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Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

• z9znz 4y ago
  This comedy skit illustrates the same in humor: https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30 https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30
• weba11y 4y ago
  over the years Amazon is getting harder and harder to find products on. I'm sure 10 years ago the quality of products was much better (even if it was a smaller amount of different products available).
• Exendroinient00 4y ago
  Most of reviews are also entirely false and botted.
• imwillofficial 4y ago
  Hilariously paywalled
• opdahl 4y ago
  First thing that popped up when I scrolled down on this article was a big modal telling me there is a Black Friday deal on a Washington Post subscription[1]. I first thought that it was some fun ironic joke made by the journalist/editor, but nope it's just ironic. 1: https://shottr.cc/s/CzrR/SCR-20221125-gtp.png https://shottr.cc/s/CzrR/SCR-20221125-gtp.png
• cookiengineer 4y ago
  I write it again: I am so glad that the geizhals.eu (.de/.at and skinflint.co.uk) website exists in Europe. It's probably the best price comparison website that I've seen, and it has soooo many dedicated filters for each category. I don't know how to buy hardware when geizhals is gone, because both amazon and ebay are the most ignorant searches that I've used. No matter what you type in there, no matter how often, no matter what you "quote". Everything gets pushed aside for the sake of useless ads that have nothing to do with the things you are searching there. With geizhals, you see the price history, a lot of similar products, and a lot of feature based comparions that you can do when you're undecided on what to get. And a lot of private/ company online shops that are included in their dataset, so you can support them. For example, take a look at the filter options in the CPU categories. It's insane what kind of development went into it. [1] [1] https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=cpuamdam4 https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=cpuamdam4 [2] https://geizhals.eu https://geizhals.eu
• kypro 4y ago
  Off-topic, but does anyone know how these dynamic articles are created? I assume it's a manual process, but always been curious.
• BaudouinVH 4y ago
  WaPo going after its owner ? Interesting.
• notpushkin 4y ago
  This is probably how most of us imagine Amazon still works. But today advertisers are driving the experience. Story continues below advertisement
• defanor 4y ago
  I had to allow JavaScript execution in order to read this rant about ads, and the website used that to present the "Black Friday starts now" modal popup/ad (which managed to get past uBlock Origin). Briefly wondered whether it's a part of the rant/article, but apparently it wasn't. Not exactly the same thing as it rants about, but still an odd combination.
• taoufix 4y ago
  It's hard to trust Amazon products even when shopping for brands. Every time I search for a brand name, after filtering the recommended non-brand stuff, on the brand product page itself, a lot of reviews say the product is a knock off. Nowadays I just go to brand.com and shop from there, it cost 5-25% extra, but at least I have some guarantee that I will not end up with a fake.
• anticristi 4y ago
  We look this awesome technology called the Internet and turned it into an ad pipeline.
• aslilac 4y ago
  Amazon is unusable at this point, and I don’t get how they have so many customers. Free and fast shipping is no longer exclusive to them, and there are others out there with far nicer websites and no shitty ad listings.
  • xadhominemx 4y ago
    What are your preferred alternatives?
    • imglorp 4y ago
      Yes. The alternative is track down the original, individual vendor and deal with their custom sign up, shopping cart, shipping, and support on their site. Repeat with each different vendor for next purchase. As much as Amazon hates its customers and vendors, it's got a consistent experience.
      • astura 4y ago
        What's wrong with target.com?
        • imglorp 4y ago
          I try to patronize the original vendors. The large markets like Walmart and Target squeeze their suppliers hard to widen their margins. So if everything's about equal, I'd rather go to the source, especially if it's a mom and pop so they get a larger cut of the same money.
      • thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > The alternative is track down the original, individual vendor and deal with their custom sign up Where are these vendors that require you to sign up before you can buy their stuff? If you don't want to sign up... don't.
      • thewebcount 4y ago
        While actually doing the signup is a pain, I just use a “hide-my-email” address and cut it off after I receive the item. And I’d personally prefer to enter my credit card info every time. I once accidentally clicked on the “Yes, sign me up for Amazon Prime today, even though I’ve turned it down literally hundreds of times,” button and they immediately charged my credit card without even an “Are you sure?” Alert. Luckily I was able to cancel and get it refunded relatively easily (after 5 screens of “are you sure?” And “do you want to just pause it for a few months?”).
• rsaxvc 4y ago
  Alexa is powered by the forges of mount doom, which burn only cash.
• zug_zug 4y ago
  Time for somebody to make an alternative interface, like teddit.com. I imagine this could be done with front-end code only.
  • verdverm 4y ago
    CORS, unless it is run locally, plus you'll have to reverse engineer the APIs. Might be easier to write a browser plugin that improves the current UI
• notamy 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/YMyrH https://archive.ph/YMyrH https://web.archive.org/web/20221124034213/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/amazon-shopping-ads/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221124034213/https://www.washi... Note: Some parts of the archive don't render correctly? Unsure why. You will get better results clearing cookies + localstorage for washingtonpost.com.
• stankbear 4y ago
  Always interesting when WaPo writes about Amazon.
  • pydry 4y ago
    It's a bit like that scene in Citizen Kane where he pens a scathing review of his wife's singing because he realizes that everybody knows and any further pretense will only humiliate him further.
  • fefe23 4y ago
    That was my first reaction as well but then I realized I can't actually read the article as Wapo gave me a paywall nagscreen that had no X button. Might as well not have written the article in the first place. Media is eating itself. And then they are all STUNNED to find out that Fox News has more readers then them. You know who else doesn't bombard you with paywall nagscreen shit? Infowars! Breitbart.
• pupppet 4y ago
  Gutsy article by WaPo considering its owner.
  • ceejayoz 4y ago
    I worked IT at a Gannett-owned newspaper. Reporting negative news about Gannett was one of the reporters’ joys.
  • lelandfe 4y ago
    And they even provided a spokesperson to speak on record for it. Awfulness of the ads notwithstanding, I'm definitely impressed that Bezos let this run.
