Flipkart to shut down website by April 2016 and Migrate to App

^^ I mean with the app installed. The app still needs internet connectivity to show the content. I am saying that with this arrangement, a user might be able to run the app without having subscribed to a mobile internet plan.
 
Lord Nemesis said:
Well, it would be violation of net neutrality if Flipkart starts getting preferential treatment or their competition discriminated against.

From what I can see so far, Flipkart is paying so that the customers can use either app without incurring bandwidth costs. A customer without an internet pack on his mobile might be able to use the flipkart app because of this arrangement.
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Um no. It is a violation of net neutrality rules because flipkart is pre-empting a day when Airtel or someone might ask them to pay up for their bandwidth usage (check Comcast and Netflix). The issue here is if I open a site called shitkart.com then what chance do I have for a mobile app/version of my site? Next to nothing, cause checking my site will need them to buy data packs.
Its the same tactic used by facebook and airtel recently. It would eventually mean I can no longer build a mobile only social app, cause why bother when fb is free.

wikipedia is doing the same thing but at least they acknowledge the grey area and issues:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...complicated-relationship-with-net-neutrality/
 
I have a fear If in Future Airtel might slow down routes to Snapdeal/Amazon when they have flash sales and Keeping Routes to Flipkart fast.
Shame on these Scumbags 'Flipkart' calling themselves as an Internet Company. They should be included in the Crap group as CrapKart or Flopkart, Indeed they will be, If they open up Free access to their App.
I fail to understand, Who the F**k at Flipkart would have got such an Idea to pay ~Rs 1000 for 1Gb of Data transferred between Airtel and Flipkart app?
 
sharktale1212 said:
Um no. It is a violation of net neutrality rules because flipkart is pre-empting a day when Airtel or someone might ask them to pay up for their bandwidth usage (check Comcast and Netflix). The issue here is if I open a site called shitkart.com then what chance do I have for a mobile app/version of my site? Next to nothing, cause checking my site will need them to buy data packs.
Its the same tactic used by facebook and airtel recently. It would eventually mean I can no longer build a mobile only social app, cause why bother when fb is free.

wikipedia is doing the same thing but at least they acknowledge the grey area and issues:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...complicated-relationship-with-net-neutrality/
Click to expand...

Sorry, your understanding of net neutrality is wrong. Net neutrality simply means that all data has to be treated on equal terms by service providers

If Airtel were charging the customer and at the same time want Flipkart to pay a fee to allow their services or if they were trying to throttle the connections for specific service providers who choose not to pay a fee, then it is violation of the neutrality because they are trying to treat the data of specific services differently. This is what happened in Netflix case. Customers were still paying for the bandwidth, but the ISPs wanted to charge netflix for allowing their services to run. They were treating Netflix traffic differently than the rest of the traffic.

If Flipkart is trying to pay for the bandwidth costs of their customers, It is simply an incentive for their consumers. The ISP is still getting the cost of the bandwidth, but from a different entity. It is no different than a company offering a freebie or a discount. You would obviously want for buy from them because they are offering better value. Even consider the case that for a product which costs the same in two shops, one shop charges 500 Rs for delivery and another has free delivery. Which one would you pick? Is it unfair competition to provide such services for free?

I don't see how the mere act of Flipkart paying for the bandwidth it a violation of neutrality as long as they are not prioritizing Flipkart or throttling their competition because of their deal. As long as they are not treating Flipkart traffic differently because of the deal, it is not a violation of neutrality. The fear may be that further down the line, the ISPs may start discriminating which is what needs to be controlled.
 
If Facebook says that their service is somehow special (part of a group of commonly used necessary services for all or whatever), so ISPs should provide access for free, then its a violation because they are expecting the ISP to give special treatment to Facebook data. If an ISP says I will change extra for Facebook traffic, then also its a violation.

But if Facebook says that they will pay for their users to get Facebook access for free, then there's no violation because the ISP is getting paid for providing the access except that its Facebook that's paying. it would not be neutral if such an opportunity is only given to Facebook and not to others. For instance if a Facebook competitor is denied the opportunity to pay for their customers to make the service available for free.
 
Right now flipkart have agreed to pay for the data transfer between there app on airtel voluntarily.

