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Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

recode.net

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Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#251

Post by beaconstudios »

wongarsu wrote: post #213
beaconstudios wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don't think people exchanging goods and services using money as an intermediate exchange (aka capitalism) can be a net-positive? Because any other aspect of our current formation of capitalism is negotiable. We can regulate to counteract negative corporate behaviours (though that has its own set of issues) so that companies are working for the benefit of the populace.

I don't think money is a nessesary ingredient of captialism (though it is immensely helpful). Money also exists in most forms of communism. Capitalism is more about private ownership of the means of productions, with different companies competing against each other on the market. Monopolies run against the spirit of capitalism. Regulated markets on the other hand are fine as long as competition is ensured.

> Capitalism is more about private ownership of the means of productions

That existed before capitalism - in feudalism, for example. It's true in the context of Marxist analysis of capitalism as that's how Marx decided to frame capitalism, but it isn't capitalism's distinguishing feature.

> Monopolies run against the spirit of capitalism.

Effectively, yes, which is why we should prevent them by either public ownership of natural monopoly resources (public road ownership, for an example to wind up the libertarians) or regulation.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#252

Post by astura »

scrooched_moose wrote: post #167
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are suggesting stop paying for Prime and just use eBay. My biggest concern if I ditch Amazon is losing out on some of the cheap Chinese merchandise that I actually don't mind; flashlights is one example. It never occurred to me that eBay is probably selling the same junk though, so I think i'll start doing comparisons between Amazon and eBay.

You don't have to completely stop using Amazon if you dump Prime though. I still place occasional orders, but I just have to get to $25 for the standard free shipping. In my area, things take about 4 days without Prime - 2 extra "processing" days and 2 days to ship.

Or you can pay for two day shipping if you really need it rather than paying up front all at once.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#253

Post by wikwocket »

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?

I'm sure lots of e-commerce companies feel this pressure. Where I work, an Additional Revenue team was created for this kind of thing - sponsored results, ads, cross-sells, etc. It's viewed as free money on the table, since it is relatively easy to estimate the income and the dev work required, but much harder to measure user experience and customer loyalty.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#254

Post by pbreit »

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…

The Recode analysis was decent but problematic in that its test searches are pretty contrived. Does anyone really search for "shoes" or "cereal". There was only 1 reasonable search attempted "justins peanut butter" and the results were indeed mediocre. But I would have liked to have seen better testing.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#255

Post by awaywopassd »

apersona wrote: post #102
ckastner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

The big issue is co-mingling inventory. This is where they mix same product from different sellers in same batch. I only order products from Amazon.com LLC. But I have still received items that seems fake.

Some says that co-mingling inventory saves Amazon a lot of money but to me it seems like Amazon is actively shielding bad players by making it hard to trackdown who is selling fake products.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#256

Post by ajross »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #220
Gustomaximus wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it though? 1) The day Amazon feel threatened they can become the cheapest in the market quickly again. 2) Given purchasing power scale and people like fast delivery there will only be a handful of companies that can complete with Amazon ever, so it seems unlikely there will be a 'started in the garage' business compete with them now the market is maturing. 3) With the extra profit Amazon are making vs a competit…

It wasn't just that Amazon was the cheapest in the market. It was that they built up a reputation over the years of being cheap and reliable. There was a long period where I would buy things from Amazon without considering other sources. That's gone now and they can't quickly get it back. Forget about price. I can't even trust that I'll be getting a legitimate product anymore. When possible, I prefer to buy from a mo…

> There was a long period where I would buy things from Amazon without considering other sources. That's gone now and they can't quickly get it back.

That's probably true, but the truth is that situation was an unstable equilibrium in the first place. There's absolutely no reason in a functioning market to expect (or want!) one provider to be the uniform best option at all things. Eventually everyone else starts competing.

To wit: the situation over the past decade wasn't so much defined by Amazon being better (or "not evil", given the framing I'm saying here), it was that everyone else sucked. Now they don't suck so much, and Amazon is having to compete in ways (like profit!) they used to be able to ignore.

That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#257

Post by stevenwoo »

maxxxxx wrote: post #75
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. It has been common practice for PC parts to use Newegg's search and buy from Amazon, but lately Amazon's price hasn't actually been lower so you can eliminate one step.

Unfortunately Newegg also seems to have gone downhill. Allowing third party sellers is a good way to boost revenues quickly but it also quickly makes the buying experience worse. I now prefer stores where they have the same item only once and not from dozens of sellers. Or I go to eBay.

Thought people were exaggerating but I recently purchased a cheap USB keyboard and the third party company sent me a CAT 5 network cable. I am now going to Fry's from now on.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#258

Post by duxup »

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.

Only recently I've had tons of issues with search on Amazon. It seems bizarrely unfriendly now.

I'll search for a thing, I know what it is called, and the results are an absolute mess. I'll search something skewed but close to the other terms.... find thing. It's very odd.

Let alone the mass amounts of totally categorized wrong stuff. No socks with one word in common aren't the same as some PC parts...

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#259

Post by gascan »

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…

You could have guessed that a chair mat (big) and cat litter (heavy) might not be products Amazon would be competitive with.

I find they are mostly good for mid-price items that are not too heavy or bulky, especially moderately "niche" items that are not carried many places and benefit from the super saver shipping. (Super niche items are no-go of course)

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#260

Post by astura »

billysielu wrote: post #28
justinph wrote: post #7

This is one of the reasons I've let my Prime subscription lapse and started doing more shopping at Target. In addition to fewer (or no) ads, I can often pick an item up in an hour instead of waiting two days, and the prices are better.

In the UK, getting to a town center to do some shopping is so horrific that Amazon is the only remaining option.

You have no other online merchants in the UK besides Amazon?
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