It smells bad to have someone from a $16 billion dollar company pitch to an audience of web 2.0 developers about how you can trust them with your business and pretend to be a good steward of what web 2.0 stands for...while you're suing one guy for upwards of $500k...especially when you had a year to shut him down and you only did that after you took all his ideas. On top of that you operate a company that would not exist without the volunteer efforts of every single person who installs the Alexa toolbar and reports that data back to the company...and they even admit...no data/volunteers...no Alexa.

      What I expect Alexa to do is to find it in themselves to work with the community that they depend on...in a more open way. I have nothing against them making a buck...but this type of lawsuit is heavy handed.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jeffrey Baker (6191)
      This is a gross misrepresentation of what Alexaholic does. It does not "pull images" from Alexa. Ever. It just constructs a URI and tells your browser about it. Then your browser pulls the image directly from Alexa.

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