This would lay the foundation for discrimination. Down the line, I can see that based on the same logic craptel might force other OTT services like skype, whatsapp, youtube etc to make a suitable arrangement for sharing some profit with them as well.
What that would do is, slowly the margins would be small and that would change and become bigger overtime for airtel. These free OTT apps would either have to shift there revenue model to subscription or have to shut down there operations. Ultimately the end consumer would have to pay for these apps that are basically free now.

Small app makers or innovative services would cease to exist as companies like flipkart with deep pockets would already have bought the data at rates that smaller players cannot manage/afford.

Right now, in USA no new handset can be launched without the telecom companies support. As those companies provide them with contracts. Companies like Sony etc don't even bother to launch any of there new handsets because of the same reason. Smaller handset makers cannot even imagine to enter that market because of the monopoly of telecom companies.

Small steps leads to bigger strides. If we consumers would not protest against the move from flipkart which might look right to some. But, it's long term implications are bad. And we would loose in the process. It's going to be even worse then the censorship in China. Normal Data packs too would be made dearly expensive and selective plans that would enable the use of flipkart or youtube would be introduced.
Soon the other telecom operators would join airtel so that you can't go anywhere else.

Time is of the essence. Fight now against this or pay the price later when nothing can be done.
 
Lord Nemesis said:
Sorry, your understanding of net neutrality is wrong. Net neutrality simply means that all data has to be treated on equal terms by service providers

If Airtel were charging the customer and at the same time want Flipkart to pay a fee to allow their services or if they were trying to throttle the connections for specific service providers who choose not to pay a fee, then it is violation of the neutrality because they are trying to treat the data of specific services differently. This is what happened in Netflix case. Customers were still paying for the bandwidth, but the ISPs wanted to charge netflix for allowing their services to run. They were treating Netflix traffic differently than the rest of the traffic.

If Flipkart is trying to pay for the bandwidth costs of their customers, It is simply an incentive for their consumers. The ISP is still getting the cost of the bandwidth, but from a different entity. It is no different than a company offering a freebie or a discount. You would obviously want for buy from them because they are offering better value. Even consider the case that for a product which costs the same in two shops, one shop charges 500 Rs for delivery and another has free delivery. Which one would you pick? Is it unfair competition to provide such services for free?

I don't see how the mere act of Flipkart paying for the bandwidth it a violation of neutrality as long as they are not prioritizing Flipkart or throttling their competition because of their deal. As long as they are not treating Flipkart traffic differently because of the deal, it is not a violation of neutrality. The fear may be that further down the line, the ISPs may start discriminating which is what needs to be controlled.
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I guess this is what you call an oxymoron. How is Flipkart data being treated equally if I need to pay for accessing amazon and not for flipkart? Its prioritised in a rather roundabout way.
Secondly, if one of those two shops were Microsoft bundled free IE and another was Netscape Navigator, you can rest assured someone sooner or later will look into anti-competitive clause.
My guess here is you never opened the link I tagged on. Here's what wikipedia had to say for their Wikipedia zero program:
"We have a complicated relationship to it. We believe in net neutrality in America," said Gayle Karen Young, chief culture and talent officer at the Wikimedia Foundation. But, Young added, offering Wikipedia Zero requires a different perspective elsewhere. "Partnering with telecom companies in the near term, it blurs the net neutrality line in those areas. It fulfills our overall mission, though, which is providing free knowledge."
 
^^ Sorry, I am not talking about Wikipedias opinion on Net neutrality. Apparently, every group seems to have their own colored opinion of net neutrality. ISPs, businesses and the consumers all want a version of net neutrality that is favorable to themselves and they are ready to change definitions for each market or choose to support or not support it.

I am talking about net neutrality from a completely neutral angle. Net neutrality in its purest form is all about how service providers are treating data traffic in a fair manner. Using the example of the Flipkart deal, The ISP is actually charging money whether you browse flipkart or amazon with the only difference being who is footing the bill. The ISPs neutrality has absolutely nothing to do with customer costs or business practices outside the scope of the ISP. Their angle is that they are charging for bandwidth regardless of which service you end up using. Net neutrality is about traffic fairness, not about business fairness. There are a different set of rules and in some countries laws to deal with any business unfairness.

