
Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products - juokaz
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-changed-search-algorithm-in-ways-that-boost-its-own-products-11568645345?mod=rsswn
======
Pxtl
Considering how shopping at Amazon now feels like shopping at an electronics
bazaar in Singapore with giant bins of random knock-off products of suspicious
quality, tweaking the algo to push name-brand options (even if it's _their
own_ name-brand) would be a welcome move to me as a buyer.

Obviously it's grossly unfair to their vendors, but from a strictly user-
centric view it's an improvement.

Otherwise, Amazon feels like AliExpress with faster shipping and better
English.

~~~
gambiting
(I can only guess you are American) - American experiences with Amazon are so
different to mine over here in the UK it's incredible. I buy tonnes of
different stuff from Amazon(multiple hundred orders last year) and I have
never ever gotten anything counterfeit or had any issues. In fact every time
when their 1-day delivery arrives late they just extend my prime by a month,
no questions asked. And yet every time I go on HN it's 100% negative, stories
about unreputable sellers selling fake stuff - this is just not happening
outside of US for some reason.

~~~
papln
It's likely related to

(1) US market is largest "single-language * consumer spending" market, so
almost everyone outside of US/UK market puts effort in US first.

(2) USPS/UPU offers nearly 0-cost shipping for China to US. Can you ship a 2oz
packet from China to the UK for under $1?

~~~
yoavm
I don't know specifically about the UK, but the zero cost shipping from China
isn't a US thing. It's an international agreement, and I've seen things being
shipped for free from China to both Europe and the Middle East.

~~~
vinay_ys
Woah. In this bigger picture, amazon and everybody else is doing the last mile
for Fulfilled By China!

------
monitron
I would compare this to a supermarket allocating shelf space to maximize its
profits, either by placing its own brands front and center or by featuring
brands that have made a deal for prime shelf placement. I don't see this as
scandalous or even new.

Coincidentally, Amazon brand products are usually pretty good in my
experience, so this might not be a terrible outcome for users who have already
decided to come shop at Amazon's store.

~~~
learc83
Grocery stores don't operate as a "marketplace" though. Grocery stores curate
their offerings, vet vendors, deal with returns etc...

Amazon is more like shopping mall that decides to start operating their own
stores and competing with their tenants.

~~~
everythingswan
You have a point but I think the fact that grocery stores sell private label
goods is the counter-point. Grocery stores re-package goods like rice, beans,
paper towels, etc. to compete with their vendors all the time. We call them
supermarkets, right? A grocery store is simply a more organized open market.
Which is very comparable to Amazon.

I think the problem is that they present the results on good faith that "these
results are the best match for you based on your search", not the most
profitable for them.

I just ran a search and the default search filter was "Featured", which is so
ambiguous it could mean anything, so it seems like a classic bait and switch
that played out over the course of a decade of consumers getting the best
search results based on reviews and sales.

~~~
philipodonnell
> A grocery store is simply a more organized open market.

That’s not true though right? Don’t grocery stores buy the products that are
on their shelves and they are reselling them? That’s fundamentally different
from a marketplace.

~~~
wccrawford
I think that's true for most goods, but there were definitely brands that
stocked their own shelves at Publix when I worked there.

That said, _what_ brands got that special treatment was very much decided by
Publix, so they were still curating the selection, they just weren't paying
up-front for the goods or responsible for keeping those shelves looking good.

~~~
learc83
Generally Publix still owns that inventory though (even if they have a buyback
guarantee) My dad worked for Lance snacks when I was a kid. He stocked the
shelves, but the stores paid him for the product.

