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Amazon blindly blocks Statsaholic

webforth.com — Yeah the news is correct. Amazon finally decided to completely block Statsaholic from using their APIs.

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thr0n 1 year 203 days ago, made popular 1 year 203 days ago

649 diggs
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thr0n, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15Seems like you can use api's unless u succeed :) lol
- panique, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Succeed at what? Misleading people about the traffic of one site vs. another site because Alexa only tracks users dumb enough to install their toolbar?
- jsp123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Just so you know they dont just track the toolbar users, they track web developers a lot because we have the SearchStatus add-on.
- duncan12, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Uh... no. See that fancy graph. Alexaholic did NOT make that graph. Alexa did. He's just taking (stealing) it directly from Alexa, not via an API. Alexa has a traffic history API and he's not using it... why? It costs money. If this guy was interested in being legit he would use the services Alexa offers and not steal graphs.
- thr0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Do_you_prefer_Alexaholic_over_Alexa
thr0n, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Update: It seems like Statsaholic wants to switch to other traffic data providers. Compete.com and Quantcast.com have already shown interest in providing their data.
ender83, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Your site is great, don't give up!!!
ekkalvia, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26What is up with the Internet lately? The RIAA tries to shut down Internet radio. Viacom sues YouTube. SuperGu files a cease & desist Pligg. Alexa tries to shut down Alexaholic. The good guys keep getting sued by the bad guys.
- kweee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28I demand you take down your comment because it is too full of truth which is a violation of Presidential Executive Order #81401a: Lie About Everything.
- TroubleInMind, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9Why are the successful established entities always the "bad guys"? I mean seriously. Not that I agree or disagree with any of the matchups above, but I'm sorta bored with this automatic "if you're successful, you're bad, and if you're some cowboy startup, you're good" thing.
  
  It flies in the face of rational thought, the hallmark of all digg users.
  
  What if digg served duggmirror with a cease and desist? Whose side would digg users be on then?
- randyzaia, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3How is Alexaholic a good guy, and Amazon a bad guy? Alexaholic was simply reposting Alexa data with a slightly nicer UI, which I'm guessing is not the intended use of the API.
- idonthack, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@TroubleInMind
  Mostly because the established ones are already rich, and they're known for doing bad things at least sometimes. The newcomers haven't pissed anyone off yet.
- Murdats, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
  Honore de Balzac (1799 - 1850)
- Johnny2085, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@TroubleInMind
  
  "It flies in the face of rational thought, the hallmark of all digg users."
  
  All digg users? Surely you jest sir.
- duzytata, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8America, A place where everyone wants you to succeed until you do.
- toppgun, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3What is up with you guys hating wealth?
  
  I come from a community of extreme wealth and no one has commited anything morally questionable to achieve it. Almost everyone that I know who is >$1 million net wealth is an extremely moral and charitable person who had a great idea or was extremely ambitious on their climb up the corporate ladder. Just becuase someone knows how to become very wealthy doesnt mean they lied and cheated to get it and in most cases people dont.
  
  My dad is an extremely moral and ethical person and he started a small business in real estate up from the ground. It suceeded and he became very wealthy. I hate reading about how People with money = bad here on digg. Whatever happened to Capitalism and opportunity? Not everyone is equal in business as they are as individuals with basic human rights. Some are better at it than others and some people are more ambitious and just because you guys arent doesnt make those that are bad people.
- ekkalvia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Are you saying that Google isn't wealthy? It's not their size or wealth that makes them good or bad, but their actions. In these cases, I would define bad as legal action in self-interest that leads to society becoming worse, even if slightly.
thr0n, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3Statsaholic links to this Digg page and requests support from all.
chrisheuer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I don't know the whole story, but open api's are all open...to a point. Does anyone know the real back story, other than the fact that Alexa feels this is competing with them unfairly, using their own IP and data in a way they don't like?
- duncan12, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yes, I know what's going on... Statsaholic isn't using an Alexa API at all. He's just taking (stealing) Alexa's graph and framing it with his script. Who in their right mind would allow such a use? Alexa offers a traffic history API available here: http://aws.amazon.com/awis. Statsaholic could use it if they wanted to be legit. But they don't.
glitch010101, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Alexaholic offered usability enhancements to Alexa. Alexa has even learned from them and incorporated some of those improvements back into their site. Now they want to shut down this excellent, well branded fan-site that amounts to a giant ad for them?

