I doubt it is. Recommendations can be great for certain kinds of purchases -- books, Amazon's original niche, being an obvious example: "people who looked at th

I doubt it is. Recommendations can be great for certain kinds of purchases -- books, Amazon's original niche, being an obvious example: "people who looked at this book also tended to look at these books" can be a meaningful signal. But I don't think that's what helped Amazon to astronomic growth, particularly when we're comparing it to Sears.