~~~
wccrawford
Did they pay him for the product before or after it was sold? I never really
knew which way it went, but assumed that since the entire thing, except
checkout, was handled by the rep, Publix never really owed the product, they
just sold it as if it were on consignment.

~~~
learc83
They paid him before. But really big stores would buy the whole thing on
credit.

They definitely owned the product, while it was on their shelves.

Even if a vendor has a buyback guarantee for expired product, if someone were
to break in and steal all the product, its the store who is liable not the
vendor.

------
cptaj
We definitely need platform legislation for the web.

After a certain size, they should be regulated as public utilities. So many
companies completely depend on Amazon's platform for their business and
they're all easy prey for the behemoth.

I did some work for a company that sells batteries on Amazon. A simple dispute
got them suspended across the board. A decision made by a third rate employee
from god knows where, probably without even a cursory reading of the case,
made in a split second, brought down a company with 10 years in the market and
hundreds of employees.

No due process, no rights, nothing. You can't defend yourself, they just shut
you down and then you have to beg for weeks to be let back in. After weeks and
hundreds of thousands in losses, you have no legal recourse against a wrongful
suspension.

You can make the argument that they could just set up their own online store
for the batteries and you're right, they can. But amazon and ebay are so big
that its practically impossible to sell these things at scale without them.
Its not a fair game and this is but one of the issues.

They definitely need to be treated as public utilities after a certain amount
of users.

~~~
bongobongo
You’re describing a monopoly and the proper tool to deal with it is anti-
trust, not entrenching it by pretending it’s a public utility.

~~~
notJim
What would that look like though? If consumers wanted to go to 20 different
stores to shop online, they'd already be doing that.

~~~
twblalock
> What would that look like though? If consumers wanted to go to 20 different
> stores to shop online, they'd already be doing that.

They do. Amazon accounts for about 47% of online retail. The rest is divided
up among a bunch of other sites.

------
goatinaboat
Umm, good? I want genuine products with an assured supply chain, not any
random counterfeit that gets commingled.

~~~
kenforthewin
So the solution to counterfeits on Amazon is to only buy Amazon brands? I'd
prefer they address their counterfeit problem directly.

~~~
goatinaboat
I would like it if when you specifically bought “sold by Amazon” products or
chose that as an option you were guaranteed a genuine item but with “shipped
by Amazon” that ship (hah!) has unfortunately sailed. They won’t be accepting
anything from third party sellers that has Amazon branding on, so it’s safe.

~~~
logfromblammo
> _" They won’t be accepting anything from third party sellers that has Amazon
> branding on...."_

I feel like that assertion has to be tested.

Amazon demonstrably cannot weed out counterfeits of other well-known brands.
If it can weed out counterfeits for it's own brand, we will know that it has
chosen not to expend the effort for anyone else, and therefore cannot be
trusted to sell those brands in its marketplace. If it cannot, we then know it
lacks the capability, and therefore cannot be trusted to sell those brands in
its marketplace.

------
Animats
It's too bad that Sears never really got into online. They were once the top
catalog retailer, and known for consistent quality, good warranties, and
boring products. Somehow they missed the Internet, retiring from catalog
operations just as Internet shopping got going.

