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Good article. There are a few unknowns still. 1. Is Google really all in on product search? Their product search is pretty bad at the moment and it's a very ch

Good article. There are a few unknowns still. 1. Is Google really all in on product search? Their product search is pretty bad at the moment and it's a very challenging search space, esp when you work with tens of thousands of retailers. Going directly to retailer/niche-platform sites usually works better for me. For example, for music related I go to reverb.com, for outdoor to rei.com, etc. I then to Google and Amazon for reviews if needed. 2. Distribution and fast shipping is something Amazon has invested in for decades. I still need to wait longer than a week to receive items from retailers such as REI and others. Not an easy problem to solve. 3. Competing with Prime. Amazon ships everything including groceries. That's a big plus of Prime. Not only you get fast shipment, but you get everything you may need so you rarely need to use a different service. And with a credit card from Amazon you get 5% cash back on purchases. Everything is included. Disclaimer. I own Amazon stock.

elorant 6y ago
Furthermore Amazon has warehouses all over the world. I see a product on the US site, I order it while in Greece, it ships from Germany or UK. Ordinary e-commerce can't provide that. If I order a product from a US based e-commerce firm I'll end up paying custom fees. Google's intervention doesn't provide any facilitation in this aspect.
wpietri 6y ago
I generally agree, but 3 is in abeyance right now; I'm getting faster delivery times from other places. And regarding 2, Amazon has been training me for a while (via slow-ship discounts and the Amazon Day thing) that I don't need everything right away. I don't know about everybody else, but that has definitely made it easier for me to try out other vendors.
- nxc18 6y ago
  I’m not sure what’s going on with Amazon recently, but they’ve on multiple occasions told me that an item won’t ship or arrive until well into May, only for it to turn up next day. (edit: this is over the last 3 weeks for context) I wonder how much of their slow delivery is them under promising and how much is them actually not being able to get things out in a day or two. None of the other vendors I’ve worked with, except Nespresso oddly enough, have been able to match Amazon’s actual performance. I wonder if it’s just because I happen to be close to a lot of warehouses? Still very weird for Amazon to be sandbagging themselves regardless.
  - somethingwitty1 6y ago
    There was a giant banner at the top of their site that explained there was global health crisis and shipments of non-essentials could be delayed. They'd been asked (told in some cases) by governments and others to prioritize eseential product shipments, so they did. They also told suppliers to stop sending non-essentials for FBA. If they had capacity (and items on hand) they've been delivering non-essentials (I've gotten some of my stuff sooner too). There was a big article that blew up here about how France was going to fine them for shipping non-essentials/putting workers at risk and gave them 24 hours to change their entire warehouse workflow/technical systems (Amazon responded by saying they'd need to shutdown for a bit to avoid the fines as they reworked everything to comply).
    - eitally 6y ago
      And on this note, I was talking with my neighbor yesterday and he's having a related issue that only became an issue when Amazon enacted this covid-response policy. It used to be that it didn't particularly matter if your products were accurately mapped into Amazon's categories as long as they were searchable. Now, however, Amazon is refusing to ship (or receive FBA stock) for non-essential categories. My neighbor is a shoe salesman for a brand that has a full medical & industrial line ... but they weren't tagged into medical equipment categories at Amazon so he can't ship replenishment inventory. Amazon isn't allowing these mapping adjustments to be made at all right now for fear of abuse. Also, when FBA stock depletes, sellers have the individual option of whether to direct ship or not. Some are, and some are using expedited shipping, but others are either not shipping at all or are using the cheapest freight possible.
      - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
        Yep. And in the circles I'm in, some are already setting up stores outside Amazon... that's not going to bode well for Amazon when all these sellers suddenly realize they don't need Amazon anymore.
  - adadahdjej 6y ago
    I wonder what major global event could have caused that in the last two months.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  Precisely. I don't know when the switch happened but Amazon seems to be using their own drivers to deliver and not Fedex. The delivery quality is worse than bad, and has lead to us getting boxes stolen because Amazon drivers dump them at the quickest most convenient place for them - like Amazon drivers are incentivized to maximize time efficiency and every second counts. It's super painful. We're now using other websites to buy from simply because their delivery takes approximately the same but goes to our door.
  - asdff 6y ago
    Quality of service can never be high if employees need to piss in bottles
ardy42 6y ago
> Is Google really all in on product search? Their product search is pretty bad at the moment and it's a very challenging search space, esp when you work with tens of thousands of retailers. Honestly, Amazon's own product search is pretty terrible too, unless you're searching for a specific name-brand product. Google might not even have to be very good to be competitive. The best product search I've actually found is NewEgg's (for computer parts, specifically). They're the only one who's collected enough accurate product metadata to facet their results effectively.
- thaeli 6y ago
