Amazon Sues Alexaholic

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."

I'm not surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

As Alan Graham's article points out, Alexa is working with "mountains of data" on the backend - which is requiring mountains of expensive processing power. As he also points out, Alexa haven't released APIs to access and reuse their data - indeed, they've shown no desire to have somebody else profit off that work at all.

So... why would anybody be the least bit surprised that Alexa are angry and suing? Alexaholic / Statsaholic is doing nothing more than stealing the difficult bit that Alexa has already accomplished, and wrapped it in a different template with their own ads, allowing them to make money off it while Alexa makes not a penny.

Alan Graham, I ask you - if I were to take the articles you write from ZDNet and republish them verbatim on my own site (with your byline, but my template and ads) - wouldn't you be rather upset? Of course you would, and hence you're a hypocrite if you expect Alexa not to take action.

Re:Thanks Tim

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think it's kind of funny that O'Reilly was complaining about Alexa/Alexaholic when O'Reilly and Associates basically trademarked "Web 2.0" and sued anyone else that used "Web 2.0" in connection with a conference or convention.

Re:Alexa

[iminplaya]

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.

Re:Thanks Tim

[cyphercell]

You're kidding? Got a link?

Re:I'm not surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

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:biting the hands that feed them

[jamie]

I still am too... but yeah, when RMS gives up [gnu.org] it makes you feel pretty lonely...

Re:data != articles

[Jeffrey Baker]

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.

Re:Thanks Tim

[Anonymous Coward]

Lest people think this is new, O'Reilly attempted to trademark "netizen" and "website" [slashdot.org]. They may be doing it through a third-party now, but O'Reilly has been attempting to trademark common web-related terms pretty much since the web was first created.