~~~
pessimizer
Because Sears was a company in the process of being looted and trashed for at
least the last couple of decades. I've had experiences in Sears of spending 15
minutes just _looking for an employee._ It had become a company so actively
not interested in revenue that it actually became difficult to buy things
there. At least they kept the stores clean; it seems like after they bought
K-Mart, K-Mart literally stopped mopping the floors.

~~~
lleolin
>I've had experiences in Sears of spending 15 minutes just looking for an
employee Reminds me of an anecdote someone told me more than 15 years ago of
him searching for a Sears employee and finding one literally hiding/crouching
behind/underneath his register to avoid having to do his job. I would have
thought it were an isolated thing.

------
blueadept111
I'm glad they do this! I publish books on Amazon.com using Amazon KDP, and
it's impossible to compete on a level playing field in brick-and-mortar
bookstores. Distributors won't touch self-published titles. And I can't offer
them at a cheaper price, due to the nature of print on demand (much pricier to
print compared to doing a print run in China).

The ONLY advantage I have is that my titles are more promoted by Amazon in the
search results (since they make a killing off the higher margins, even when
they decide to discount it themselves). If Amazon wasn't boosting KDP self-
published titles in the search results, it wouldn't work... period, in my
opinion. I wouldn't even try.

And if anyone from Amazon is reading this, you guys should allow the authors
to purchase the title in bulk at a much cheaper rate, so that reselling to
local bookstores is a viable option.

------
Bhilai
My problem with Amazon is that I dont know what to trust anymore. For every
product I buy off Amazon, I spend time reading "verified purchase" reviews, 1
star and 2 star reviews and may be then find an item that seems legitimate and
durable. I only recently learned that "Amazon's Choice in category X" label
does not necessarily mean that Amazon has actually vetted that item. So my
experience shopping at Amazon has drastically changed.

------
otakucode
According to the book 'The Everything Store,' Amazon's search engine is a
matter of internal contention. Years ago, when people noticed that Amazon's
search engine was terrible (as it is), someone from another group in the
company developed a new search system based on Elasticsearch and more modern
technologies. He presented the new search to Bezos. But there was an existing
team whose primary responsibility was the search functionality. And the man
who led that team was one of Bezos' personal friends. That man was,
apparently, petty and status-seeking, so pushed back against adopting the new
search engine. Bezos proposed that there would be a contest between the old
and new search engines. Judged by his friend, head of the current bad search
engine team who didn't want the new search because it threatened his status.
Predictably, the new search 'lost.'

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
This sort of thing makes me sick, and I'm familiar with the feeling because
I've seen this several times in my career. But the older I get, the more a
tiny kernel of respect grows in me for the kind of person that can parley a
modicum of technical understanding into an unassailable political position in
a large company, and succeed -- at least in terms of money and influence --
despite the opportunity costs I've witnessed. You just kind of have to hand it
to people like this. I guess. Maybe that's the only way I stay sane at this
point.

------
jjohansson
If you’re a manufacturer without a strong brand, it’s incredibly risky selling
through Amazon. They will take your sales data to evaluate ROI of building it
themselves , and then undercut you.

Similar if you’re a retailer.

This is why Shopify’s new model is better for D2C and retail (but very
difficult for them to pull off).

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Also, a factory can produce a counterfeit of your product and sell it on
Amazon on the same listing as your genuine product, with no way the customer
can tell which they're buying.

~~~
gok
Hell, that factory can produce an AmazonBasics-branded version of your product
too.

------
pixelpoet
ANTITRUST!

If Microsoft can get hammered for packaging Internet Explorer with Windows
(and probably rightly so, given the market conditions at the time), there is a
direct analogy to be made here.

Pick what you want to be: if you want to be the greatest goods index and
shipment company in the world, fantastic. But you have to accept that you
cannot sneak some of your own other-products to the top using that power. In
this case, spin off your Kindle etc companies or have them broken up.

~~~
toasterlovin
No, there is not a direct analogy _because Amazon is not a monopoly_. They
aren't even the largest retailer.

~~~
pixelpoet
I feel there's an argument to be made for Amazon having a near-monopoly on
online sales and distribution in many countries, even outside America.

They've simply nailed it and scaled it. In New Zealand a company called
TradeMe got there first and successfully fended off Amazon, but that's a
minority case.

There are pros (e.g. consumers love it) and cons (e.g. human toll when
optimising efficiency without robots) to having Amazon dominate in whatever
country, but you can't deny, they get the job done. There isn't really another
company competing with them at that level, is there? And that's why I think
it's an effective monopoly.

