amazon is optimizing itself into oblivion
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it's a series of independently rational choices that produced a weird outcome: while building a massive globe-spanning retail logistics system, amazon was simultaneously outsourcing its own store
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This is very weird, because I was searching for a spatula last night (I want a flat edge metal one for cast iron) and eventually filtered by seller and brand to see only Oxo sold by Amazon.
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(please send me your weird or mysterious amazon experiences, I always love to hear them)
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When sellers “game” the algorithm, it makes me want to scream. Six months ago, you couldn’t search for “cotton bedsheets” without “feels like cotton” descriptions. When I went to grab a screenshot of this just now, saw they actually cleaned this up. I was shocked.
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I try to shop at specialty stores, however the Amazon order history search is useful and better than most. And it’s not just for reordering… it can act as a kind of scrapbook. What year did I get this thing or do this project? But yeah ordering a simple item is frustrating
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Have not read this but part of the problem is the hustle culture. They are doing drop shipping by selling cheap stuff from Alibaba on Amazon and doing zero work to make a profit. Hence all the same products with weird names and different prices.
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Amazon used to be great. Searching for products and reading reviews was easy and effective. Now the search results are 75% crap. I do not like what Amazon has become. I hate what it aspires to become. And yet I still pay for Prime, which makes no sense.
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