In the words of The Monarch "Oooh. Dick move."
- randyzaia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9"Now they want to shut down this excellent, well branded fan-site that amounts to a giant ad for them?"
  
  It's interesting to me how outsiders who have no clue as to how a particular business operates are always great at knowing the best approach for a that business! It's also amazing to me how those people all managed to end up on Digg!
  
  It's also amazing how the people who actually operate a business like Alexa are always the worst at knowing what the best strategies for that business are! Like, they don't understand that things should always be given away for free! Or that if someone's using your data without any substantive improvements, and lots of people are using that site instead of your own, resulting in fewer ad dollars for you and market confusion as to who is actually providing the stats, it's really just a great "ad" for your site! How stupid are people!
- TroubleInMind, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If I'm understanding it right, basically, Alexa asked them to stop using the name Alexa as part of their brand identity. Thread at techcrunch including remarks from the principal:
  
  http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/19/amazon-forcing-name-change-at-alexaholic/
  
  but a few days later (missing a whole middle part here) the Stats/Alexaholic entity was effectively cut off. It's the middle part we don't know about. On the surface it looks like a mundane trademark issue that didn't get resolved to the complainer's satisfaction, therefore they ramped it up a notch.
  
  Again, there's obviously a whole middle part we don't know about. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with so and so is better, so and so is cooler than us so we'll crush them -- honestly it looks like a legitimate trademark complaint issue.
- TroubleInMind, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1whoops doublepost /cringe
  
  kudos for sweet Monarch quote btw
Ourai, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0What I'd like to know is what Alexa possibly has to gain by selectively blocking Statsaholic. Stats is probably not using much bandwidth, relatively speaking, of Alexa's APIs, and they aren't trying to smear Alexa--anything but. Stats might be construed as competing against Alexa, but the publicity Alexa gains probably outweighs any slight profit loss from Statsaholic's existence by several orders of magnitude.

Either a very large puzzle piece is missing, or else BREAKING: Alexa put in looney bin.
- TroubleInMind, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I probably agree with the sentiment but Alexa are free to make their own judgement (right or wrong) regarding what's in their best interest.
  
  If there was some way that "sensible" humans could cause corporations to make good business decisions, we wouldn't have ever seen things like the Memory Stick, ATRAC3, UMD, MiniDisc...oh wait, this is starting to become a bit of a pattern, isn't it? Nvm.
fuzzmeister, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1What I find confounding is that Statsaholic is PAYING Amazon for that information. They aren't just scraping it for free. Money is money, it shouldn't matter if you are getting it from advertisements or API payments. If Amazon really felt like it, they could increase the prices for Statsaholic, but blocking them outright does nothing but create bad press...
- duncan12, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0whoah footballdude, you are just flat-out wrong. They aren't paying for it. They are taking the graphs straight from Alexa's site and framing them. Alexa offers an API, but statsaholic doesn't use it... they'd rather steal a free image from Alexa.
NickD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Come on Jeff, it is not like you to behave like this.
MichelleMacP, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Wow.. I hop this gets tons of coverage. I hate to see the little guy bullied like this. Particularly when what Ron is doing is bringing *more* traffic to Alexa, in the end.
- randyzaia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For me at least, it ended up giving Alexa less traffic. The UI was better on Alexaholic, so I used Alexaholic. Now I'll use Alexa.
m00dy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Who else thought the title said 'Scholastic'
- triscuitbiscuit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Although I read the title correctly, I thought it was referring to the river and Statsaholic was some sort of fish. Woops
quick5pnt0cobra, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I've dugg the story because I hate seeing the big guys pick on the little guys, but with that said I think there has to be a part of the story missing here.
ShaunOlsen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Now imagine if Scholastic stopped supplying to Amazon.
- m00dy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1LOOOOL @ shaunoisen
  