• hermannj314 4y ago
  This article was full of ads, many of which had no relationship to the article I was reading. In the early 2000s, I dont remember this being a problem. It is not your imagination, reading on WaPo has gotten worse.
  • HDThoreaun 4y ago
    I think the point of the article is that the ads are incredibly deceptive, not that they just exist. Wapo ads aren’t really trying to trick you, the Amazon ones absolutely are.
  • xdavidliu 4y ago
    Firefox with ublock origin solves this problem easily.
• eljimmy 4y ago
  My spending on Amazon has diminished significantly due to the flood of Chinese copycat brands and products on there. Wish there was a way to filter out products by their country of origin. Is there any alternative out there?
  • fmajid 4y ago
    Amazon has actually been requiring vendors to supply this info for a few years now. They have it in their database, but refuse to expose it. The Indian government forced them to, mostly because they are in a cold war with China and want to wean themselves off from Chinese goods.
• proee 4y ago
  Would it be possible to create an Amazon "Ad blocker" of sorts that hides all the sponsored products and store promotions?
• Mistletoe 4y ago
  It’s refreshing to see this in the Washington Post, owned by Bezos. Tiny beacon of hope going out into the darkness. Search ads on shopping websites are just capitalism taken to the natural end. Hopefully degradation of user experience will curb it somewhat. Our only other option is some sort of new Internet Bill of Rights being passed and I’m not optimistic lobbyists would ever allow it. We need some sort of fund for humanity that hires lobbyists with greater funds. We need voters that vote for candidates that would support the human right to freedom from manipulation from corporations.
  • mclightning 4y ago
    I opened the page and immediately got paywalled... Maybe that's the intention, create such a terrible enemy that the thought piece becomes mute.
  • imiric 4y ago
    Those are noble goals, but have close to zero chance of happening, and they won't address the root of the problem. > Search ads on shopping websites are just capitalism taken to the natural end. The issue is not just with search ads or shopping websites, but advertising in general. It's the primary business model of the modern web, and the main revenue stream for most Big Tech corporations. Considering their symbiotic relationship with governments, neither side has much incentive to change the status quo. Some change is slowly happening, but I suspect it will become much worse until it gets better. We're lucky that ads are still somewhat blockable. Wait until browsers become WebAssembly interpreters, so that this isn't possible anymore, or for XR to become mainstream, allowing adtech to do much more invasive tracking and advertisers to buy a chance to deliver ads straight to your eyeballs. Label me a pessimist, but I don't see how any of this will be unavoidable in the near future, other than by becoming a luddite.
  • id 4y ago
    We don't see what they are not reporting.
    • macintux 4y ago
      Thankfully there are many other news organizations who aren’t owned by Bezos.
• UltraViolence 4y ago
  The article speaks of a tipping point and has aided in pulling it forward. Unlimited greed is what eventually sinks a company. We saw it with AltaVista in the '90's (when the search results were all ads) and Google is slowly repeating this opening a space for a competitor to jump into.
  • marginalia_nu 4y ago
    > Unlimited greed is what eventually sinks a company. We saw it with AltaVista in the '90's (when the search results were all ads) and Google is slowly repeating this opening a space for a competitor to jump into. I'm not sure this is a helpful characterization. Greed is also what helped the same companies get where they were before they went to shit. The problem is that you can only grow so far in a market before the only way to keep the appearance of growth is to make your product worse, either by producing it cheaper (like Toblerone) or by monetizing it harder (e.g. ads in paid video subscriptions).
    • navane 4y ago
      There are always people working in these companies that are trying to get a good product to a customer. These are slowly replaced or overruled by A/B testers who want to maximize profit. I think that process shifts the company from actually doing a service, to greed.
      • s1artibartfast 4y ago
        I dont think this is the whole picture. It is generally true that selling products and making a profit is the goal for both. Optimizing the best result for each query can result in a terrible result for the minority of shoppers for that query. More importantly, it can lead to a terrible result for the majority of shoppers across many queries. The problem is other considerations that A/B testing metrics often leave out (Satisfaction in the long term, in searches that dont lead to sale, and across multiple changes) That is to say, on average most shoppers might want cheap shit for a given search. but sometimes, they might want a different/better product and get frustrated. If you over optimize for the typical use case, you might still lose the typically user because they not typical in every way and every day.
• fijiaarone 4y ago
  Wait just a minute! Are you telling me that Amazon is showing products that they are selling on their e-commerce website?
• moolcool 4y ago
  It runs deeper than just everything being an ad. It's also completely flooded with rebadged junk from dropshippers. A few weeks ago, I was looking for a new whetstone, and this is what I got when I searched Amazon https://i.imgur.com/1Utp2dF.png https://i.imgur.com/1Utp2dF.png The results keep going like that. You see constant repetition of the exact same units with slightly different branding, often with the same stock photography, repeated for page after page. It used to be that you could count on Amazon to give you pretty solid results when you wanted something. It was great, it really took the fuss out of shopping when you didn't have to do 10 google searches when you needed to buy a USB cable or something. Now Amazon is nothing more than AliExpress with faster shipping. Shame.
  • stavros 4y ago
    I was about to say when I saw the end of your comment, that looks very much like the AliExpress experience. You get cheap stuff, but you gamble on them being a fake.
    • moonchrome 4y ago
      AliExpress isn't even cheap for what you're actually getting, but it is cheaper than Amazon if you're dumpster diving. The reason I say it isn't cheap is because when I ignore the fake labels and look at actual goods delivered equivalents can be bought locally for similar price (sometimes cheaper, sometimes more expensive) without insane wait time and with warrenty.
      • Cloudef 4y ago
        For spare / repair parts aliexpress unfortunately is still the heaven. Sure you have to be really careful who you order from, but sadly the modern world hates selling spare parts and loves e-waste (especially for smartphones, it used to be different before ...).
        • Scoundreller 4y ago
          Or eBay. I’m offloading a bunch of random bike parts, and yeah, somebody out there needs a Shimano XYZ-123 that was last built in 1994 (and doesn’t care to figure out the modern replacement).
