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> AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads No, the threat is bigger than that. If AI automatically

by petilon 12d ago

> AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads No, the threat is bigger than that. If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference. You have to own the consumer experience. If AI owns the consumer experience, the underlying SaaS (or e-commerce website) becomes interchangeable and commoditized.

fc417fc802 12d ago
If that's true then it seems like they're ultimately doomed because if AI can place orders for me everywhere except amazon and I'm using AI to find products on amazon to order (which I already do because holy shit are their product listings ever a confusing mess) then I'll naturally start to gravitate towards the more convenient option.
- freeopinion 12d ago
  Amazon cannot even sort by price. An AI that gives me a list of Amazon products sorted by price will instantly replace Amazon for me.
gz5 12d ago
>If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference. Agree that is a big-time longer-term threat but "user won't know the difference" means the user gets the order with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc...that won't be replicated overnight, at least not at scale (interesting to think what products could be done first...similar to Amazon starting with books). Meanwhile ads made Amazon $19.8 billion last quarter alone, even while detracting from our user experience. Can't rip that business away overnight either, but it is less of a lift imo.
- carefree-bob 12d ago
  "with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc." How would the user know that? Many sites, including Amazon, make their bones providing decent quality at a lower cost, and then once they build up their market they start reducing the features and raising the costs. Amazon tends to be more expensive nowadays and suffers from product quality issues. It is super easy to use and has a good return experience, but it used to be a leader in all four areas. And the AI replacement will be incentivized to do the same thing. And so will the LLM provider, etc. All businesses do this - once they acquire a dominant position, they start screwing over the customer.
  - bix6 12d ago
    Still can’t beat the delivery time though. Their logistics network is insane.
    - freeopinion 12d ago
      Delivery time is super important--50% of the time. Maybe less than 50%. I never pay for express shipping on personal orders. One or two days is never worth $3 cost to me. Let alone a $12-20 charge. I suspect super fast delivery is only a differentiator when all else is equal. At $6+/gal diesel, I'll take the cheaper item delivered by bicycle in a week. (A bit of a joke, but you get the point.)
      - bix6 11d ago
        I ordered something the other day from another website and it was $9 cheapest shipping option and took 5 days. When all Prime is 1-2 day “free” delivery for me, that’s hard to beat.
        Retric 11d ago
        Amazon prime was costing me 20$/order so I cancelled it a while ago. Which made many sites competitive with Amazon on shipping. As to delivery times, many things could take 2 weeks to show up and I wouldn’t care. The range where I can wait 18+ hours but can’t wait ~1 week just doesn’t cover that many of my purchases.
ihsw 12d ago
Disintermediating the consumer experience the primary value proposition of AI clients, and, yes, I mean to say disintermediating even though AI -- in effect -- becomes an intermediary. It has shown that it is a much better intermediary than all others because it does what you ask it to, unlike Google Search and Amazon Search et al, whom make their bread and butter by disregarding what you ask for and instead sending paid slop to you.
deleted 12d ago
[deleted]
lupire 12d ago
Disintermediation. It's Amazon's whole business model. https://prosperousamerica.org/amazons-heavy-recruitment-of-chinese-sellers-puts-consumers-at-risk/ https://prosperousamerica.org/amazons-heavy-recruitment-of-c...
iAMkenough 12d ago
> You have to own the consumer experience. If AI owns the consumer experience, the underlying product becomes interchangeable and commoditized. Ironically, this is what Amazon did to local business owners. Now that the tables are turned (and they have billions to spend on lawyers), they see the threat.
matheusmoreira 12d ago
> You have to own the consumer experience. No, we have to own it. I'm so tired of these abusive control freak corporations. I'm actually starting to look forward to these "unaligned" AIs which are just going to ignore all of this nonsense whether they like it or not.
Buttons840 12d ago
What about the end game where my own computer running my own code controls the experience? There's a 10 trillion dollar incentive to never allow that reality.
gmerc 11d ago
It was legal when amazon did it to everyone else
CTDOCodebases 11d ago
This is what I have been saying since LLMs came out. A device with a custom agent that has a screen, mic and speaker can now turn amazon into a logistics company. The most low friction way of doing anything is to just ask someone else to do it for you. In this case it's the agent. So now if a company wants to capture a percentage between the buyer and seller then they need to have influence over the agent or capture a percentage of the transaction fees.