  ref : my previous comment
- m0laria, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Is it sad or good I get this joke?
sonaro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I knew something was up. Last few days it's been blank and I just had a gut feeling that they were being blocked. Statsaholic is awesome.
leed25d, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This is just plain wrong.
paulknag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I first heard about Alexaholic as a way to compare websites, before I knew what Alexa was, or appreciated how unreliable it's data is. Seeing comparisons is far more interesting, and if anything Bezos and company should be giving Alexaholic a reward for making its half-baked service relevant
- randyzaia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You can see comparisons on Alexa as well.
- thr0n, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1randyzaia, whether Alexa can do it themselves or not is not the question. The real question is how reliable and stable is Alexa's API's are?. You build an awsome mashup which got popular and one fine morning you realise that you are nowhere. Guess It wouldn't be joyful.
- randyzaia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Alexaholic is not a mashup. It simply took the Alexa data and reposted it in a slightly modified manner.
johnadams1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0This is so non-web 2.0. Anyways, simply use attentionmeter.com instead.

Attentionmeter is a good idea. According to Steve Rubel:

"...a neat web application that triangulates traffic graphs from Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast. It's called the Attentionmeter. I am not sure about the name but I can live with it. Even better, there's a handy dandy bookmarklet (yum, I love bookmarklets) so you can track any website you're browsing."
gotys, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1AlexaHolic has been making a bank on someone Else's playground for too long. I am surprise it took alexa this long to do something about it. The whole business of AlexaHolic was based on someone Else's business --- that's not a good bussiness in my opinion ,and can't expect much more then getting shutdown.

Just my 2 cents
SneezyRobot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Good lord, has Alexa lost it's collective mind?? Way to shoot yourself in the foot.....way to litigate rather than innovate.
henriduong, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Alexa/Amazon need to fire their executive team - ithat's what happens though when you get a bunch of old fat guys sitting around with nothing else better to do other than spend their money on old fat attorneys...I hope this digg keeps growing until someone realizes they made a mistake in pissing off the people's internet!

Henri
"Get Yourself Together"
www.socialurl.blogspot.com
www.socialurl.com
- randyzaia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, get rid of that Bezos guy. Built a company from nothing to $16 billion? What have you done for me lately? Have you created any cool mashups? Podcasts? Any cool widgets? Old fat guy.
viktors, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0As an owner of AlexaRadar.com, a traffic comparison service which focuses on international movers & shakers, I’m worried if I’ll be the next target of Alexa/Amazon lawyers. Alexa looked like a nice company until they've made almost exact copy of Ajax interface used on Alexaholic. Now that trademark issue, what's next? Will they go after big EC2 or S3 users? Or is it a new trend, with companies like Google preventing new API registrations?
- viktors, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Alexa/Amazon lawyers finally appeared on the radar, just renamed AlexaRadar to http://www.HITgeist.com/
anthropocentric, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Alexa should thank you, not shut you down.
formerlyOfTheEx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It's a good site which makes life easier
Greggo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Here is what is posted on Alexa blog;

"Saturday, March 24, 2007
Alexaholic/Statsaholic
Last year Ron Hornbaker started a website called Alexaholic.com that displayed Alexa traffic graphs. This website very clearly misappropriated the Alexa name, which isn't something that Alexa tolerates under any circumstances. We reached out to Mr. Hornbaker last year in an attempt to resolve the problem [...] check http://awis.blogspot.com/2007/03/alexaholicstatsaholic.html From this it seems to me that Alexa has tried to work on the problem prior to taking this action. I'd love to know more from both sides.
closetgeekshow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I can't figure out how to directly respond to nested comments... so to this is for duncan12 in reply to:
"Uh... no. See that fancy graph. Alexaholic did NOT make that graph. Alexa did. He's just taking (stealing) it directly from Alexa, not via an API. Alexa has a traffic history API and he's not using it... why? It costs money. If this guy was interested in being legit he would use the services Alexa offers and not steal graphs."

He actually already uses their for pay API, but good call on the jumping to conclusions.
In his words: "I’m already paying them several hundred dollars each month for data, and would gladly pay for graphs. The fact that they haven’t charged for them, and allow any website in the world (except mine) to link to them, says to me that they only mind hotlinking if the hotlinker becomes successful. Which should give every Amazon/Alexa api developer pause for thought."
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Amazon blindly blocks Statsaholic

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