  There are other specific sectors with great product search - RockAuto for car parts, for example. It's a striking example because the big auto parts stores (AutoZone, Advance Auto, Pep Boys, etc) all try to have an "Amazon style" search and it doesn't work. Heck, it doesn't work well on Amazon either. In the specific sector of car parts, search is based on the year, manufacturer, model, and trim line/options of the vehicle. What's weird to me is that every one of these retailers has a point of sale system that works on the "specify vehicle, list and search within parts" model, yet they're using a traditional/"Amazon style" search on their own website. RockAuto's site is ugly, but it's extremely functional. Their business model has complicated shipping (sometimes buying a more expensive item from the same warehouse as another item in your cart is less expensive after shipping than buying a less expensive item from a different warehouse) but there are UI affordances that make this easier to deal with. It's kind of sad that "show the shipping cost in the shopping cart, on the same page as the product list" is a noteworthy UI affordance, but it's so rare. (Also the option to select several items that meet spec, and it will automatically select the overall lowest cost after shipping set of products)
  - ars 6y ago
    The shipping is why I don't buy from RockAuto anymore.
  - jdhn 6y ago
    >RockAuto's site is ugly, but it's extremely functional. I went to their site to see how ugly it was, and was absolutely blown away by how visually terrible it is. Truly function before form.
freeopinion 6y ago
Using Amazon for reviews seems ironic to me. Product reviews highlight Amazon's single biggest weakness: trust. You can't trust any Amazon review. Many of Amazon's other failings also center around trust.
- dylan604 6y ago
  You can't trust Amazon. period. full stop. Their reviews are total shite, that's for sure. However, you can't trust their product listings either that you'll actually receive what you thought you purchased.
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  I don't disagree. But for some products it's sometimes hard to find reviews outside of Amazon. I also learned how to spot products that have fake reviews.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- superimposition 6y ago
  Agree. If folks have come across better sources for product reviews, would love to get your recommendation.
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    There are no universal sources. Each source should be viewed with skepticism. That said, I have found small discords to be pretty good for PC hardware/tech related recommendation. Reddit on the other hand seemed a bit terrible at times with outdated or overly fishy marketing power speaking instead of the consumer.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  Yes and no. They have a fake review problem, for sure. But it's usually fairly obvious which reviews are fake and which are not. And Amazon reviews have something I don't really see anywhere else -- pictures. That's a feature I really like.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
siruncledrew 6y ago
Amazon is really good at being the ‘signal gateway’ in between inputs and outputs. Whether it is ecommerce or AWS. They take care of everything in the middle that many people don’t think about. Investing heavily in logistics connected to transactions is what made Amazon excel over Walmart, Target, UPS, Fedex, etc. How many companies setting out in online commerce have the amount of backbone infrastructure as Amazon? The closest I can think of is Taobao/Alibaba.
pc86 6y ago
I think just about everyone with a 401k owns Amazon stock at least indirectly, and I think it's a safe bet that unless an HN comment is coming from Daddy Bezos himself, it's unlikely-bordering-impossible to move the stock price either way.
chrischen 6y ago
1. The problem for me is that for any given product category, I don’t know who the online retailers are. For electronics there is microcenter.com, frys.com, tigerdirect.com, circuitcity.com, and many many more. 2. I think this is something that is burned into people’s heads but not actually true. Most retailers do offer pretty fast shipping. Even with prime you’re paying for fast shipping (in the membership fee).
- ansible 6y ago
  > * For electronics there is microcenter.com, frys.com, tigerdirect.com, circuitcity.com, and many many more.* Definitely drop frys.com from the list, they are going out of business. Actually, except for microcenter.com, I wouldn't buy from the others either. newegg.com seems to have the best attribute filtering by far.
  - prismatk 6y ago
    If frys hasn't gone out of business yet, they're not going to - last one I was in only sold gift bags and batteries in a massive retail space and yet somehow they were still there. The retail gods must love Mr. Fry.
    - bsder 6y ago
      > If frys hasn't gone out of business yet, they're not going to - last one I was in only sold gift bags and batteries in a massive retail space and yet somehow they were still there. I really don't understand why Fry's isn't out of business. Do they own the real estate they're sitting on or something? Are their online operations that profitable? Sure, a private company can carry losses for as long as they have money. But, why would you?
      - rrdharan 6y ago
        A lot of people have been wondering the same thing: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Is-Fry-s-Electronics-in-trouble-Company-denies-14945559.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Is-Fry-s-Electr... https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/10/frys-electronics-isnt-restocking-goods-in-multiple-stores/ https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/10/frys-electronics-isnt-res...
autokad 6y ago
Google was all in on cloud, and they have already had some layoffs in cloud, froze hiring, and are reducing spending on data center. Either Google never goes all in, or they do not know what all in means
qppo 6y ago
Google is unusable for product search. It's too heavily gamed and optimized not to show you things you want to buy, but things Google is paid to show you. It makes it too difficult to get the information you want to make the purchases you want. Try shopping for a car or hotel room sometime on Google. None of the information is reliable, and none if it is for what you want to see or ordered in a reasonable way to navigate. They're paying too much money to try and get your eyeballs at this point, and I wound up not making purchases because of it.
- Allower 6y ago
  Yup this has been my experience as well

