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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

I've long wondered why Amazon made it harder to buy products from them, why they've decreased the [customer] value of their search, decreased the value of the filters, decreased the value of the reviews...

I mean the answer has to be "they make more money this way" but for me it's means I groan internally before going to Amazon because finding the product I want will be almost impossible - it's even hard if I already visited and already found what I wanted to buy, finding it again, near impossible. Not even basics like search by product manufacturer actually work.

Sites with usable search are a relative joy.

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Perhaps there is a trend in letting an algo decide instead of the user.

I've worked for a large e-commerce company, and you're right, search is very important - to the point where effective search was one of the main focuses of the company's development. They had a clear correlation between revenue and how good/relevant the search results were, so they focused on that. Doing what seems like the complete opposite is a... choice.

I don't use amazon, but I use AWS every day of my life and I see similar-ish decisions made there in the console UI (although admittedly it has gotten a little better) - like, why are you seemingly making this purposely difficult? There's no way this benefits you.

>> search is very important - to the point where effective search was one of the main focuses of the company's development.

THIS is what I really do not get.

Of course N=[small_numbers_somewhat_selective], but I have never encountered anyone who wanted anything other than good search. I have only ever heard complaints about the messy Amazon-style searches. In decades I have NEVER heard or seen a written comment about someone finding something great that 'just popped up' in an otherwise failed search. No one likes sloppy search or finds it anything but a waste of time and actually drives them away from the site.

Yet, clearly the search-enshittifiers have some data or usage pattern information indicating it works for them, or they wouldn't keep doing it. Does anyone know what this data might be?

I also don't know why they couldn't do both. Present the sloppy-search but have a small button to switch over to strict search (or even better, a McMaster-style search). I fail to see how that wouldn't be better, since I and everyone I know now actively work avoid Amazon and the like rather than work to try to find stuff in their shitty search. I came originally because it was easy to find stuff. Now, it is hard so I'm elsewhere

I suspect, this is just my personal opinion, doesn’t reflect any of my former or current employers opinions, the Amazon makes a lot of money based on ad revenue. I don’t think there’s a lot of evidence that they’re killing it on the online retail front.

there have been many e-commerce players that have come in to the gap there and specialize in these “niche” products or services that deliver fast as Amazon and it isn’t hard to do so if you’re willing to invest. i would not personally be surprised if amazon saw long term growth loss in their e-commerce sector, especially given the competetion from other retailers that have adjusted - like walmart and target.

Interesting insight; thanks!

That would make sense as to why they insist on making search worse — keep you in the doom loop to show more promoted products and collect more pennies from the promotion, even if you end up going and purchasing somewhere else. Same Prime subscriptions, as long as they keep you coming back just enough to keep re-subscribing, they collect $130 or whatever per year.

I had noticed a while ago I was using Amazon in a way analogous to 'showrooming'. When Amazon came on the scene, people would look in the brick&mortar stores to see what goods they liked, then buy cheaper on Amazon. I had now unconsciously started using Amazon to do a broad survey search before purchasing somewhere else. OFC, when their search tool really enshittified, haven't been there much.

> console UI (although admittedly it has gotten a little better) - like, why are you seemingly making this purposely difficult? There's no way this benefits you.

My secret suspicion is that AWS wants everyone to use APIs and deliberately enshittify's the console

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