Each week, technology reporters and columnists from The New York Times review the week’s news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here.

Hi, I’m David Streitfeld, reporting from a very quiet week in Silicon Valley. The venture capitalists were at their vacation homes or exotic resorts, dreaming of riches to come. Entrepreneurs also must have taken time off, because I made it to San Jose in less than two hours, a personal record. There wasn’t even a new data privacy scandal to occupy the pundits.

Amazon, however, never lets up. Chances are, something under your family Christmas tree or at your Hanukkah or Kwanzaa celebration was from the retailer. Perhaps everything was. Amazon’s 210th and final press release of the year summarized the company’s holiday season: best ever. If history is any guide, more than half those sales were made by third parties — shops big and small that are in essence renting a stall in the Amazon bazaar.

With millions of marketplace sellers battling for a piece of the lucrative Amazon action, competition is fierce. Exactly how tough I didn’t realize until I read a piece called “Prime and Punishment: Dirty Dealing in the $175 Billion Amazon Marketplace,” by Josh Dzieza on the tech site the Verge. Almost as an aside, the article mentions that some unscrupulous sellers were taking an established competitor’s product, setting it on fire and then posting photos saying it exploded. Amazon would go nuts and pull the product as a safety hazard, leaving a clear field for the shady new arrival.