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Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

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Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#111

Post by WalterBright »

taeric wrote: post #104
WalterBright wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "questionable" about it?

Questionable about their practices? I remember the effort it used to take to get netscape to be the browser your machine used. It was comically difficult to do, at times. So much so that I was never comfortable going for the paid Opera, as I just didn't think it would stick to my machine. It is frustrating, because I think it is largely fair to say that netscape was the worse option at the time. Navigator was largely…

> jscript and activex controls were both obvious land grabs on the internet

Jscript was developed originally for Netscape in 1995 and was standardized in 1997. Not sure how that is a questionable land grab by Microsoft.

P.S. I wrote a jscript interpreter back in 1999 or so. It was used as a drop in replacement for Microsoft's implementation. It did not require heroic efforts to make.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#112

Post by tobyjsullivan »

metabagel wrote: post #56
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine what the exact same FTC would be saying if Amazon exerted control over which ads were displayed based on what converted to more product sales (and thus revenue for Amazon). Advocating for a less equal ads marketplace seems like such a strange position for the FTC to take. Are they simply throwing out every possible accusation and seeing what sticks?

I don’t follow your reasoning. Amazon stands acccused of “pay to play” market behavior. If you want to participate as a seller in the Amazon monopsony marketplace, you have to pay. That’s the behavior of a monopolist. Edit: changed “monopoly” to “monopsony”

Grocery stores sell shelf space, particularly prime positioning, and that’s a practice that predates the internet. Add to that the fact that most websites sell ad space as a primary or secondary revenue generator.

Yes, Amazon is a middleman and they take as big a cut as they can.

Is that abusing a monopoly or simply the nature of being the most successful marketplace? That’s for the courts to decide, I guess. (Or not since they’ll obviously settle before it goes to decision.)

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#113

Post by tobyjsullivan »

mynameisash wrote: post #57
wlesieutre wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Made site shittier to boost profit” describes nearly 100% of online advertising

I don't know what has happened to YouTube ads in the last year or so, but now that YT is cracking down on adblockers, I'm seeing a lot of them. One thing I'm noticing is that most ads are absolutely garbage. It was one thing to see the 'professional' ads for T-Mobile internet and makeup and whatnot, but I'm seeing a ton of clickbait-style ads for things that are very clearly get-rich-quick and/or straight-up scams. "…

You may be seeing the ads but you’re likely still blocking the tracking/targeting.

Disable targeted advertising on any platform that allows it and you’ll see the lowest form of generic click bait junk ads. Twitter used to allow this and I disabled only to be fed streams of shock-factor click bait rather than industry-relevant ads.

High-quality, expensive, polished ads only go to demonstrably high-value demographics.

Turns out there’s at least some merit to the argument that targeted ads create a better experience (for some, at least).

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#114

Post by WalterBright »

nicoburns wrote: post #99
WalterBright wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Monopolies tend to keep growing until they are broken up No, they don't. Left alone, they grow until they collapse from internal bureaucracy and inefficiency. > Monopolies don't have to charge high prices to consumers if they can increase their profits at the expense of sellers. Microsoft gave away the browser for free. > In the case of Amazon, sellers may be authors or publishers who get squeezed. Resellers normal…

> No, they don't. Left alone, they grow until they collapse from internal bureaucracy and inefficiency. Eventually, maybe. But it usually takes far too long and if we speed up the process (and smooth out a boom/bust cycle at the same time) then that seems like a win to me. If we agree that smaller companies are more efficient then we should actively bias the economy towards them rather than allowing big companies to…

Big companies are the engines that drive an economy with productivity and employment. Small companies are the future big companies. A healthy economy needs both.

Trying to bias an economy towards small business means your economy will be backward and unproductive.

> If we agree that smaller companies are more efficient

I did not say that. Small companies become big companies by being more efficient than existing big companies. As time goes on, big companies slowly get strangled by bureaucracy and inability to adapt to changing times, and come unglued.

But the economy needs their efficiency when they are young.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#115

Post by WalterBright »

FireBeyond wrote: post #109
WalterBright wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I installed and used Netflix for free in those days. Nobody paid a penalty for that. I later switched to Explorer, not because it was free, but because Explorer crashed far less often than Netscape. Netscape crashed constantly. Only a desperate person would continue to use it.

But were you using Netscape or Netscape Gold??

The free one, whatever that was. It was a long time ago. If you're saying Netflix Gold didn't crash as often, the crashing free version was not a convincing advertisement for it.

There was a lot of money made in the PC era by making better tools than the ones bundled with DOS. Netscape wasn't one of them, because it was worse than the bundled one.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#116

Post by cpeterso »

adamsb6 wrote: post #91

"Accept more defects" sounds like a statement about tradeoffs. Defects being too low could reflect that you're putting too much effort on reducing defects when that effort could be better spent on other things. Getting rid of the long tail of defects takes a lot more effort than getting rid of the most obvious cases.

The article says “defects” is Amazon’s internal term for irrelevant junk ads and that “Mr. Bezos instructed his executives to ‘[a]ccept more defects’ because Amazon can extract billions of dollars through increased advertising despite worsening its services for customers.”

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#117

Post by zx8080 »

granzymes wrote: post #64
riskable wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct solution is a no ads marketplace. Where search results return what the user searched for and literally no one (not even Amazon) gets to pay to put their products at the top of the results.

Maybe that’s your preference, but it certainly isn’t against the law to offer advertising.

Remember SEO. Is it ads? No. Does it bring money? Yes. Expensive? Probably, simar to ads: both will eat the whole budget until empty and ask for more.

But SEO is quite hidden and hard to define. Ads are there, see a banner. SEO? No obvious 100% criteria for it.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#118

Post by zx8080 »

jrmg wrote: post #103
mynameisash wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what has happened to YouTube ads in the last year or so, but now that YT is cracking down on adblockers, I'm seeing a lot of them. One thing I'm noticing is that most ads are absolutely garbage. It was one thing to see the 'professional' ads for T-Mobile internet and makeup and whatnot, but I'm seeing a ton of clickbait-style ads for things that are very clearly get-rich-quick and/or straight-up scams. "…

It amazes me how much advertising is literally fraud. Aren’t there authorities that are meant to police this kind of thing?

It's a multibillion business and helps other businesses grow. And it even pays (some) taxes. Why would any authority even think about killing it?

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#119

Post by WalterBright »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #96
WalterBright wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Monopolies tend to keep growing until they are broken up No, they don't. Left alone, they grow until they collapse from internal bureaucracy and inefficiency. > Monopolies don't have to charge high prices to consumers if they can increase their profits at the expense of sellers. Microsoft gave away the browser for free. > In the case of Amazon, sellers may be authors or publishers who get squeezed. Resellers normal…

Their actions were taken to stop Netscape, and succeeded. Keeping Linux and Be off the desktop succeeded well enough also.

> Their actions were taken to stop Netscape, and succeeded

Making a much better product often does that.

You'd know what I mean if you were a Netscape user :-/

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#120

Post by cratermoon »

richwater wrote: post #93
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here lies the issue: > take your business elsewhere You can't necessarily do that. Amazon is a pseudo monopoly. But if the FTC is trying to use that as antitrust evidence against Amazon, it feels like a weak angle. Which is not a good sign given their recent history.

> Amazon is a pseudo monopoly I can google a product and get 9 different online storefronts for almost any item.

https://sell.amazon.com/learn/ecommerce-storefront

Edit: or they are dropshippers using Amazon fulfillment

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