• jabo 4y ago
  I recently had to buy something mundane - a light bulb, with a specific lumen and color temperature spec. Weeding out all the junk listings, ads and clearly fake reviews, I ended up spending an hour trying to get to the one I wanted to buy. Had a very similar experience for another product as well. At this point, I hesitate to look up stuff on Amazon just considering the time it takes to find stuff. I much rather prefer a curated list of products so someone else has done the weeding out. It seems like Amazon’s philosophy of having the widest set of options for every product is actually not that useful in practice, at least for me. The only reason I still keep going back is that they deliver many products on the same day to the neighborhood I live in.
  • YeBanKo 4y ago
    For household stuff i started using Grainger and large hardware store more often, than amazon. It might be more expensive, buy i endup spending less time on a purchase.
  • tomohawk 4y ago
    Try bulbs.com Even when I have to resort to amazon, I usually end up using that info to find non amazon sites to purchase from. Why support a fake goods laundry service?
  • noveltyaccount 4y ago
    More is less. Decision fatigue, terrible comparison shopping experience, nearly indistinguishable products. I think about this at the grocery store every time I look at yogurt or toothpaste, by the way.
  • BenjiWiebe 4y ago
    What I do sometimes is search the websites of the manufacturers of the product. Like for SD cards I'll search samsung.com, for hard drives westerndigital.com, for light bulbs maybe creelighting.com, etc.
  • kennend3 4y ago
    > I ended up spending an hour trying to get to the one I wanted to buy. As someone who has been in the same situation I just go to my local Lowes/Home Depot now. The lighting section actually shows you what they look like turned on which is nice. After doing some competitive price shopping it is rare that amazon's prices are competitive. I guess not having to go to the store is convenient? > I much rather prefer a curated list of products so someone else has done the weeding out. With amazon's commingling of inventory this isn't a workable solution.
• strathmeyer 4y ago
  Amazon will also do something where certain drugs will be the top of searches for other drugs or sometimes for example drugs for cats will show up even if you search "for dogs" so if you aren't paying complete attention you might not realize your mistake.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• Zufriedenheit 4y ago
  I do my online shopping almost exclusively through comparison sites (idealo and geizhals). They have much better filter options. This also overcomes the problem with dynamic pricing where in some cases shops show me >25% higher price if I navigate to them directly as they show me when coming through a price comparison site.
  • dehrmann 4y ago
    > idealo That's a name I haven't heard for a long time. I decade ago, I worked for a company in that space. It was dying back then, getting killed by Google product ads and Amazon.
• nottorp 4y ago
  That's funny. I was scrolling down and after a while the article got covered by a popup ad with something about black friday! subscribe now! And back to Amazon, i just don't search for generic products name on there. I just go to check if they have a specific product. Same for the iOS app store etc. You just can't trust them.
  • akkartik 4y ago
    I saw the popup and literally kept scrolling. Because it appeared perfectly centered on the amazon screenshot and I thought it was part of the screenshot. And as I scrolled more stuff got added to the screenshot. It's a Poe's law world we live in.
• mk89 4y ago
  Search engines have overall become terrible due to ads. Amazon is finally a search engine with the extra step of selling a material good. I have to admit that it has become difficult also for me to find a simple item without too much bias on Amazon. Last search I did a few days ago was for some beard balms and things like that. Finally, for some items I bought a known "safe" brand, while for other things I couldn't decide on I chose a local shop nearby. Yes, this exclusively because of the issue described in the article. So it seems: if you don't know ahead what to buy, Amazon is not a good place to search for things. On the other hand, it's convenient for subscriptions to items you know you want and need (pampers, toilet paper, etc.) ...and don't get me started on "let's search for products made in XYZ" to narrow down the search. It's just impossible.
• nytesky 4y ago
  Have to say this is impressive commentary coming from Bezos owned WP.
• swayvil 4y ago
  >Let me be clear: Advertising isn’t necessarily bad... Sure it is. It's legalized production of mass-insanity. When communication isn't intended to fuck your mind we call it "news" or "conversation" or something like that. Advertising is most definitely 100% evil. The only reason anybody says otherwise is because that implies all kinds of scary stuff about our society and nobody wants to go there. Also, because such statements offend our sponsors. And also, if you are in the advertising business, talk like that makes you look like a real Morlock. I think that's crystal clear.
• PaulKeeble 4y ago
  Its apparently not enough for a business this size to just sell products with good customer service any more. The customer service is long gone replaced by the computer saying no. The product listings are just ads and the reviews are all fake.
  • lightbendover 4y ago
    One Day Shipping and aggressive FC expansion led to a completely inordinate logistics cost. Pretty good reason Wilke is gone and Jassy had the chance to step up to me, but I can’t speak to that with authority.
• syntaxing 4y ago
  It has absolutely gotten out of hand lately. 2 sponsored product, 3 regular listed, 2 sponsored product, continued perpetually. Walmart has been pulling the same stuff lately and it’s infuriating.
  • YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
    At a certain 'sponsored product' density, the 'sponsoring' effectively just becomes an additional mandatory listing fee.
• layer8 4y ago
  This skit represents the experience quite well: https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30?t=4s https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30?t=4s
  • chrisbaker98 4y ago
    Haha this was amazing.
  • Oras 4y ago
    5 stars video haha
  • thefourthchime 4y ago
    I was thinking the same!
  • Terretta 4y ago
    I got this for my husband and he loves it.
• Tepix 4y ago
  Amazon is awful to shop at. I accidentally bought the wrong article twice already because i was searching for something and it showed me something else and i wasn't paying super close attention. It must be contributing to a lot of returns. These days when i buy something at Amazon it's because i found out elsewhere that one particular product is being offered at a good price there.
• pkrotich 4y ago
  Ad and junk… I recently ordered speakers and I got broken ones that looked like it was rescued from a bin / dumpster.
• mark_l_watson 4y ago
  The article is not wrong. I find myself “shopping” by looking at my previous orders and selecting things that I liked before. Amazon Prime is now more of a $10/month source of streaming entertainment content. It does feel good to buy direct from manufacturers but I do a price comparison with Amazon first.
