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The simple answer is that "Customer Obsession" is dead. Amazon is now so dominant that improving search to help customers find what they actually want would re

by mabbo 5y ago

The simple answer is that "Customer Obsession" is dead. Amazon is now so dominant that improving search to help customers find what they actually want would reduce profits. The top search results are paid ads. Why distract from those with good top organic results? That just reduces the value of those ads. And those ads are big business. Projects at Amazon are approved during the yearly OP1/OP2 planning cycle and are prioritized based on how much money the project will make. A project to fix the 'problems' has negative overall value, so it won't ever make the list.

kwatsonafter 5y ago
I think this is what's going to fuel the next phase of what some are referring to as, "Digital Enclosure." What's extra scary is you have an up-and-coming generation that's going to accept this kind of thing as status quo. What's even worse is that you've got a huge mass of recently disenfranchised people in the United States that might be, "consent manufacturer'd" to militarize themselves to defend a system that's systemically locking them out #ThinBlueLine (?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_enclosure https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1273&context=lcp https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
suresk 5y ago
I have hundreds of books, partially due to how good Amazon's book recommendations used to be. They are now mostly paid ads as well, and are of much lower quality. It definitely feels like a very un-Amazon thing to do, unless the lens you look at it through is "Customers really care most about price and charging sellers for ads lets us lower prices", but that feels like a stretch?
mikequinlan 5y ago
Amazon is still very much customer obsessed. The problem is that you are no longer the customer; their customers are the millions of scammy businesses that sell on their site.

by mabbo 5y ago

kwatsonafter 5y ago

I think this is what's going to fuel the next phase of what some are referring to as, "Digital Enclosure." What's extra scary is you have an up-and-coming generation that's going to accept this kind of thing as status quo. What's even worse is that you've got a huge mass of recently disenfranchised people in the United States that might be, "consent manufacturer'd" to militarize themselves to defend a system that's systemically locking them out #ThinBlueLine (?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_enclosure https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1273&context=lcp https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

suresk 5y ago

I have hundreds of books, partially due to how good Amazon's book recommendations used to be. They are now mostly paid ads as well, and are of much lower quality. It definitely feels like a very un-Amazon thing to do, unless the lens you look at it through is "Customers really care most about price and charging sellers for ads lets us lower prices", but that feels like a stretch?

mikequinlan 5y ago

Amazon is still very much customer obsessed. The problem is that you are no longer the customer; their customers are the millions of scammy businesses that sell on their site.