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Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

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Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#191

Post by dodobirdlord »

mikelward wrote: post #181
jeffbee wrote: post #133

This doesn't seem to solve the main problem I have with Amazon: even when I know exactly what I want, it's impossible to find. Amazon hides the thing you want behind the items they want you to buy instead, and they allow fakes and spammers to flourish. They never have the right aspects in their search filters, either. Looks like Google is the same way. I can't find an A19 LED light bulb with 2700K color temperature a…

If I search for Pixel 3 case on Amazon, it will also return Pixel 3 XL cases. If I search for 1440p IPS monitor, it will mix in some monitors that aren't 1440p, and some that aren't IPS. I'm not sure if it's because they don't want to solve the problem, because they don't care, or because somehow having customers need to spend more time on Amazon to research their purchases perversely leads to people spending more ti…

Presumably their data shows them that if they mix in some monitors that aren't 1440p or aren't IPS that customers still sometimes buy those monitors anyway. From Amazon's perspective the search functionality is more of a product discovery functionality. If they only showed what the customer was searching for they would miss out on sales to people who didn't start out with a clear idea of what they wanted.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#192

Post by namibj »

donor20 wrote: post #177
hansvm wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed a trend lately where items will "ship from the US" with an estimated 2-3 day delivery date only to be delayed at the sender, eventually "ship" a month later, and arrive with international postage a few days afterward. I'd love to filter that kind of crap out as well, but I'm not sure how Amazon could go about actually implementing it.

That's happening on Aliexpress and other places too - I've wondered about this. An aliexpress seller said ships from US, arrives within a 5 days or free, then 1.5 months later it finally arrives and they get dispute overturned because it was delivered. So pathetic. The stupid postage gives away their "shipped from US" game.

Read the fine print, and launch the dispute right away. Oh, and look at the seller's reputation/history.

But maybe I just wasn't affected because I don't even look for locally shipped items, as I'd be better off going to B2B-focused niche retail locations in the rough vicinity.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#193

Post by b112 »

noncoml wrote: post #124

It's not 2000's anymore. Nobody falls for the "free" as in free while we increase our user base anymore.

Well... "free" has been used like this for thousands of years. Traders/merchants spouting free this or that, like a car dealer giving free oil changes, or midas with a free inspection.

Nothing is free. Ever.

What's changed is you personally know this now. Many still fall for this, and there are always more humans to be scammed.

Bear in mind, most of humanity can't read. Are not really literate. The UN's definition of literacy, is reading at a grade 6 level.

Not how you read in 6th grade, but whatever lets a 6th grader, make it to 7th grade.

Can someone read a stop sign, do not enter sign? That's pretty much 'literate'.

While street smarts exist, bear in mind how many 'stupids' exist...

So yup.. lots of fresh pigeons.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#194

Post by rawoke083600 »

What i need a price_parity for amazon and my local country south africa. I agree.its mostly import duties by my misguided government.(we dont make cpus, why tax them ?). Im thinking the next n big thing in online shopping is getting the global-village-catalogue at my doorstep with a reasonable shipping price, ppl in America dont know how lucky you are to have free shipping. We can pay 2x the price in dollars just for shipping.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#195

Post by splonk »

jeffbee wrote: post #133

This doesn't seem to solve the main problem I have with Amazon: even when I know exactly what I want, it's impossible to find. Amazon hides the thing you want behind the items they want you to buy instead, and they allow fakes and spammers to flourish. They never have the right aspects in their search filters, either. Looks like Google is the same way. I can't find an A19 LED light bulb with 2700K color temperature a…

From having spoken to people who worked on object clustering for Froogle in the past, I think the base issue is that it's surprisingly hard to extract all the metadata accurately from descriptions. Even if you provide an file format and allow merchants to upload all their item descriptions with structured data, you'll still just end up getting bad data from a lot of merchants, and then you have the problem of whether you want to accept the inaccurate data provided by the merchant who has an incentive to misstate things, or the inaccurate data provided by your flawed automatic text extraction systems.

