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Comment by krn | Hacker News Reader

Seeing ads in Amazon search results has substantially reduced my perceived trust in Amazon brand, since as a buyer I no longer feel like Amazon is on my side. I feel like I am Amazon's product. That it's me, who is for sale.

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Probably a bigger issue for Amazon is that a large part of the ad market is competitors or potential competitors. Walmart, Safeway, and Azure won't be advertising on Amazon.

Does P&G want Amazon to control more of the retail market? Not if it has any brains. Amazon has it's own branded home speaker systems and will not sell Google's. If Amazon brought out a shampoo brand, would it sell head and shoulders?

P&G is already at the mercy of Walmart, Publix, etc. Why would Amazon be any different?

I bet P&G would love to get branded Dash buttons all over people’s houses.

Why would other big retailers pay for ads on Amazon's website? Brands are the ones who pay and already do. P&G already places a ton of advertising on Amazon for its various products. Search 'Tide' and look at the headline ad spot.

That's P&G paying for that placement.

Amazon makes plenty of their own stuff, under Amazon basics, like 70 other brands, plus whatever they got with Whole Foods. Aside from the Kindle shenanigans, they haven't blocked competing brands.

The general public won't care as long as Amazon is able to offer prices lower than competitors.

This 1000 time. I only care about prices when I am shopping online. The problem is, Amazon is not often the less expensive option.

I think every company cares about its customer loyalty, and damaging the trust in your brand might leave you with the customers who use you only because you are the cheapest. This would quickly make your brand worthless.

In my honest opinion, customer loyalty is a thing of the past. I am in no way loyal to Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Apple. However, they continue to make the best products, hence I do business with them.

They will when the counterfeit problem hits the mainstream consciousness. There's a limit to how many "genuine" Apple power adapters can self-combust before it goes really viral.

That's when Amazon will need to draw on their deep wells of goodwill, but they're squandering them today by cozying up to advertisers.

The counterfeit problem is HUGE, I think people are greatly underestimating how many counterfeit items sold on Amazon.

I've also been seeing Amazon reviews in AdChoices square-shaped banner ads. I'm not sure Amazon is facilitating this but it makes it seem like the reviews are there just to get people to buy things, and the reviews are going to keep getting more and more fake like Uber, AirBnb, and Yelp.

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