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

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#101

Post by Carstairs » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:43 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 never really understood the search results in amazon or how anyone could even browse it without knowing the exact item they are looking for. Often the results it returns only has a tenuious link to what I searched for and it just feels like a list of what they have most of in stock that they want to flog off quickly.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#102

Post by apersona » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

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…

How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems?

It seems like a hard problem - eBay suffered from this too for their goods,Yelp with reviews. I doubt it's just a "I don't care" kind of thing.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#103

Post by fishbone » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

greedy_buffer wrote: post #91

fishbone wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now that I think about it, price manipulation is probably illegal in most countries.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#104

Post by bgorman » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

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…

Walmart actually has a pretty good online shopping experience. They even give free 2 day shipping on orders of 35 or more IIRC.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#105

Post by hvoiiita » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:44 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…

Ebay purchases should also have sales tax, it's just that the onus is on you to report it on your taxes rather than being taken automatically. I don't think it's very fair to add that as a negative to Amazon purchases. Other than that, I agree, many things have 10%-15% markup.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#106

Post by vlozko » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

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…

I had a similar experience. I had DLP bulb burn out in less than a year. The original item claimed to have a 1 year warrantee. So I went through ever means possible to find the contact info for the seller to make a claim. Sure enough, there wasn't any. I wrote up a review indicating that it's falsely advertising a warrantee. In no time it was rejected. It seems that Amazon has a policy or practices that makes it really, really hard to post a negative review and not have it rejected.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#107

Post by swaggyBoatswain » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

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…

Pretty sure users all see the same price, because otherwise reddit would be up in flames on things like r/mechkeyboarddeals, r/buildapc, r/ultralight, etc.

Camelcamelcamel (price history checker) scrapes or pulls data from an external API, its going to be the same for all users

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#108

Post by Finbarr » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

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…

Walmart has a major online shopping portal that competes directly with amazon. My assumption is the OP was talking about buying online from Walmart, particularly given the other example was eBay.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#109

Post by etatoby » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

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…

I suppose GP used some Walmart e-commerce site, otherwise they would be comparing apples to oranges.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#110

Post by intopieces » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

tfha wrote: post #63

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…

Making money and wanting to make great products are not mutually exclusive. Nor does one necessarily follow the other. The latter does depend on the former, quiet often, though.