To abuse this wide-reaching power, in making your own stuff rise to the top of
world sales, is absolutely a concern and we should honestly be grateful that
there are laws and funded agencies giving a shit about this.

~~~
toasterlovin
We are so early in the shift to online retailing. People using Amazon for
stuff other than books, DVDs, and CDs only became a thing in the last 10
years. Walmart has barely started to get their shit together with online
retailing. Same for the major supermarket chains. They have an incredible
physical presence with huge transaction volume that they can leverage into
their online efforts.

------
Rafuino
"After the Journal’s inquiries, Amazon took down its A9 website, which had
stood for about a decade and a half. The site included the statement: 'One of
A9’s tenets is that relevance is in the eye of the customer and we strive to
get the best results for our users.'"

Huh, that's an interesting reaction.

------
nbanks
I've always considered Amazon's search system as pretty bad, often ignoring
keywords to get more search results. It does look like their sort by price
mechanism has improved. eBay has my favourite search system because it's
willing to admit if there are no results and allow me create an e-mail alert.
It also allows negation and lets me use parentheses to define a logical "or"
as part of the query.

------
softwaredoug
As someone who works in search this is unsurprising, and happens all the time.
Search is a two sided sales exercise both to show you good products and also
to products that make the e-commerce business money. Search is the e-commerce
businesses sales person - not a neutral broker. You don’t expect the blue
shirt at Best Buy to be entirely neutral do you?

It’s actually a pretty understudied microeconomics case

[https://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2017/07/04/optimizing...](https://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2017/07/04/optimizing-
user-product-match-economies/)

------
mdolon
I was so annoyed by the promoted products and expert recommendations that I
wrote a Chrome/Firefox extension that hides them. It needs to be updated but
mostly works as expected:
[http://mdolon.com/projects/shopsuey](http://mdolon.com/projects/shopsuey)

------
feketegy
Shocking.

If you go into a candy store where the owner also makes their own brand of
candy, what do you think will be the most prominent item on the shelf?

~~~
panopticon
That's not really comparable. The candy store owner is still paying for the
other brand of candy to collect dust.

Amazon isn't exposed to the same risks in a lot of product listings.

------
vz8
I've taken to keeping a copy of Fakespot[0] open in an incognito browser and
regularly submit Amazon URLs to it. Over the past month or so, I've looked at
everything from headphones to shampoo and been boggled at the amount of
rigging that goes on.

While I can't say for sure that their algorithms are always spot on, they give
some interesting feedback in terms of recent review count history, price
history, whether Amazon has recently bulk deleted reviews, and some heuristic
comment quality ratings. So often I've found that Amazon's Choice is
questionable: 4.8 stars, hundreds of reviews within the last 30 days on a
slickly packaged, no-name electronics gadget is all too common.

Typically, I use Fakespot to look for red flags, flip back to the reviews area
on Amazon, sort them by Most Recent Reviews, and dig around. I don't use the
Fakespot Chrome extension, though. Too invasive for my tastes.

[0] [https://www.fakespot.com](https://www.fakespot.com)

------
josefresco
Side rant: Where is my Amazon branded phone case?!? This weekend I placed a
half dozen searches for "iphone 11 case" and was only presented with super
shady, low quality vendors.

Floveme? Tendam? Donse? Spigen? and my favorite: Vapesoon.

Is it just too early for the legit brands to have a case ready? Or am I doing
it wrong?

~~~
ChrisLTD
Spigen is a legit brand

~~~
josefresco
Cool, thanks for that! Beyond Speck and OtterBox I actually couldn't name any
other legit brands. I had an easier time finding seemingly "legit" brands via
Google.

------
12345abcde
You don't have to be an rocket surgeon to see that amazon search sucks. I
wouldn't even call amazon search "Search".

If I have one file on my computer named "Amazon Search Sucks ASS.txt" and I
search for it by name, in quotes, I expect to see only one result.

A similar search on amazon will return a bunch of results many of them have
nothing to do with the words I typed, not in the title, description, etc.

DON'T GET ME STARTED ON SORTING BASED ON PRICE!!! The number of search results
should not change based on how you sort the result list!!!

Bezoz should just stick to sexting...

------
hbosch
There was a post on HN a while back about Apple boosting it's own apps in
their App Store search. Likewise, I am sure that Google prefers to show
results from it's own companies (e.g. if I google the word "spreadsheet", my
first result is for Google Sheets). This is all the same thing, no?