by petilon 12d ago

fc417fc802 12d ago

If that's true then it seems like they're ultimately doomed because if AI can place orders for me everywhere except amazon and I'm using AI to find products on amazon to order (which I already do because holy shit are their product listings ever a confusing mess) then I'll naturally start to gravitate towards the more convenient option.

freeopinion 12d ago
Amazon cannot even sort by price. An AI that gives me a list of Amazon products sorted by price will instantly replace Amazon for me.

gz5 12d ago

>If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference. Agree that is a big-time longer-term threat but "user won't know the difference" means the user gets the order with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc...that won't be replicated overnight, at least not at scale (interesting to think what products could be done first...similar to Amazon starting with books). Meanwhile ads made Amazon $19.8 billion last quarter alone, even while detracting from our user experience. Can't rip that business away overnight either, but it is less of a lift imo.

carefree-bob 12d ago
"with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc." How would the user know that? Many sites, including Amazon, make their bones providing decent quality at a lower cost, and then once they build up their market they start reducing the features and raising the costs. Amazon tends to be more expensive nowadays and suffers from product quality issues. It is super easy to use and has a good return experience, but it used to be a leader in all four areas. And the AI replacement will be incentivized to do the same thing. And so will the LLM provider, etc. All businesses do this - once they acquire a dominant position, they start screwing over the customer.
- bix6 12d ago
  Still can’t beat the delivery time though. Their logistics network is insane.
  - freeopinion 12d ago
    Delivery time is super important--50% of the time. Maybe less than 50%. I never pay for express shipping on personal orders. One or two days is never worth $3 cost to me. Let alone a $12-20 charge. I suspect super fast delivery is only a differentiator when all else is equal. At $6+/gal diesel, I'll take the cheaper item delivered by bicycle in a week. (A bit of a joke, but you get the point.)
    - bix6 11d ago
      I ordered something the other day from another website and it was $9 cheapest shipping option and took 5 days. When all Prime is 1-2 day “free” delivery for me, that’s hard to beat.
      - Retric 11d ago
        Amazon prime was costing me 20$/order so I cancelled it a while ago. Which made many sites competitive with Amazon on shipping. As to delivery times, many things could take 2 weeks to show up and I wouldn’t care. The range where I can wait 18+ hours but can’t wait ~1 week just doesn’t cover that many of my purchases.

ihsw 12d ago

Disintermediating the consumer experience the primary value proposition of AI clients, and, yes, I mean to say disintermediating even though AI -- in effect -- becomes an intermediary. It has shown that it is a much better intermediary than all others because it does what you ask it to, unlike Google Search and Amazon Search et al, whom make their bread and butter by disregarding what you ask for and instead sending paid slop to you.

deleted 12d ago

[deleted]

lupire 12d ago

Disintermediation. It's Amazon's whole business model. https://prosperousamerica.org/amazons-heavy-recruitment-of-chinese-sellers-puts-consumers-at-risk/ https://prosperousamerica.org/amazons-heavy-recruitment-of-c...

iAMkenough 12d ago

> You have to own the consumer experience. If AI owns the consumer experience, the underlying product becomes interchangeable and commoditized. Ironically, this is what Amazon did to local business owners. Now that the tables are turned (and they have billions to spend on lawyers), they see the threat.

matheusmoreira 12d ago

> You have to own the consumer experience. No, we have to own it. I'm so tired of these abusive control freak corporations. I'm actually starting to look forward to these "unaligned" AIs which are just going to ignore all of this nonsense whether they like it or not.

Buttons840 12d ago

What about the end game where my own computer running my own code controls the experience? There's a 10 trillion dollar incentive to never allow that reality.

gmerc 11d ago

It was legal when amazon did it to everyone else

CTDOCodebases 11d ago

This is what I have been saying since LLMs came out. A device with a custom agent that has a screen, mic and speaker can now turn amazon into a logistics company. The most low friction way of doing anything is to just ask someone else to do it for you. In this case it's the agent. So now if a company wants to capture a percentage between the buyer and seller then they need to have influence over the agent or capture a percentage of the transaction fees.