• CosmicShadow 4y ago
  Scamazon just sucks now. It was once good, but every time I go to use it I waste time and get frustrated. I now only seem to buy stuff where the trade off on research vs going to store is not worth it and buy their probably crappy prime brand batteries. I've been floating like $100+ of amazon credits for months because I keep getting damn gift cards and more credit from returns. Sure there is things I kind of want, but I end up saving it for things I need, and then when I waste time researching what to buy on Amazon, I end up not buying it on Amazon because of their awful fake reviews and cloned YGGFSS named brand items. It's a real shame that brick-and-mortar stores don't realize their advantage is that I'd rather pay more and drive to pick something up TODAY than waste time waiting and risking garbage on prime, yet they flood their own stores with "online seller marketplace items" or nothing is ever in stock.
  • chrisbaker98 4y ago
    > YGGFSS What does this mean?
    • chihuahua 4y ago
      It was probably meant to be an example of the millions of machine-generated nonsensical names that a certain kind of 3rd party seller uses. Typically these names are a bit more pronounceable - the algorithms that generate them usually include some vowels. Examples from a search for bike fenders: TAGVO, XINBOUS, MEGHNA, NICEDACK, RBRL BRL, ENLEE, FETESNICE, JIVMEE
      • banana_giraffe 4y ago
        And sometimes the machine generated product descriptions seem to have gone live seemingly without someone that speaks English giving them a once-over: https://imgur.com/a/kvvO7dM https://imgur.com/a/kvvO7dM
    • aendruk 4y ago
      Nonsense all-caps throwaway brand name?
    • 4y ago
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  I have contacted AMZN support about obviously bogus and word salad product listings but they say they won’t do anything unless you bought the product. I don’t think they understand that when more than 50% of listings are obviously bogus you don’t have much confidence in the ones that remain. For me AMZN went from the first place I looked to the last.
• pftburger 4y ago
  Doesn’t Bezos own the Washington Post?
• KyleBrandt 4y ago
  "Amazon has turned shill results into its next big thing. After selling $31 billion in ads last year, Amazon became the third-largest online ad company in the United States, trailing only Google and Facebook". Got my attention more than than anything else. Seems to really be pushing antitrust to new heights?
• roflyear 4y ago
  You would think that a third party could curate Amazon listings and make a lot of money on affiliate links. But part of me thinks the problem is not just digging it is that many vendors moved off Amazon in general.
  • AlexandrB 4y ago
    Even if you curate listings you can't fix Amazon's inventory commingling. And, as with other review services, curation would hit conflicts of interest if it got popular as less scrupulous operators would be happy to pay more to have their product listed than consumers would pay for reliable curation.
• jbuzbee 4y ago
  I just got done searching for an accessory for a specific model of car on Amazon. My results prominently included items (ads) for accessories for a different model of car that would not fit my car. How does that help anyone? Wasted money for the company buying ads. Wasted time for me trying to figure out what is really applicable. And if I wasn't careful, I'd have ordered the wrong thing and would have to return it wasting everyone's time and effort. I guess Amazon got their money for showing me the ad. Worth it? I wouldn't think so, but I'm not one of the richest person in the world like Bezos - My lack of vision?
• GekkePrutser 4y ago
  I agree with the article except for the criticism about Amazon promoting their own products. I don't mind that part. After all I go to Amazon to buy stuff from Amazon. In fact I wish I could just select a box and filter out all the third-party sellers. There is too much completely unvalidated scammy stuff on there, even in the "shipped by Amazon" category. However they don't have this option probably because then none of these ads would be relevant. By the way, another thing I've noticed is that Amazon sometimes doesn't even come up with the right products if you type the actual product name. It just comes up with suggested crap that's not what you're looking for. The actual thing I want does not come up, even on the further pages. Often I think Amazon doesn't have the thing I want, and then I google (or duckduckgo more often) it to find it somewhere else, and the first result is... A link to Amazon with the thing I wanted! In stock, first-party and for a good price. It's really ridiculous that I have to use a third-party search engine to find what I need when I specify exactly what I want!
  • pigbearpig 4y ago
    I thought there was a seller filter. I know I’ve used it before to only show Seller: Amazon.com.
    • GekkePrutser 4y ago
      It doesn't come up for me on the left-hand side where all the filters are :( Just double-checked.
• aeharding 4y ago
  Amazon prime isn’t even two days anymore in Madison. It’s more like four or five days. I don’t understand what people value in prime anymore.
• cratermoon 4y ago
  What Shopping On Amazon Feels Like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQpxAvjD_30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQpxAvjD_30
  • Hackbraten 4y ago
    Not only hilarious but also extremely relevant. It’s essentially TFA in comedy form.
• nblgbg 4y ago
  I really miss "customers who also brought" features. I used to discover a ton of good books with that. Now it's all advertising. The whole search results are advertising and recently they are not relevant also any more.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• rzimmerman 4y ago
  Watching my parents get duped by Amazon results is maddening. They’re used to being able to trust a retailer or at least some consequences for scams and poor quality. People less scam-savvy than myself get understandably confused by “Amazon recommend” or a slightly lower price. But the minute I search for something on Amazon a dread comes over me of “here we go”. My danger center kicks in and I have to keep your wits about me. It’s a symptom of our (American at least) obsession with getting “the best deal” no matter what and it’s just awful.
  • Guest9081239812 4y ago
    I visited my family the other month and my mother was searching for a product. I told her it's likely available on Amazon and opened the website. When I started scrolling she started commenting on the prices and how she can buy some of the products for 10x less in the store. I then explained to her that unlike a store, Amazon prices are mostly meaningless, and the site will have the identical product selling at 10 different price points. People don't have to worry about that problem when they walk into a Walmart. They know the pricing has been carefully reviewed before the product touches the shelves. They know they're not going to see two identical products at Walmart with different stamped logos selling for $5 and $30. There's a level of trust you can buy any item and it's a fair value.
• chrisan 4y ago
  I don't mind the ads, they are clearly labeled "sponsored". What I hate is all the fake reviews influencing my choice. You buy something highly reviewed then receive some giftcard/offer or something in the packaging saying to leave a review and get something in return. Now I have to "reddit productX" and read there before making a choice.