elorant 6y ago

Furthermore Amazon has warehouses all over the world. I see a product on the US site, I order it while in Greece, it ships from Germany or UK. Ordinary e-commerce can't provide that. If I order a product from a US based e-commerce firm I'll end up paying custom fees. Google's intervention doesn't provide any facilitation in this aspect.

wpietri 6y ago

I generally agree, but 3 is in abeyance right now; I'm getting faster delivery times from other places. And regarding 2, Amazon has been training me for a while (via slow-ship discounts and the Amazon Day thing) that I don't need everything right away. I don't know about everybody else, but that has definitely made it easier for me to try out other vendors.

nxc18 6y ago
I’m not sure what’s going on with Amazon recently, but they’ve on multiple occasions told me that an item won’t ship or arrive until well into May, only for it to turn up next day. (edit: this is over the last 3 weeks for context) I wonder how much of their slow delivery is them under promising and how much is them actually not being able to get things out in a day or two. None of the other vendors I’ve worked with, except Nespresso oddly enough, have been able to match Amazon’s actual performance. I wonder if it’s just because I happen to be close to a lot of warehouses? Still very weird for Amazon to be sandbagging themselves regardless.
- somethingwitty1 6y ago
  There was a giant banner at the top of their site that explained there was global health crisis and shipments of non-essentials could be delayed. They'd been asked (told in some cases) by governments and others to prioritize eseential product shipments, so they did. They also told suppliers to stop sending non-essentials for FBA. If they had capacity (and items on hand) they've been delivering non-essentials (I've gotten some of my stuff sooner too). There was a big article that blew up here about how France was going to fine them for shipping non-essentials/putting workers at risk and gave them 24 hours to change their entire warehouse workflow/technical systems (Amazon responded by saying they'd need to shutdown for a bit to avoid the fines as they reworked everything to comply).
  - eitally 6y ago
    And on this note, I was talking with my neighbor yesterday and he's having a related issue that only became an issue when Amazon enacted this covid-response policy. It used to be that it didn't particularly matter if your products were accurately mapped into Amazon's categories as long as they were searchable. Now, however, Amazon is refusing to ship (or receive FBA stock) for non-essential categories. My neighbor is a shoe salesman for a brand that has a full medical & industrial line ... but they weren't tagged into medical equipment categories at Amazon so he can't ship replenishment inventory. Amazon isn't allowing these mapping adjustments to be made at all right now for fear of abuse. Also, when FBA stock depletes, sellers have the individual option of whether to direct ship or not. Some are, and some are using expedited shipping, but others are either not shipping at all or are using the cheapest freight possible.
    - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
      Yep. And in the circles I'm in, some are already setting up stores outside Amazon... that's not going to bode well for Amazon when all these sellers suddenly realize they don't need Amazon anymore.
- adadahdjej 6y ago
  I wonder what major global event could have caused that in the last two months.
three_seagrass 6y ago
Precisely. I don't know when the switch happened but Amazon seems to be using their own drivers to deliver and not Fedex. The delivery quality is worse than bad, and has lead to us getting boxes stolen because Amazon drivers dump them at the quickest most convenient place for them - like Amazon drivers are incentivized to maximize time efficiency and every second counts. It's super painful. We're now using other websites to buy from simply because their delivery takes approximately the same but goes to our door.
- asdff 6y ago
  Quality of service can never be high if employees need to piss in bottles

ardy42 6y ago

> Is Google really all in on product search? Their product search is pretty bad at the moment and it's a very challenging search space, esp when you work with tens of thousands of retailers. Honestly, Amazon's own product search is pretty terrible too, unless you're searching for a specific name-brand product. Google might not even have to be very good to be competitive. The best product search I've actually found is NewEgg's (for computer parts, specifically). They're the only one who's collected enough accurate product metadata to facet their results effectively.

