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Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

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Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#361
Here is what i want to shop by on amazon:

* kitchen

* wash

* garage

—-

Basically, id like to setup a standard or select a standard product lineup and say “refill my kitchen”

“Refill my bathroom set”

“Refill my washing supplies”

Etc...

And you could see the averaged products used to supply each area of the home...

This goes in line with a previous YC application i had submitted which was called “standard pantry”

The idea was that a pantry cabinet would be delivered to you, with ingredients and recipes on how to make various healthy dishes based on the whole pantry of ingredients. The goal being to raise nutritional health, especially among lower income.

And with a smart pantry it would give you recipe ideasbased on what you have and know what ingredients you lack and auto order

Like a netflix for healthy food...

YC hated it...

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one difference is that the Amazon Basics products seem to have a quality bar higher than the other random re-labeled products.

I'm not sure about Amazon Basics, but with Amazon's Choice products they're plainly not evaluating products before selecting them. LockpickingLawyer on youtube has done reviews on several Amazon's Choice locks and safes and they've all been abysmal borderline fraudulent products.

> LockpickingLawyer on youtube has done reviews on several Amazon's Choice locks and safes and they've all been abysmal borderline fraudulent products.

So basically Amazon's Choice locks are about the same as 95% of consumer locks on the market.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#364
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: I didn't explain this well at all because I couldn't find the episode and haven't listened since it came out, I highly suggest someone better than me find the episode because it makes much more sense and has WAY more information than me. There was a planet money episode about this exact comparison the other day. Basically it comes down to: When a grocery store puts something on it's shelves, the store itself bo…

> When a grocery store puts something on it's shelves, the store itself bought it from the manufacturer. They have already made their money. On Amazon, manufacturers don't make money when the item is listed, they make it only if and when a customer buys the product. It's way more complicated than that. Manufacturers pay stores to carry their products, feature their products in special places in stores, get forced to…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#365
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe an urban legend, but I thought I read somewhere that the version of Amazon that Bezos personally sees is quite different than the one you and I see, due to all his various little one-off complaints and product micromanagement. Legend has it that engineering gave up trying to make sense of the requests and just gave him his own environment that does everything he thinks it should do. If true, then the search he…

Something seems off about that story. What's the point of requesting changes to a version of the site only he uses? I can't imagine he spends a lot of time surfing amazon.com as a regular user. Plus, not seeing the regular site means he might miss issues with the public website that he would want to change. Unless the point of the story is that Bezos doesn't realize the devs made a site just for him, but that's almos…

It’s suggesting that Amazon literally shadowbanned him.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#366
post #34

Considering how shopping at Amazon now feels like shopping at an electronics bazaar in Singapore with giant bins of random knock-off products of suspicious quality, tweaking the algo to push name-brand options (even if it's their own name-brand) would be a welcome move to me as a buyer. Obviously it's grossly unfair to their vendors, but from a strictly user-centric view it's an improvement. Otherwise, Amazon feels l…

In the long term, it's not user-centric at all.

Amazon pushing its own products drive 3rd-party resellers out of business and eventually, no other choices for consumers.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really enjoy the LockpickingLawyer's videos, but I'd imagine that the threat model of the average Amazon (or Walmart/Home Depot/etc.) buyer is such that any basic lock is enough deterrence for 95%+ of scenarios. It could just be that their evaluation criteria don't match his.

You are correct. Locks keep honest people honest.

Locks keep lock-picking ignorant and insufficiently motivated dishonest people honest too.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's Choice is a purely algorithmic tag decided by the computer. It's utterly meaningless. I guess they change periodically on some reason known only to the code. Amazon Basics must have had at least a couple of humans involved to agree getting it branded Amazon.

Presumably it was humans who signed off on the premise of Amazon's Choice in the first place. If Amazon is so careless with their brand in that case, as a consumer I'd feel like a sucker if I trusted there brand to mean much when their employees are evaluating products rather than algorithms. Maybe the algorithm seemed like a good idea at the time but later turned sour. If that's the case, why hasn't Amazon yanked th…

Why do you need to trust Amazon? Just look at the reviews. Most AmazonBasics stuff has thousands of 4+ star reviews. It’s clearly distinguishable from the products with 15 questionable reviews.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#369
post #34

Considering how shopping at Amazon now feels like shopping at an electronics bazaar in Singapore with giant bins of random knock-off products of suspicious quality, tweaking the algo to push name-brand options (even if it's their own name-brand) would be a welcome move to me as a buyer. Obviously it's grossly unfair to their vendors, but from a strictly user-centric view it's an improvement. Otherwise, Amazon feels l…

Amazon: fast shipping, easy returns. That's literally the beginning and end of their entire value proposition. If any other company can fill that niche, they can have my money with no regrets.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its really not simple, technically. So I don't understand what you're saying.

It really is. You can use manage services through AWS to set this up at almost any scale including encoding, transcoding, global CDNs, etc.

I don't think you understand what simple means for the vast majority of Americans.
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