  • hubraumhugo 4y ago
    We're building a product research engine with Reddit's favorite products in one place: https://looria.com/reddit/overview https://looria.com/reddit/overview
    • Terretta 4y ago
      Welp, there goes reddit product discussions. This is why we can't have nice things! (J/K) Love the idea, and I actually used your site when shopping for espresso machines recently. I just worry about social media agencies turning their tactics onto ranking in your algo. There are SEO kings reading this thread right now...
• samhickmann 4y ago
• Arubis 4y ago
  Amazon-the-store is mostly near-shored AliExpress + 7-Eleven at this point. That's got its uses--it's awfully convenient!--but it leaves them open to niched-down competitors that I would love to give my money. AWS, on the other hand, feels pretty sustainable.
  • Scoundreller 4y ago
    Iunno, Amazon has last-mile delivery down to a science relatively inaccessible to small sellers. Maybe with enough time, non-Amazon services will pop up more and more with the same kind of reach. I think postal shipping is still within reach in USA, but in Canada, the post sees parcels as a profit-centre and are shouting themselves in the foot as their volumes drop.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• SoftAnnaLee 4y ago
  > Here’s a modest proposal: No more than half of any screen we see at any given time — be it on desktop web or a smartphone — should contain ads. I have to say, we have gotten extremely complacent if “half” your page being filled with ads is considered acceptable. I can understand the unfortunate reality that online services need ads to survive, but surely half of a screen is still far from acceptable.
  • charcircuit 4y ago
    What's wrong with full screen ads? I honestly don't mind tiktok and reels ads at all despite them taking a full screen.
• alangibson 4y ago
  It's the same problem on German Amazon too. Results are loaded up with so much junk that I've started to wonder if there is a good arbitrage opportunity here. Basically filter out the garbage and fake reviews in your own curated search and recommendation site. Get paid via Amazon affiliate program.
• fmajid 4y ago
  Amazon is the third largest advertising company after Google and Meta. Its ad revenue is $32B (and growing fast, the run rate is $40B). That is half the revenue of AWS, which is worth 70% of Amazon's market cap. The inescapable conclusion is that Amazon's advertising is worth the remaining 30% of Amazon's market cap and Amazon's e-commerce arm is deemed worthless by Wall Street, its only purpose being to support the advertising business, just what Google Search is to Alphabet. Think on that for a moment. The other inescapable conclusion is that whenever the quality of the shopping experience on Amazon and the needs of Amazon's advertising business clash, advertising will win (just as it has on Google). That's an even more foregone conclusion since Andy Jassy took on the top job, he's from AWS and owes no special allegiance to the historical e-commerce business.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • SergeAx 4y ago
    > AWS [...] worth 70% of Amazon's market cap I am curious, how did you figure out this 70% number? Why not 60%, not 80%?
  • s17n 4y ago
    > The other inescapable conclusion is that whenever the quality of the shopping experience on Amazon and the needs of Amazon's advertising business clash, advertising will win (just as it has on Google). Saying that the e-commerce arm is worthless isn't really the right way to think about it - the ads business only exists to due the e-commerce product. Both Amazon and Google are well aware that their ad revenues depend on their having users, who will ultimately leave if the product (ecommerce and search, respectively) isn't compelling. Both of them know that long-term success requires them to prioritize user experience. Do they make bad decisions, either due to misaligned incentives internally or due to simply making mistakes? Undoubtedly. But it's also worth considering that they probably get the tradeoff right a lot of the time and most people simply aren't bothered by ads nearly as much as you'd like them to be.
    • Thursday24 4y ago
• sanitycheck 4y ago
  My process for getting usable results on Amazon (.co.uk, presumably the others too): 1. Search for thing 2. Filter by department (necessary for 3) 3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon 4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+ 5: Sort by price, Low > High 6: (Further filters as appropriate) 7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews 8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show only reviews for {the product variant you're actually looking at}". Closely scrutinise 1 and 2 star reviews. But sometimes even this _still_ doesn't get me quite what I want, because when an item is sold both by Amazon and a 3rd-party it can be sorted based on the non-Amazon price. It does feel just a little like Amazon's goals might not be perfectly aligned with those of the customer.
  • cryptoegorophy 4y ago
    You are not their customer. You are a small percentage that they just don’t care about. 99.99% people don’t do what you do to search. They successfully click on ads.
  • ikt 4y ago
    > It does feel just a little like Amazon's goals might not be perfectly aligned with those of the customer. Why do you still use it? Is it just because it's cheap?
    • sanitycheck 4y ago
      This is a good question. I use it a lot less than I used to, and I don't have Prime. Sometimes it's because of price, if something's significantly cheaper on Amazon I'll buy it from Amazon. Free delivery tips it in Amazon's favour sometimes. Sometimes it's availability. It can be quite painful to order things from outside the UK, most sellers aren't equipped to deal with VAT/duty their end so I end up with the delivery company holding packages hostage until I pay those (which is fine) plus a £20-30 "admin fee" for their package-hostage service. Pre-Brexit I could avoid this by ordering from elsewhere in the EU, but now I'm even more limited. Looking through my Amazon purchase history 3 of the last 5 things I've ordered are only available from Amazon in the UK (and at twice the price from a couple of dodgy looking online stores I've never heard of). The other reason is their returns policy, if the thing I order doesn't work they'll take it back with no fuss and refund the money. Other major retailers in the UK make this difficult, frustrating and/or time-consuming. I think they succeeded in retail because of a relentless focus on making the experience for customers better than their competitors. That's all still there, in the background - but it's being eclipsed by some other part of the org that wants to trick those customers into buying a load of shit.
• stewx 4y ago
  Kudos to the Bezos-owned Post for openly criticizing Amazon.
  • heisenbit 4y ago
    Emperors have a great need for honest feedback on their lack of clothing. The biggest risk to them is being surrounded by all yes people as Putin is learning painfully.