I'm not sure if there's a good workaround for this besides buying from places specializing in the specific types of items you're looking for, which comes with its own set of tradeoffs in price, convenience, etc.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#196

Post by cmonnow »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #191
mikelward wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I search for Pixel 3 case on Amazon, it will also return Pixel 3 XL cases. If I search for 1440p IPS monitor, it will mix in some monitors that aren't 1440p, and some that aren't IPS. I'm not sure if it's because they don't want to solve the problem, because they don't care, or because somehow having customers need to spend more time on Amazon to research their purchases perversely leads to people spending more ti…

Presumably their data shows them that if they mix in some monitors that aren't 1440p or aren't IPS that customers still sometimes buy those monitors anyway. From Amazon's perspective the search functionality is more of a product discovery functionality. If they only showed what the customer was searching for they would miss out on sales to people who didn't start out with a clear idea of what they wanted.

fine, then come to a middle-ground:

search bar (on the top) for window-shoppers

selection boxes (on the left) for focus-shoppers

If I select 1440p under Resolution, I do not want non-1440p monitors in search results.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#197

Post by rawoke083600 »

mikelward wrote: post #181
jeffbee wrote: post #133

This doesn't seem to solve the main problem I have with Amazon: even when I know exactly what I want, it's impossible to find. Amazon hides the thing you want behind the items they want you to buy instead, and they allow fakes and spammers to flourish. They never have the right aspects in their search filters, either. Looks like Google is the same way. I can't find an A19 LED light bulb with 2700K color temperature a…

If I search for Pixel 3 case on Amazon, it will also return Pixel 3 XL cases. If I search for 1440p IPS monitor, it will mix in some monitors that aren't 1440p, and some that aren't IPS. I'm not sure if it's because they don't want to solve the problem, because they don't care, or because somehow having customers need to spend more time on Amazon to research their purchases perversely leads to people spending more ti…

Yea i've seen this many times with price comparison engines, i even used to work for one and was head of search back then. We had to actually "tune/down-weight" phone accessories vs phones. Ppl typing in "iphones" wants "iphones". Ppl typing in iphone cases wants "iphone cases". The rudimentary problem is both of the text tokens are in the titles and are popular products. "precision vs recall vs popularity/sorting". We had a similar but lesser problem with books (the titles are so vast and ambiguous). Lol you get a book called 'iphone'. The leading ecomm platform in my country (s.a) has this book problem in search results and mm-tokens still. Looking at you T..A..L ;).

End of the day, search is hard and personal.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#198

Post by abandonliberty »

jeffbee wrote: post #133

This doesn't seem to solve the main problem I have with Amazon: even when I know exactly what I want, it's impossible to find. Amazon hides the thing you want behind the items they want you to buy instead, and they allow fakes and spammers to flourish. They never have the right aspects in their search filters, either. Looks like Google is the same way. I can't find an A19 LED light bulb with 2700K color temperature a…

I miss Amazon before 2010. Or the Internet. It was so easy to find great things, real reviews, etc.

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#199

Post by dodobirdlord »

esrauch wrote: post #87
three_seagrass wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, looking at a map used to be an IRL activity.

Mapquest was already successful before Google maps.

So isn't that a perfect example of Google entering a new market and dominating it?

Re: Buy on Google is now open and commission-free

#200

Post by draebek »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #184
bhamta wrote: post #14

This is 'The Anti-Amazon Alliance' as Ben Thompson puts it. Curious to see if customers will adopt it. I think it lacks two key value props of Amazon: uniform guarantees (Amazon guarantees regardless of seller) and super fast shipping.

Super-Fast shipping is available now to everyone now via USPS Priority Mail 3 day. It's 3 days at most and unlike Amazon the delivery time is guaranteed. Amazon's shipping time estimates aren't trustworthy enough to rely on for important deadlines, the buyer has no recourse other than a refund if shipping takes longer than it's supposed to.

FWIW I would never trust USPS to deliver on time in my city. They regularly lose packages for a week or two before magically delivering them, with tracking information that is the long-form equivalent of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. UPS, FedEx, and Amazon have all been vastly more reliable than USPS. However, USPS has been fine for me in other cities. Maybe, like real estate and cell phone coverage, location matters when it comes to package delivery.

BTW, when you say, "the buy has no recourse other than a refund if shipping takes longer than it's supposed to", do you imply that shipping via USPS gives you some other, more useful recourse if your shipping takes longer than it's supposed to? I cannot fathom what that would be, unless they're going to, like, refund your shipping and then give you $50 or something.

(Actually, if USPS was going to give me $50 every time they fumbled a package, I would ship everything USPS, always. I would order things I don't need, one shipment at a time. I would retire by the end of next year on my earnings.)

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