The author takes Amazon at its word, and that is a mistake. The main reason 'search' on Amazon has gone downhill, is not because Amazon is valiantly battling a

The author takes Amazon at its word, and that is a mistake. The main reason 'search' on Amazon has gone downhill, is not because Amazon is valiantly battling an army of pesky outside vendors. The smoking gun on Amazon is that it haphazardly inserts its own knock-off products within search results. If Amazon cared even slightly about search quality, it wouldn't insert $5 shoes above $200 shoes at the top of a list sorted by price descending. Search is getting worse on most FAANG-like companies: Amazon is worse, Google, famously, is worse, Youtube is worse, and on and on. A few companies now dominate their respective online markets, and users lack the knowledge and stamina to investigate alternatives. So the main reason search is getting worse is because companies like Amazon feel like they can serve the most profitable search results to their users without attrition. Where else would customers go?