• fatneckbeardz 4y ago
  I agree this is horrible. (this comment is sponsored by Honey, the best way to save money online)
• 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago
  It has become impossible to find certain products on Amazon unless I know the exact name of it already, instead it will show me multiple pages of garbage that does not even belong to the same category. Often times Amazon will refuse to show me the product I am looking for, going as far as not even list it in the 3-4 pages of results, as if it did not exist. Then I go and enter the exact name and suddenly it shows up, but even then it is often not even among the first results...
• stef25 4y ago
  Bad: - Fake products, including outrageously a Delonghi coffee machine (paint came off the buttons after a few days and then the machine just broke). - Chinese crap with brand names that sound computer generated - Here in EU you'll get some product descriptions in the wrong languages (Polish, Italian ... on the .fr domain), or images that have Chinese text on them. Good - The refurbished / Amazon warehouse stuff is great. Just bought 2x 27" computer screens at a price far, far lower than what any other shop was offering. Same for a PS4 a couple years back. Looking at doing the same for a television. Who cares it the remote doesn't have batteries or some cable is missing. No other store here in EU comes close to the prices Amazon has.
• Ruq 4y ago
  I find it ironic the Washington Post has this article.
• mannschott 4y ago
  I was shocked by how spammy Amazon.com's search results seemed compared to what I'm accustomed to from Amazon.de. I'm not a regular user of Amazon.com but have had occasion to do so since I'm visiting family in the US. Amazon.de is the "local" Amazon where I live. Is this an affect of differing laws in the EU versus the USA? Differences in leadership of Amazon.com versus Amazon.de? Differences in perceived market expectations? Perhaps the average American consumer is expected to be more tolerant of this kind of thing? (I wonder because I compare the robo-call-infested hellscape that we've made of our telephone system compared to the rarity of such abuse where I live in Europe and wonder if we, in the US, are just more prone to behave in a way that produces tragedies of the commons.)
• chaostheory 4y ago
  As shown by this and countless of other articles, including comments here and places like Reddit; Amazon has gotten to Day 2 years ago on Jeff’s watch Just to ensure that you don’t buy a fake product, it’s now normal to check if there are any 3rd parties using Amazon warehouses in the Other Sellers section
• AlexandrB 4y ago
  Is it just me or does it feel like the major tech companies have completely lost the war against bots/spam? Search results are regressing across multiple online services[1] - Google, Amazon, and app stores are all filled with junk and scams. Reviews for products are generally filled to the brim with bots or paid reviews. [1] I've noticed the re-emergence of Experts Exchange style sites on Google recently. For technical questions Stack Overflow or official docs are often near the bottom of the first page, while sites like w3schools or geeksforgeeks are at the top with much less useful content.
  • thomassmith65 4y ago
    Is it just me or does it feel like the major tech companies have completely lost the war against bots/spam? It's just you; the major tech companies are winning the war. You yourself point out how useless and spammy search has become.
  • Terretta 4y ago
    Try https://kagi.com https://kagi.com and the Programming Lens (Kagi is worth the subscription even w/o that: user is paying for search, not advertisers paying for eyeballs.)
• pliuchkin 4y ago
  Is it time for a browser extension to ad block Amazon internals?
• syliconadder 4y ago
  I think most comments here are America centric where Amazon might've peaked. Even without Prime, Amazon has been the best e-commerce site I've used in Europe or India. The customer support itself warrants the price they ask for and it's usually the cheapest in the market. It is possible that it will head the same direction with market saturation but for now the promise still lives up.
• agentcoops 4y ago
  I’m part of the I’m sure infinitesimal and ever-shrinking portion of Amazon’s userbase who actually try to use the site to buy rare and used books. Most annoying for my experience is that they recently replaced what was in fact a best-in-class recommendation engine, which lead to a lot of my purchases, with a totally useless ad bar that displays universally terrible “related” books. There’s a world where after effectively cornering the world book market they subsequently destroy it (and they of course own and have effectively feature frozen competitors such as abebooks and bookdespository).
  • llanowarelves 4y ago
    It's funny Alexa is named after the Library of Alexandria. Their other products are named Kindle and Fire.
  • iamacyborg 4y ago
    It seems buying rare and used books has mostly migrated to Facebook groups and ebay, at least for the sorts of stuff I collect.
  • protastus 4y ago
    I stopped ordering books from Amazon after twice receiving books shipped loose in oversized boxes, with obviously inadequate padding, leading to corners damaged in transit. This would've been unthinkable in the old days (Amazon customer since 1995). I'm assuming you order from Amazon marketplace retailers who you trust, and do their own shipping.
• coding123 4y ago
  These aren't the same thing as ads. It's paid placement, same thing happens in your local grocery store.
  • Cipater 4y ago
    Paid placement is quite literally advertising.
  • JohnFen 4y ago
    Paid placements are a kind of ad.
• strenholme 4y ago
  That’s why I use uBlock origin: It hides all of those Amazon ads. Also hides Twitter ads, even YouTube video ads, pretty much everything except Facebook ads (Facebook plays cat and mouse games with ad blockers). While I don’t mind YouTube ads -- I have disabled ad blockers on that domain because I’m an electronic musician myself so strongly feel it’s important to support artists and musicians -- these Amazon ads are in my book unethical, since they look like legitimate results with only a light grey “sponsored” in small text underneath them. Don’t get me started with how Amazon pesters me to join Prime every time I order with them.
  • odysseus 4y ago
    Are there any reputable Safari extensions that hide Amazon ads? uBlock doesn’t work in Safari
  • nicbou 4y ago
    This is the internet as I know it since a few years. Going without it is unbearable after just one or two pages. The cookie notices alone are unbelievable. It's wild to think that some people live with the unfiltered Internet.
  • LadyCailin 4y ago
    FBPurity does a pretty good job on blocking FB ads. Not perfect, still cat and mouse, but that’s the only site it works on, so the devs spend more effort on only that.
• yalogin 4y ago
  Over the last few years Amazon has been overwhelmed by Chinese goods and over time the search results has become similar to aliexpress. I would have never heard the manufacturer’s name and will never remember them either. All of them have close to 5 star rating and there is no way to even judge if they are any good. You buy if you accept that. Feels like it’s time for this to be disrupted.
