Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#61

Post by moate » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #17

Monopolizing one part of the value chain, enables you to leverage that monopoly into controlling the next. Owning the railroads enabled standard oil to price it's competitors more, put them straits, and buy them up cheaply. Owning the OS, Microsoft can make sure they own the Office Product productivity. It's why the electrical grid needs to be separate from the energy makers (and regulated). Amazon and Google as the…

Regulations and oversight? Or anti-trust lawsuits? I have a feeling the only way to disrupt companies this large is with the force of a government busting up the monopolies. A scrappy start-up will just be pounded into submission and/or bought up.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#62

Post by nabla9 » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

arbuge wrote: post #19

Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases. A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Eb…

Perfect customer retention is not their goal. If selling 100 for $70 gives $7000 in revenue and selling 70 for $100 gives $7000 in revenue and the inverse relationship is linear, they should sell 85 for $85 and get $7225 in revenue.

They have created solid economies of scale that others can't match. Together with the massive amount of customer data they are in a position where they can optimize their prices and respond and react in almost real time to get optimal customer retention.

The long term goal is dynamic pricing for the perfect price discrimination (personal pricing). Detect when the customer is tired or stressed and show higher prices. Detect price conscious customers and show them lower prices. Maybe Alexa can trained detect the mood from the tone of voice and exploit that.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#63

Post by tfha » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

arbuge wrote: post #19

Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases. A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Eb…

This is why I've been unhappy to see Bezos gaining steam. As his other products become more successful, you can expect a lot more of this.

Alexa is not your friend, Alexa is a tool to make Amazon money. Amazon's move into media is not an effort to improve the media system, it's a recognition that there's a lot of money to be made by controlling the media that people consume. Same thing with the fire phone, it wasn't an attempt to make a better phone, it's an attempt to gain access to all of that juicy information that Google gets from Android.

Bezos is out to make an empire, everything else comes second.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#64

Post by cle » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:56 PM UTC

sk5t wrote: post #6

It's not hard to imagine that Amazon has created a situation where groups within the company are incented to drive up this high-margin ad income (no annoying logistics! no inventory!), divorced from the "external" fallout of ever-so-slowly turning the site into garbage. eBay, have you anything to say about this? Or how about you, Hewlett Packard?

Ad revenue is easy to measure. Long term erosion of the trust of your users isn’t.

Metric-driven decision making is not a silver bullet.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#65

Post by eganist » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

chrisper wrote: post #56

eganist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies in advance for the self-referential commentary: I've put down a long list of reasons for why I've cancelled prime after almost ten years of consistent use. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16937290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17568320 If you-the-reader need good reasons to quit prime, I hope these help.

Did you ever end up installing the Helium10 extension?

I don't recall this being on my list. Remind me?

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#66

Post by jspash » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

iamgopal wrote: post #2

I think amazon is winning solely based on their physical infrastructure which they keep investing in, and hence the share growth. It has nothing to do with how good their website or customer support is, or how many ads they show or not show. All are this ideas they just trying without anything to loose.

From my window (if there wasn't a house in the way) I could see an Amazon Locker. THAT is why Amazon is winning - for me at least.

They've solved a problem that makes up for the increased prices. The fact that I don't have to take a day off work to pick up a package. Or worry that my dodgy neighbours are going to steal it. That single feature has changed online shopping for me forever.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#67

Post by Retric » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

slivym wrote: post #42

village-idiot wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their website is garbage for how popular it is. It’s really hard to navigate the sections for controlling your kindle, digital purchases, or settings.

Whilst their website is terrible, I actually think the specifics of what Amazon does makes it very difficult for the website to be good. They sell a million versions of a million products in a million sectors. What is useful for me to know when buying a hard disk is not the same thing that is useful for me to know when buying a bottle of wine. So they either have 1 size fits all, or a huge cost in building almost cus…

Having a 100 or so skins for each major section could go a long way without costing Amazon that much. They already do some customization for example showing different sizes for clothing.

The problem is they don't face much direct head to head competition. Where online can you buy a digital movie to watch right now, lawn ornaments, an out of print book from 1970, etc without ordering from several websites.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#68

Post by Judson » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

maaaats wrote: post #10

Unless you know exctly brand/make/model you wan't to buy on Amazon, the search is useless. Hundreds of similar results from dozens of vendors of varying quality. I liked it better when they sold things themselves, now they're just an eBay clone selling cheap knockoffs trying to hide the fact.

I've noticed lately that Amazon's search also returns products if the query matches customer Q&A questions.

So if you are wanting to purchase, say, a 10ga extension cord, and UL listing is important to you, searching for '10 Gauge Extension Cord UL' will return many non-UL listed cords with customers asking 'Is this UL Listed?'. It makes for a very frustrating shopping experience.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#69

Post by _ea1k » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

eganist wrote: post #34

arbuge wrote: post #19

Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases. A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Eb…

Apologies in advance for the self-referential commentary: I've put down a long list of reasons for why I've cancelled prime after almost ten years of consistent use. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16937290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17568320 If you-the-reader need good reasons to quit prime, I hope these help.

I don't necessarily agree with the bits about 2-day shipping. TBH, I've had positive and negative experiences with that for years and don't really see a trend one way or the other. When it works well, it can be amazing (next day on a weekend!) and when it fails can seem really weird.

But I'll still mostly agree with your list and add another. A lot of clothing items now only have a reasonable return policy when bought as part of a Prime Wardrobe. What if I just want a pair of shoes and am worried about them not fitting? Some offer free returns for this and others don't. Ugh.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#70

Post by bootlooped » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

chanandler_bong wrote: post #32

m-p-3 wrote: post #3

Is there an addon of some kind that exists to make those ads more obvious (some kind of highlights) without outright removing them?

I am not a developer, but something like AdBlock or uBlock Origin should be able to at least highlight the "Sponsored" text to make it more prominent?

uBlock Origin appears to remove a lot of the sponsored results. Some sections like "our brands" or "expertly reviewed" may still appear above organic results.