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Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

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Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#91

Post by greedy_buffer »

fishbone wrote: post #83
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…

I almost ordered two pvc plumbing fittings from Amazon last week for $13.99. Thanks to some Hackernews skepticism I cancelled my shopping cart. I found the same fittings at my local hardware store for $8.99. My question is, how dynamic are Amazon’s prices? Do all users see the same prices or is it more like google search where results are “personalized”? It seems like they could dynamically change prices based on use…

If they were personalised it would be hard for sites like camelcamelcamel.com to exist, right? I would speculate that they don't personalise. Offering price discrimination as a service to third party sellers sounds like a minefield too.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#92

Post by amelius »

ckastner wrote: post #74
tfha wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Bezos is out to make an empire, everything else comes second. I share this sentiment. For comparison, I believe the amount of and methods with which Google collects data to be wrong, but I also believe that they don't believe they are doing something (outright) wrong. Amazon, however, must know that they have a counterfeit goods problem, but it seems that they couldn't care less about it. Same applies to gaming the…

> but I also believe that they don't believe they are doing something (outright) wrong.

With so many engineers working at Google, someone there should be thinking they are doing something wrong. Right?

Or are you more thinking of a collective conscious of some kind?

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#93

Post by village-idiot »

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…

If it’s possible, Amazon has the resources to do it, they just clearly have decided not to spend them.

Fwiw I knew a guy who claimed that the templating language for the main website was written in C headers. I can’t verify that, but if true it’d go a long way to explain why it’s so bad.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#94

Post by beaconstudios »

m3kw9 wrote: post #84
tfha wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Xyz company is not your friend. Ok, like we didn’t know they are trying to make money off the other side? When is the last time a company trying to make a profit is our friend?

any time where they are trying to make a profit by selling you something you want?

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#95

Post by slouch »

fishbone wrote: post #83
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…

I almost ordered two pvc plumbing fittings from Amazon last week for $13.99. Thanks to some Hackernews skepticism I cancelled my shopping cart. I found the same fittings at my local hardware store for $8.99. My question is, how dynamic are Amazon’s prices? Do all users see the same prices or is it more like google search where results are “personalized”? It seems like they could dynamically change prices based on use…

> My question is, how dynamic are Amazon’s prices?

Camelcamelcamel charts the price history of any item on Amazon https://camelcamelcamel.com/

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#96

Post by SteveCoast »

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…

So you saved $4.40 to go to Walmart.

* There's a non-zero chunk of the population not near a Walmart or similar.

* It costs time to go there

* It costs vehicle depreciation

So if you were going to Walmart anyway, or walked there with nothing better to do you saved the money.

But if you didn't then let's say the average wage is $25/hour or so and you spent 30 minutes there and back, and fully loaded vehicle depreciation is 50 cents/mile and it's 5 miles away then you spent $17.50 to go there.

I totally realize we could argue all this back and forth but just pointing out that most of the time the "savings" aren't real if you value your time and transport. And yes, I realize most people don't value their time and treat their transport as a sunk cost even if it isn't entirely.

edit: I was assuming going to walmart in person as opposed to online, because that's what most people appear to do but I'm happy to be wrong :-)

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#97

Post by cmurf »

jrockway wrote: post #57

I might actually be done with Amazon. Every few months, I spend some time searching for the perfect LED light bulbs for my apartment; the built-in fixture requires 6 candelabra-base bulbs. These are hard to find, but there are a few products catering to this market, so I randomly buy stuff to see if I ever get anything good. I found some LEDs that claimed to have a high CRI and were brighter than normal, so I took a…

Ikea LEDs are pretty darn good for the price. Also note there is a lot of debate and quandary about the CRI as it applies to fluorescent let alone LED. Basically the CRI as it stands is like your kid coming home with a single grade for their report card, they got a B+. Little do you know they got A's in everything but got an F in earth science. The full spectral power distribution is almost too much information, but you can at least visually see how the sun and near black body radiators like incandescent are similar, whereas not at all the case with fluorescent and LED. LED has the potential to have really good color rendering like those used in the graphic arts, but those bulbs are still expensive and you're not gonna find them in Amazon or Ikea.

But just from a casual, pretty good for the kitchen without making clothes or food sometime look weird? At least the higher lumen MR16 style floods from Ikea are pretty OK. And I also am not worried about them being fakes.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#98

Post by [deleted] »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #49
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.

Even then it's borderline useless as when you search for the exact pair of trousers you want you'll now get other ranges, and dozens upon dozens of fake-brand cheap knockoffs. When you do find the item, you'll find in amongst the "customers also looked at/bought" 4 or 5 other pages containing the exact same item. At different prices and stock levels. None of which showed up in the search you just did for that item. I…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#99

Post by shawabawa3 »

SteveCoast wrote: post #96
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…

So you saved $4.40 to go to Walmart. * There's a non-zero chunk of the population not near a Walmart or similar. * It costs time to go there * It costs vehicle depreciation So if you were going to Walmart anyway, or walked there with nothing better to do you saved the money. But if you didn't then let's say the average wage is $25/hour or so and you spent 30 minutes there and back, and fully loaded vehicle depreciati…

You can order online from walmart right? I assume that's what he meant

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#100

Post by kmano8 »

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…

> they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases

I've been loyal to Amazon, but am certainly willing to buy items elsewhere if the top to bottom price + experience is better.

For example, camera equipment and many electronics, I've been finding prices better at B&H photo -- and you don't have to pay sales tax if shipping outside NY. Also, their customer service is at least as good as Amazon's.

Sure, it's less convenient to purchase across more ecomm sites, but I'm fine with it if Amazon's value prop begins to diminish.

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