  • russdill 4y ago
    And 8 other identical looking products listed under a different manufacturer.
  • noncoml 4y ago
    When it came to shopping I used to blindly trust Amazon. Wouldn’t even check prices anywhere else. Now, it’s always the choice of last resort. I really don’t like it when I have to shop on Amazon. It feels like a combination of AliExpress and eBay. Delivery times are getting worse by the day too.
    • avitous 4y ago
      I used to trust them a whole lot more, too. But of late it seems Amazon is leaning toward a cesspool of price gouging, and I've noticed a lot more of the presented results are "Sponsored". Along with that, I stream movies on my TV, running clients, usually Netflix or Prime Video, on my xbox. Increasingly the Amazon prime video client wants to present me with options to "Rent or Buy" instead of free offerings (I am a Prime subscriber after all, and seek to take advantage of the free streaming offerings), sometimes a page of results will contain nothing but pay-to-play offers.
      • fmajid 4y ago
        The iPad or browser version offer a "free to me" option. Unfortunately they also count their ad-infested service as "free to me". In my experience Amazon has the best streaming service now. There's nothing on Netflix I want to see and I'd have cancelled the service a long time ago if it were not for my wife and 10 year old daughter.
• wkdneidbwf 4y ago
  i’m not sure exactly when it happened, but i slowly lost confidence shipping on amazon. too much crap and too many fake reviews. at some point it began to make sense to just go to a store again—as it turns out also means i make a decision about how much i actually need something. amazon fucked up bad by chasing growth at all costs. sounds like a lot of tech companies these days.
• citizenpaul 4y ago
  >But now that I’m aware Amazon is playing games, I start my shopping on Google and trusted reviews sites, and then head over to Amazon only once I’ve identified what I want. So the author has stockholm syndrome. What I do is go to the company website and see where I can order besides amazon. Though some sellers only do sell on amazon. This is basically an echo of the Ticketmaster post a week or two ago. I hate them and they abuse me as a customer but I still keep giving them money.
• gumby 4y ago
  For the mixer example, it seems the way to do it is to go to the brand's "store". Perhaps there is a way to get there directly but the only way I know is to search for the brand name, scroll down until one of the brand's products appears (even if the offered example isn't what you want), click on that, and then on the product page you'll see "visit the <brand> store", if there is one. I assume it's something the company has to pay for as well. Actually I just tried searching for "kitchenaid store" and mirable dictu the first page of results was all kitchenaid products. I would give up on Amazon but some smaller brands (e.g. Anker) sell only through Amazon.
• butMebbe 4y ago
  The path to success now is still the Walmart model but you have to take longer to get there subtlety. The other Walmarts are out there monitoring for threats and will litigate! So you have to appear novel to early adopters, and grow into being a landfills cash cow in a politically correct way.
• thefourthchime 4y ago
  I have uBlock and fakespoter installed on my browser. I had to open another browser where I wasn’t logged in and had no extensions to reproduce the results. I don’t know if the filtered results are that much better. But it is free from blatant ads.
• donaldbough 4y ago
  After starting up at Amazon ( biased opinion), it really is impressive to see the relentless customer focus. Even at the cost of short term profit or wall street gains, they have historical proof of putting the customer first. Lots of Amazon ads? Sure. But they're generally useful, and the teams building the "not as profitable e-commerce" will be making something people love.
• akomtu 4y ago
  Amazon is certainly getting more scummy. Last time I made an order, it sneakily turned one item into a subscription (in a tiny font it said "the next arrival scheduled on...") and stopped showing cost of the faster delivery option it selected without asking me, i.e. it selected the 2nd option which is 3 days earlier, and that option had no price tag on it, only when I chose the slower option, it showed that the faster ootion is 10 bucks (on a 30 bucks item). We are seeing how capitalism is advancing to its next phase: false advertising. Shorty after will follow another phase: extortion (uncancellable subscriptions, automatically signed legal agreements, etc.)
• andrewyates2020 4y ago
  I worked on ad load optimization and founded a company that specializes in ad load optimization, here's an explainer video: https://www.promoted.ai/videos/unified-ads-search-and-feed-optimization https://www.promoted.ai/videos/unified-ads-search-and-feed-o...). The cynical comments here align with my experience: when leadership demands now revenue, there is an iterative game where the only correct answer is "increase revenue now." If you run enough A/B tests and ask this question enough times over a large enough organization, more ads and 3p always result. Most companies are trying hard to produce a great user experience. However, it's hard to measure subtle degradations to buyer experiences, especially when those degradations happen after the purchase or quality metrics corrupted by motivated sellers or advertisers. This is one reason obsession with A/B testing drives this poor user experience: it's hard to measure. Revenue now is easy to measure. Another aspect you may not see as a buyer is that when the market is down, sellers are SCREAMING at their platforms to fix the problem. Same iterated game: give boost (discount, ad credits etc.), less screaming (for that team right now). What you see as bad as a buyer may be trying to appease sellers.
  • lastpingstandin 4y ago
    I worked for Amazon on a team that touched this, and I can confirm this is basically true. For recommended products, Amazon's algorithm prefers widgets that generate more revenue (which sponsored products has a huge advantage with), and thus those products typically get ranked higher.
• BetterGeiger 4y ago
  I manufacture and sell one unique product. I started with direct sales, doing okay, but it was clear that Amazon is where the real action is, so I tried to sell there. Getting the listing up was a slow and painful experience due to horrible seller service (this is typical). Finally it's listed. Around 15% of revenue is fees. That's with me doing my own fulfillment! Hardly any sales at first, so I had no choice but to advertise. It looks like another 15% of revenue will end up going to amazon ads. Amazon will probably end up making more money than me, just for being the middle man. That's if I'm lucky, because sales are still just a trickle, and I'll probably have to up my ad spend to get any real traction. It seems like the system is designed to put comparable products competing against each other and the one that rises to the top is he one that Amazon can squeeze the most blood out of, unrelated to what the user might benefit from. It's www.bettergeiger.com if you're curious.
