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The Amazon tax

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Re: The Amazon tax

#571

Post by Retric »

inigyou wrote: post #511
Retric wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you stop using google search, which I and many other people I know have done. Losses and gains on the order of 0.5% market share may not sound like much, but at this scale it’s a vast amount of money. So being slightly more hostile needs to be offset by meaningful increases in revenue.

I'm sure they know that. Cycling enshittification on and off seems to make more money overall than not enshittifying, even though it can make less during the downcycle.

Burning reputation looks great on quarterly reports until the death spiral begins.

There’s a great number of products that I used to like that have been replaced and that’s fine as a consumer but stock holders are generally better off when the stock is still valuable in 10 years vs a slightly higher dividend today.

Re: The Amazon tax

#572

Post by albedoa »

buggyipadmettoo wrote: post #556
autoexec wrote: post #438

> Amazon makes enough in search ad revenue to give every single one of their employees a $35,000 cash bonus and still have change left over. There was study not too long ago that showed that 48% of Amazon's employees were paid so little that they were forced to depend on some form of public assistance to meet their basic needs. Not only would an extra 35k a year prevent amazon employees from needing foodstamps and ho…

Force means "coercion or compulsion, especially w the use of threat or violence". If "not paying someone x dollars" = force, then at this moment, I'm forcing 6 billion people to do something.

Even the staunchest libertarians disagree with your understanding. Embarrassed that anyone holds or ever held this view, they have left you behind.

Re: The Amazon tax

#573

Post by Retric »

autoexec wrote: post #492
Retric wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you stop using google search, which I and many other people I know have done. Losses and gains on the order of 0.5% market share may not sound like much, but at this scale it’s a vast amount of money. So being slightly more hostile needs to be offset by meaningful increases in revenue.

Most people wont. Even those that do will probably switch to something that does the same (or worse). Alternatives are scarce. Most other search engines are using Google's search results (at least in part) behind the scenes. AI probably wont save you (Gemini sure wont). Advertisers can't wait to infest the chatbots. AI companies are expected to accept money to promote certain products or to refuse to mention a compet…

Google beat out the competition by being better in a market with near zero switching costs. It can coast a long time without being the best option, but once the fall starts it’s always harder to gain back reputation.

Today I told someone to google “school name student handbook 2026.” Only to realize I wasn’t using Google so my #1 wouldn’t be in the same place, doubled checked it showed up on Google and eventually found their link to the handbook way down the page.

“Ops, sorry Google sucks now” isn’t going to kill a company quickly but market share is a lagging indicator. Of course some enshitificstion is simply companies responding to what the largest market segment wants so they may actually be doing the correct thing even if it doesn’t seem like it to me.

Re: The Amazon tax

#574

Post by SamBam »

antonvs wrote: post #535
ryandvm wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burnt myself on this in Google Maps just this week. I had an appointment in my calendar with the location set to "Dr Firstname Lastname, 123 Main St, 12345". I clicked through it into Google Maps and since it had the full address specified I just trusted it. Well, it turned out that the first result was actually an ad for a competing doctor 20 minutes in the wrong direction. To Google's credit, they did drop the "Don…

I would show up at the competing doctor and make things as awkward as possible. They chose to do that ad.

Do they even have any idea that their ads are showing up for the specific competing doctor? Isn't Google the one deciding where the ads are most valuable?

Re: The Amazon tax

#575

Post by Dusseldorf »

rexer wrote: post #552
ryukoposting wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. If I search "Toyota RAV4" what I mean is Toyota RAV4. If I meant Mazda CX-50 I would have typed "Mazda CX-50." If I wanted information about various mid-size SUVs, rather than one in particular, I'd have searched "midsize SUVs." The number of times I have searched something, got back something I did not ask for, and found that helpful, rounds down to zero. It's actively destructive to the platforms that allow thi…

Are you saying that because it’s across company boundaries? Or would you be similarly upset if one result was for a Toyota Highlander? Or for a Toyota RAV4 XSE but not the LE trim I gotta say, I think you’re in the minority. I suspect most folks appreciate the cross shopping suggestion

Yes! It's very frustrating when I think I'm browsing several variations of a single product, only to realize that some of the results are a totally different product, the brand doesn't affect it either way. I'm fine seeing results for multiple trims if I didn't specify one.

Re: The Amazon tax

#576

Post by nathancahill »

j9feng wrote: post #195
83457 wrote: post #30

When searching on Amazon I always change sort to Best Sellers. The default is Featured Items which shows ads at the top and throughout results. For some searches that have a small number of real results, the majority of the list will be ads. Sorting by Best Sellers eliminates all ads in the results.

And you can buy a position on the best seller list for your product.

Indeed, but it's more expensive so that weeds out some of the riffraff.

Re: The Amazon tax

#577

Post by applicative »

msy wrote: post #566

This is a lot of words to describe rent seeking. Google, Amazon, Instagram/Meta, ultimately all of these are earning their outsized margins through market-dominance enabled intermediation of commerce. I search for 'foo' and the top result is either Foo paying through the nose for what should really should be organic traffic or Bar 'buying' the click instead. In the absence of anti-trust the only winning move is to bu…

There is no rent seeking or monopolistic or technofeudal or enshittifying aspect of Amazon at all. The people who made their names beginning twenty years ago by marketing these expressions are losers who have simply been proven wrong. It is monotonous middle brow repetition See eg the left wing expose of the above mentioned brain death in Maher Aquanno https://archive.ph/YJaZr better in their academic papers like Monopoly or Competition? Unraveling the Amazon Paradox https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/04866134261415639

Re: The Amazon tax

#578

Post by dools »

Don’t supermarkets allow companies to pay for shelf position? They also allow companies to do paid promotional sales activations renting floor space.

It doesn’t seem all that egregious to me.

Re: The Amazon tax

#579

Post by oblio »

apparent wrote: post #394
abixb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look for independent artists and craftspeople. I recent bought a pack of sci-fi posters for my apartment from an artists who designs it herself and who has an independent reputation. My goal has now shifted to identify the thinnest intermediary between my dollars and the person doing the labor for the product/service I'm paying for.

This is an interesting goal. I would agree in general, but in the age of AI I'm feeling like much of the 'labor' being done is done by AI.

Posters, maybe. AI won't be knitting any time soon, though.

Re: The Amazon tax

#580

Post by _gllen »

projektfu wrote: post #542
throwaway2037 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You raise a good point. This phenomenon is well-documented for at least two decades now on Google search. It is common for brands to buy keywords for their own product. Why? If not, competitors will by the same keywords to direct customers away . As I understand, this has existed for more than 20 years and Google has never been sued for it (that I know). Maybe this is just part of a highly competitive online search m…

I don't know how it is for large businesses, but if you're a small business, and you put your own business name as a search keyword for your ad buys, fully half or more of your ad spend will be your existing customers looking for your website, phone number or address. If you stop spending on it, they will still find you, but a competitor will probably show up above you. I am not sure this matters.

Depends on what ads are showing and what they are bidding (vs. what you can afford to bid for the marginal traffic) but yes can be very much worth it to pay google's troll toll.
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