I'll take a crack at it.
> What absolutely confounds my comprehension of marketplace sites and any online business driven by user directed discovery, is the unbroken and never deviated from practice in every industry and field of making the method and techniques used for search as unique inviolable individual apotheoses of a imaginary USP.
I don't get marketplace sites. Specifically, it seems like every company decides they have a unique selling point, and they should build all search features around emphasizing that selling point at all costs, instead of building it around showing the user the thing they were looking for.
> why on earth doesn't occur to anyone that heterogeneous search methods producing a range of results with a identifiable classifiable process or at least perceptual sensibility that users can get some understanding of, might provide not only consumer choice but profit?
Why don't they provide a search interface that will be familiar to their users? Wouldn't that be both more user-friendly and also more profitable?
> The only thing that I can imagine to be happening is the overriding objectives must be econometric optimization and blow every other consideration. Or maybe it's possible with the adherent mantra of "internet speed" development that without constant investment in maintenance "development" nothing will work if left alone while bringing in alternative abilities.
Maybe the companies are Goodharting themselves to death? Or maybe they value developing new features over making sure that their core infrastructure actually works.