  • tbran 4y ago
    Frankly, you're probably better off learning some SEO, writing some articles in your niche, and waiting for a while (6-12 months) for your website to show up in Google results for as many keywords as you can. Use a tool like Ahrefs (you can get 7 days free iirc, or just use it for a month and then cancel) to find keywords people search for in your niche and start writing. When you're selling stuff on the internet, keyword data is illuminating! Use keyword data to think about why people want a Geiger counter (I see you have a survey!) and the kinds of problems they have, then show them how yours fixes their problem.
  • fmajid 4y ago
    Amazon will promote sellers who use their fulfilment service over those who DIY. https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/fulfillment-by-amazon-chokehold https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/fulfillment-by-ama...
    • dymk 4y ago
      How is that not a violation of antitrust laws?
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• wayeq 4y ago
  behind a paywall.. oh, the ironing
• Razengan 4y ago
  Everything everywhere is become a f'ing ad. Even the damn posts and comments on social networks like Reddit and sometimes even HN masked as genuine opinion. Ads are pollution, cancer, and pandemic. When will the masses buckle under this incessant accursed FATIGUE and demand enough be enough?
• etothet 4y ago
  And it’s not just Amazon. This is now the way the web works. In fact, on mobile most of the linked article becomes hidden beneath a WaPo Black Friday ad and a Google ad.
• Ozzie_osman 4y ago
  This statement generalizes to: Almost everything on (ads-monetized tech product) is becoming an ad. The ads business model is just too powerful.
• Justsignedup 4y ago
  I just tried using it with/without uBlock Origin. Holy shit is the experience different. Every single person on earth needs uBlock Origin.
• unnouinceput 4y ago
  I can die peacefully now. I lived to see a negative article in Washington Post about Amazon. Did I missed something? Is WP no longer Jeff's vomit (like the flurry of articles about how bad Amazon's worker doing a union would be for them, that flooded WP not even a year ago)?
• maxnevermind 4y ago
  I find a general web and pictures Google search for shopping on Amazon more effective, native Amazon one is a dumpster fire.
• tomxor 4y ago
  How are they identifying these as ads? I really can't see any differences (which I suppose is the point the article is making)... but if so, how are they confident what the highlighted listings are ads?
• aenis 4y ago
  Interesting in how it resembles the situation in traditional retail. FMCG companies typically pay a lot of money in so called trade funds to the likes of Walmart, Tesco, and others. One company I worked for spent Approx 20pct of its topline a year on that - double digit billions. Ostensibly, this is to place the product on the right shelves, run promos and have the products featured in the chains' newsletters. The real reason is, however, efficient taxation. The "trade funds" make all the profit for legacy retailers. Branded products are sold at near zero, or sometimes - if allowed - negative margins. The operating companies make near-zero taxable profits. The marketing spend is typically channeled to different legal entities than actual sales and taxed "efficiently". I think it might be the same with Amazon.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• ozzythecat 4y ago
  Ads = revenue = promotions. I was at Amazon for over a decade. Show YoY growth in terms of revenue, you’ll get a bigger empire. Sr. Managers become Directors. Directors become VPs. The senior engineers who worked on the low latency performance optimization becomes principals. The tech program managers become principals as well. All the other cogs in the chain either get burned out, managed out, or they bounce to AWS, maybe Alexa. All the analysis and commentary in this thread is interesting, but there’s nothing complex here. It’s basic incentive structures incentivizing undesirable outcomes.
• seydor 4y ago
  When you attract a lot of attention, inevitably ads will make more money for you than your initial product. You become a middleman, a hub, a celebrity, a politician, a higher up. This leaves the space below open to competitors and puts you in a more lucrative position.
• toofy 4y ago
  about 6 months ago i just stopped ordering physical products online entirely. i noticed that i was needing to return way too much of the stuff i ordered. clothes sizes were completely wrong or the material was just cheap. cords and other accessories were cheap or just plain the wrong item. household items _really_ didn’t match the pictures. scale was all wrong, etc… it’s just so much easier to walk into a store, actually touch the product and literally walk away with it immediately knowing that it’s what i wanted. it’s also just nice to be out and about. i suppose im lucky that i live in a populated area and have physical stores i can go to tho. a lot of people don’t have that option. it really is frustrating how low online shopping has sunk. but the amount of deception shops have turned to online is just an awful experience.
• Marsymars 4y ago
  > “We are dedicated to providing customers with a world-class shopping experience, including working hard every day to ensure the ads they see are useful, informative, and help make shopping a little bit easier,” said spokesman Patrick Graham. If they were actually confident in this, they could give every user the option to toggle ads on or off. Maybe even limit that option to Amazon Prime subscribers.
• tempestn 4y ago
  Anybody else remember the days when you'd be looking at a product in a physical store, and check the Amazon reviews on your phone before buying it, because that was the easiest way to get reliable feedback? How things have changed since then!
• geuis 4y ago
  I ran into a similar issue a couple days ago. I was searching for 3D printing supplies and literally everything had the price as "from (some amount of money)". Then when I go into a product, literally nothing was marked at that price. Most of them had multiple versions of the same product all at slightly different prices, all of which were much higher than whatever the original "from" price was set as.
• Vanit 4y ago
  Amazon search results are nigh useless for me; it absolutely refuses to constrain the results based on my terms and just fills the results with vaguely related ads that aren't even what I want. For example, I've been trying to find what 5k2k/WUHD monitors they have, but it completely ignores that and returns WQHD/etc, so I'm no better off than just scrolling through the entire monitor category myself.
  • wrycoder 4y ago
    Try searching for “battery siding nailer”. You get everything but. All pneumatic.
    • jefftk 4y ago
      Are electric siding nailers a thing? I've only ever seen pneumatic ones.
      • wrycoder 4y ago
        You may be right about that. I haven’t discovered one, either. All my other (amateur) residential construction tools are battery at this point, and I’d rather not buy a compressor and drag it around just for siding. Why do you think the manufactures have avoided battery siding nailers? Too heavy?