2 ms·

but the website is outrageously slow.

• WalterGR 6y ago
  Pure speculation, but: Things suck by default. You have to make them better. So websites especially at the scale of Amazon aren’t automatically fast. Work (i.e. $$$) has to be dedicated to it. Continuing with the hypothesis that Amazon ruthlessly “optimizes” for a specific goal (not necessarily “optimizes” their code,) the conclusion would be that Amazon found that a faster website does not in fact lead to more sales. Or it did lead to more sales, but not enough to justify the cost of making the website faster.