From an ISP standpoint, If flipkart is allowed to pay for its customers, the ISP cannot say no to Amazon or some other competitor who wants to do the same. If that business doesn't want to do it, it is not the ISP's problem. The only thing is that the ISP cannot start penalizing Amazon or their customers because of that business decision. As long as they don't do that, they are being neutral.

As I said before, the only concern with regard to these sort of deals is that somewhere down the line, the ISP may actually be prompted to, or voluntarily favor one over their competitors or penalize the competition. This is what needs to be prevented. Just because it can happen somewhere down the line does not mean that Flipkart paying for its customers is in self a violation of neutrality. Its like US Govt is setting up surveillance on any body with a Muslim name or adding them to the flight travel black lists.

Having standard net neutrality rules will automatically prevent preferential treatment by removing any incentives that the ISP may have from this sort of deal. If an ISP is getting paid whether its from the service owner or customer and they are not getting any additional benefit from the deal, why would they bother with any special treatment.
 
^ Your description means Microsoft giving away IE free (because they had paid for the development) compared to letting people choose IE vs Netscape was ok.

But it was not, they were sued for anti competitive-ness.

So no, just because I pay for something and let someone else use it is not neutral. It is a predatory practice.
 
sharktale1212 said:
^ Your description means Microsoft giving away IE free (because they had paid for the development) compared to letting people choose IE vs Netscape was ok.

But it was not, they were sued for anti competitive-ness.

So no, just because I pay for something and let someone else use it is not neutral. It is a predatory practice.
Click to expand...

^^
What is wrong with the above..? I really do not see that..?

The bundling of IE in the OS image was fine, but the ability for users not to be able to uninstall (or creating a prohibitive environment for a second choice); was probably incorrect. Also that they had specific tie up (said: they paid) with OEMs to only bundle their OS, was seen as incorrect. But again, that is just capitalistic business sense, and they were not forcing users to buy their products. I agree with @Lord Nemesis , as long as the frame-work is such: the data paths are not compromised or skewed (as per the data request), it hardly matters who is paying. FK, is actually doing users a favor by making the service free (when their data is accessed), and footing the bill. What you are actually saying: If all channel points are being charged for, by the ISP, then it is not fair, if a channel partner makes it free, and takes up the charge. Compare it to an ashram (free stay, run by a welfare organization), versus a small motel (charged per night, run by a hotel group). Is the ashram, being incorrect, anti-competitive..? In this same sense, any freebie which we get when we purchase goods (example: soap free with toothbrush), also looks unfair..? Is it..? The onus is on the manufacturer (FK is one), to create such an environment, which entices and lures the projected consumer to use their products. It is how, M$ gives away free-copies of their OS, before it finally comes out to retail. If all are charging, then none can give free, is a bad mantra...!
 
My shopping quota for Flipkart has been reduced from a few thousand bucks a month to a few hundred bucks a month due to their degrading customer service and reducing availability of items to my location. Now this - it seems sooner the Flipkart is going to get zero budget from me.
 
sharktale1212 said:
^ Your description means Microsoft giving away IE free (because they had paid for the development) compared to letting people choose IE vs Netscape was ok.

But it was not, they were sued for anti competitive-ness.
Click to expand...

Yes, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Microsoft bundling IE and I never had any doubt about that. It is called value addition. It would have been anti-competitive if they had prevented alternative software from being installed, but they didn't. They did not stop anyone from installing Netscape Navigator if they wanted to use that instead. In fact I myself have always used Netscape over IE.

It is the retrograde laws that allowed them to be sued over it. Lots of other operating systems have bundled browsers or other software without getting sued. Why is it ok for Apple to bundle Safari and shit load of other software, but not for Microsoft to bundle IE just because they happen to have a larger market share? Heck, on iOS, Apple did not allow any other browser apart from Safari for a considerable period of time.