thaeli 6y ago
There are other specific sectors with great product search - RockAuto for car parts, for example. It's a striking example because the big auto parts stores (AutoZone, Advance Auto, Pep Boys, etc) all try to have an "Amazon style" search and it doesn't work. Heck, it doesn't work well on Amazon either. In the specific sector of car parts, search is based on the year, manufacturer, model, and trim line/options of the vehicle. What's weird to me is that every one of these retailers has a point of sale system that works on the "specify vehicle, list and search within parts" model, yet they're using a traditional/"Amazon style" search on their own website. RockAuto's site is ugly, but it's extremely functional. Their business model has complicated shipping (sometimes buying a more expensive item from the same warehouse as another item in your cart is less expensive after shipping than buying a less expensive item from a different warehouse) but there are UI affordances that make this easier to deal with. It's kind of sad that "show the shipping cost in the shopping cart, on the same page as the product list" is a noteworthy UI affordance, but it's so rare. (Also the option to select several items that meet spec, and it will automatically select the overall lowest cost after shipping set of products)
- ars 6y ago
  The shipping is why I don't buy from RockAuto anymore.
- jdhn 6y ago
  >RockAuto's site is ugly, but it's extremely functional. I went to their site to see how ugly it was, and was absolutely blown away by how visually terrible it is. Truly function before form.

freeopinion 6y ago

Using Amazon for reviews seems ironic to me. Product reviews highlight Amazon's single biggest weakness: trust. You can't trust any Amazon review. Many of Amazon's other failings also center around trust.

dylan604 6y ago
You can't trust Amazon. period. full stop. Their reviews are total shite, that's for sure. However, you can't trust their product listings either that you'll actually receive what you thought you purchased.
tinyhouse 6y ago
I don't disagree. But for some products it's sometimes hard to find reviews outside of Amazon. I also learned how to spot products that have fake reviews.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
superimposition 6y ago
Agree. If folks have come across better sources for product reviews, would love to get your recommendation.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  There are no universal sources. Each source should be viewed with skepticism. That said, I have found small discords to be pretty good for PC hardware/tech related recommendation. Reddit on the other hand seemed a bit terrible at times with outdated or overly fishy marketing power speaking instead of the consumer.
rootusrootus 6y ago
Yes and no. They have a fake review problem, for sure. But it's usually fairly obvious which reviews are fake and which are not. And Amazon reviews have something I don't really see anywhere else -- pictures. That's a feature I really like.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

siruncledrew 6y ago

Amazon is really good at being the ‘signal gateway’ in between inputs and outputs. Whether it is ecommerce or AWS. They take care of everything in the middle that many people don’t think about. Investing heavily in logistics connected to transactions is what made Amazon excel over Walmart, Target, UPS, Fedex, etc. How many companies setting out in online commerce have the amount of backbone infrastructure as Amazon? The closest I can think of is Taobao/Alibaba.

pc86 6y ago

I think just about everyone with a 401k owns Amazon stock at least indirectly, and I think it's a safe bet that unless an HN comment is coming from Daddy Bezos himself, it's unlikely-bordering-impossible to move the stock price either way.

chrischen 6y ago

1. The problem for me is that for any given product category, I don’t know who the online retailers are. For electronics there is microcenter.com, frys.com, tigerdirect.com, circuitcity.com, and many many more. 2. I think this is something that is burned into people’s heads but not actually true. Most retailers do offer pretty fast shipping. Even with prime you’re paying for fast shipping (in the membership fee).

ansible 6y ago
> * For electronics there is microcenter.com, frys.com, tigerdirect.com, circuitcity.com, and many many more.* Definitely drop frys.com from the list, they are going out of business. Actually, except for microcenter.com, I wouldn't buy from the others either. newegg.com seems to have the best attribute filtering by far.
- prismatk 6y ago
  If frys hasn't gone out of business yet, they're not going to - last one I was in only sold gift bags and batteries in a massive retail space and yet somehow they were still there. The retail gods must love Mr. Fry.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > If frys hasn't gone out of business yet, they're not going to - last one I was in only sold gift bags and batteries in a massive retail space and yet somehow they were still there. I really don't understand why Fry's isn't out of business. Do they own the real estate they're sitting on or something? Are their online operations that profitable? Sure, a private company can carry losses for as long as they have money. But, why would you?
    - rrdharan 6y ago
      A lot of people have been wondering the same thing: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Is-Fry-s-Electronics-in-trouble-Company-denies-14945559.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Is-Fry-s-Electr... https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/10/frys-electronics-isnt-restocking-goods-in-multiple-stores/ https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/10/frys-electronics-isnt-res...

autokad 6y ago

Google was all in on cloud, and they have already had some layoffs in cloud, froze hiring, and are reducing spending on data center. Either Google never goes all in, or they do not know what all in means

qppo 6y ago

Google is unusable for product search. It's too heavily gamed and optimized not to show you things you want to buy, but things Google is paid to show you. It makes it too difficult to get the information you want to make the purchases you want. Try shopping for a car or hotel room sometime on Google. None of the information is reliable, and none if it is for what you want to see or ordered in a reasonable way to navigate. They're paying too much money to try and get your eyeballs at this point, and I wound up not making purchases because of it.

Allower 6y ago
Yup this has been my experience as well