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Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

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Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#91

Post by flakes »

_kulang wrote: post #72
zamadatix wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I absolutely cannot understand is the "price range" functionality seems to be broken as well. Maybe it's the same root cause and/or change which broke price sorting but when I put in a range of say $100-$200 searching for "network switch" the first result is $240, the 2nd result $90, and the 3rd result $120 and legitimate results go on for tens of pages. So it's not that there isn't anything for sale in tha…

Probably the preferred suppliers/partners or sponsored products that are close to the asked range that show up and are prioritised

Then call the category ~200. IMO This is prime enshitification. You cant search for anything reliably any more. You dont get to see what youre actually searching for.. just whatever a company thinks they can make more profit off of.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#92

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #90
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have some sort of poisoned history with amzn. I just tried what you describe, and it works perfectly.

Poisoned History is a term I've never heard before, when it's really just algorithms and sponsored products pushing company interests over the users

What I mean by it is that some previous interaction with amzn has left behind some state that leads to a markedly different search result than for other people.

I can see (because I was there discussing it back in 95) what the appeal of personalized search results could be for both sellers and consumers. But a few decades of that BS have fairly convincingly made the case that it is a horrible idea.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#93

Post by paxys »

The "D" in R&D is development, i.e. software engineers writing day-to-day product code. So R&D budgets cover the majority of employee salaries and even stuff like cloud hosting. It's not earmarked for groundbreaking research as people seem to think.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#94

Post by DSMan195276 »

zamadatix wrote: post #64
rqtwteye wrote: post #60

Maybe they need to spend even more to figure out how to show Adidas shoes when I search “Adidas shoes”. Seems that’s a really hard CS problem. Once they have that, maybe they can show products ordered by price when I select “Sort by price low to high”.

One thing I absolutely cannot understand is the "price range" functionality seems to be broken as well. Maybe it's the same root cause and/or change which broke price sorting but when I put in a range of say $100-$200 searching for "network switch" the first result is $240, the 2nd result $90, and the 3rd result $120 and legitimate results go on for tens of pages. So it's not that there isn't anything for sale in tha…

FWIW I just tried that exact search and every item I see listed at above $200 also has a "more buying options" listed on the search page with a price less than $200, so while it's annoying I guess I get the logic.

All those options (the ones I see anyway) are used, so when I limit the search to "Condition - New" they all go away.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#95

Post by dogcomplex »

rqtwteye wrote: post #60

Maybe they need to spend even more to figure out how to show Adidas shoes when I search “Adidas shoes”. Seems that’s a really hard CS problem. Once they have that, maybe they can show products ordered by price when I select “Sort by price low to high”.

They could probably try and make some sort of filter so fake products cant be autouploaded via chatgpt too:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/01/lazy-use-of-ai-leads-to-a...

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#96

Post by jknoepfler »

Sai_ wrote: post #89
zamadatix wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I absolutely cannot understand is the "price range" functionality seems to be broken as well. Maybe it's the same root cause and/or change which broke price sorting but when I put in a range of say $100-$200 searching for "network switch" the first result is $240, the 2nd result $90, and the 3rd result $120 and legitimate results go on for tens of pages. So it's not that there isn't anything for sale in tha…

It isn’t uncommon to say your price band is $100-200, then find something costing $250 which checks all the boxes. In this case, fuzzing prices while presenting results seems like an acceptable trade off.

As a user, when I set a price range, I want the search function to return results within that range. I don't want fuzz. I don't want you to second guess me. I want the results I asked for.

This is the natural, simple, user-friendly design I want.

Don't give me some bullshit instead.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#97

Post by CivBase »

fooker wrote: post #67
rqtwteye wrote: post #60

Maybe they need to spend even more to figure out how to show Adidas shoes when I search “Adidas shoes”. Seems that’s a really hard CS problem. Once they have that, maybe they can show products ordered by price when I select “Sort by price low to high”.

It is a human problem, there's not necessarily a technical solution. How do you define a Adidas shoe? Something with the same name could easily be fake

Recognize names of well-known brands in search queries and filter (or at least prioritize) items by the associated seller? It's not exactly black magic.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#98

Post by marcus_holmes »

mkj wrote: post #70
marcus_holmes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia we have a tax break that means 80% of all R&D costs are repaid by the government. Everything we can ever possibly classify as R&D is classified as R&D. If I take a dump on company time it's R&D because I'm a software dev and therefore thinking about developing stuff while I'm in there.

That's not actually allowed, it's meant to be research with an "unknown outcome" or some similar wording. But lots of companies ignore yhat and claim regardless.

Yeah, playing with the wording for the claim is always fun :)

How the huge mining companies get away with claiming so much is beyond me. But they do.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#99

Post by FridgeSeal »

jknoepfler wrote: post #96
Sai_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t uncommon to say your price band is $100-200, then find something costing $250 which checks all the boxes. In this case, fuzzing prices while presenting results seems like an acceptable trade off.

As a user, when I set a price range, I want the search function to return results within that range. I don't want fuzz. I don't want you to second guess me. I want the results I asked for. This is the natural, simple, user-friendly design I want. Don't give me some bullshit instead.

Agreed.

So many modern UX issues are from people presuming what users want, rather than just giving them well-designed tools and getting out of the way.

Re: Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

#100

Post by justinclift »

rqtwteye wrote: post #60

Maybe they need to spend even more to figure out how to show Adidas shoes when I search “Adidas shoes”. Seems that’s a really hard CS problem. Once they have that, maybe they can show products ordered by price when I select “Sort by price low to high”.

Their search doesn't even seem to understand negative search terms either.

eg searching for 25GbE network cards shows a bunch of 2.5GbE network cards, and no amount of -"2.5GbE" nor "NOT 2.5GbE" options (and variations) gets rid of them. :(

Ebay though seems to work ok. :)

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