Laws are not the start and end of everything and they don't always cover everything They don't by themselves determine right and wrong. They are determined based on what we perceive to be right and wrong and a lot of stupid stuff gets added to laws when stupid people are given the authority. Do you think the main guy in the Nirbhaya case deserved to go scot free just because he was a few months shy of being 18 years old. yeah he was kid till the eve of this 18th birthday regardless of what he did, but he would suddenly grow more mature in that last one second right? Don't you think it was the retrograde laws that allowed him and many others like him to go free without deserved punishment.
 
asingh said:
^^
What is wrong with the above..? I really do not see that..?

The bundling of IE in the OS image was fine, but the ability for users not to be able to uninstall (or creating a prohibitive environment for a second choice); was probably incorrect. Also that they had specific tie up (said: they paid) with OEMs to only bundle their OS, was seen as incorrect. But again, that is just capitalistic business sense, and they were not forcing users to buy their products. I agree with @Lord Nemesis , as long as the frame-work is such: the data paths are not compromised or skewed (as per the data request), it hardly matters who is paying. FK, is actually doing users a favor by making the service free (when their data is accessed), and footing the bill. What you are actually saying: If all channel points are being charged for, by the ISP, then it is not fair, if a channel partner makes it free, and takes up the charge. Compare it to an ashram (free stay, run by a welfare organization), versus a small motel (charged per night, run by a hotel group). Is the ashram, being incorrect, anti-competitive..? In this same sense, any freebie which we get when we purchase goods (example: soap free with toothbrush), also looks unfair..? Is it..? The onus is on the manufacturer (FK is one), to create such an environment, which entices and lures the projected consumer to use their products. It is how, M$ gives away free-copies of their OS, before it finally comes out to retail. If all are charging, then none can give free, is a bad mantra...!
Click to expand...
Don't take this the wrong way but neither you nor Lord Nemesis are thinking in terms of a normal user. For a non-techie (or even some techies) even being aware of an alternative is a big thing. How many non-IT people, say your uncle or sister will be aware of removing IE and installing Netscape? Or that there was an alternative? Not many. People might be aware of Chrome or FF today but that came very late.

Secondly, the lowered barrier of entry (due to capitalism, as you put it) made sure that MS did not have any incentives to improve. They kept on putting out shittier version and it affected the end customer. And it made sure that even with shittier version they occupied the market share for a very long time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#/media/File:Internet-explorer-usage-data.svg
See how things flipped after 1996 when it started to be integrated into Windows OS. It took many years to actually for it to be reverted.

Lets apply the same principle to this whole story about FK too. It will make sure people have larger market share even if they dont improve. Does it mean companies will be able to get away with it over time? Nope as the IE example showed us. Will it take as many years as it took for IE? Probably not because of the speed at which information gets shared today. But will it impede other people coming with better ideas? Yes.
Today if I want to open a social networking aimed at India, a teenager might not bother because FB is free. And for him being free is a big deal. In these early years my company will die out pretty quickly. Over time when people are frustrated enough (or I am a Chrome/Google like entity) for "being free" stops being a barrier entry, the company might take off. And while it might take lower number of "years", why even take chance of something like this to happen.

Then again with ashram and motel, are we going to equate FK as a NGO giving welfare? If yes then there is not much to say. But if we were talking about providing free internet for say the whole IIN thing - educating people, even Wikipedia then it makes sense.

Still let me give you another example. I am Hathway/Airtel and I have setting with a society to be exclusively providing internet. And this happens a lot of places in metros. What kind of competition are these guys providing? There are no laws against it so its fine and dandy. But people suffer because a Beam/ACT broadband can't connect to the same building.

Anyways, FK has reverted back its plan after the backlash:
http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/flipkart-pulls-out-of-airtel-zero/46916526
 
Flipkart to shut down website within a year
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ebsite-within-a-year/articleshow/46983595.cms

Flipkart would move to an app-only format within a year, a senior executive said, confirming growing speculation that India's largest e-commerce platform would follow the route announced for unit Myntra.

"Last year, we had more on the app, but still did our web and desktop. In the next year or so, we're going to be only mobile," said Michael Adnani, vice-president, retail and head of brand alliances, Flipkart. "A year ago, 6% of our traffic was coming from mobile. In less than 18 months, that traffic is 10-fold. That shows the significance of what a mobile phone is doing for the consumers and consequently doing for us,"
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An year in Advance, My condolences to Flipkart . RIP.
 
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