Edit: I'll add that I'm not saying it isn't an anti-competitive practice, I'm
sure it is. But I am saying that it's a bit silly to insinuate that stores
don't already advertise for their own goods.

~~~
cglong
It's worth noting Microsoft's own email offering is _third_ on a Bing search
for "email":
[https://www.bing.com/search?q=email](https://www.bing.com/search?q=email)

------
ReverseCold
The only reason I still use Amazon is because it's so easy to buy things using
Bitcoin/Ethereum on it. I can get giftcards from literally hundreds of vendors
(some even at a discount), or use a service like Moon which makes the gift
card buying fully transparent (I just click checkout and scan the qr code with
my phone), and I can buy almost anything on Amazon.

Everywhere else requires me to convert coin into USD and then buy things,
which sucks.

~~~
soVeryTired
Aren't you effectively converting to USD by buying gift cards?

------
WalterBright
I don't see anything surprising or unusual about this. It's hardly different
from a supermarket giving better display positions for their store brand.

------
spike021
Honestly, what's the big deal?

Google prioritizes certain websites/results when I enter queries too, it
doesn't mean I'm required to click on them.

What ever happened to people spending a few extra minutes looking for the
result they want? If the first few aren't correct for you then move on. Unless
you're spending an extra 30+ minutes because the search doesn't work correctly
at all then there's no issue here.

~~~
calibas
If you have a product that's negatively affected by this, then this is kind of
a big deal. If you look at the marketing data, most people don't like spending
a dozen extra seconds, much less a few extra minutes, finding what they want.

------
reilly3000
I’m not sure how this is news. Maybe I’m too in the bubble, but I thought
every tech company used their platforms to promote their own wares. VScode
gives me tools to build AKS clusters but not GKE clusters. Facebook wants me
to use their marketplace, dating service, etc. Google is boosting Google
Flights over travel sites. It’s unsavory and betrays their guise of
impartiality, but is nothing close to illegal.

------
chiefalchemist
I'm certainly no Amazon fan (read: they are my last choice when I run out of
options), but this title/headline should be:

Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Maximized Its Profits

In other words, no news here really.

Shareholders come first. The customers (who are presumedly happier getting
better prices) come next. Finally, last comes Amazon's vendors.

In other words, no news here really.

Perhaps the follow up could be:

WSJ Use Clickbait Headlines to Boost Its Own Agenda And Ad Revenues

------
scarface74
Without getting into whether what Amazon is doing is right or wrong, as a
vendor, you have to accept reality for what it is and come up with a business
plan that gives you an “unfair advantage”.

Selling physical goods is a three part process - manufacturing, marketing, and
selling. At each part of the process, you have to know what helps you stand
out.

Manufacturing - is there something that enables you to manufacturer a product
that can’t easily be copied or that allows you to create the product cheaper
than competitors?

Marketing - are you depending on SEO and Google ads just like all of your
competitors?

Selling - Are you depending on Amazon just like all of your competitors?

You have to be able to optimize on at least one of those areas or you’re going
to find yourself competing on price at either slim, no or negative margins or
being lost in a marketplace where everyone is doing the same thing.

------
logfromblammo
Given the functionality of Amazon's search algorithm before this, I can't
exactly say that any changes to it could make it worse.

I can't even count the number of times I have searched for Product-X, by
lowest price, and encountered a dozen pages of Clearly-Not-X and Actually-
Just-An-Accessory-For-X before even reaching the first X.

Or Item-Sold-By-Weight-Y, that comes in 30 different package sizes, none of
which is tagged with comparable unit prices. If you want some Y, you cannot
order your search by $/kg or $/L. And sometimes it's difficult to figure out
exactly how much Y you would be getting. The giant barrel of industrial
generic will be listed next to the 20 oz bottle of gold-plated spiritual-grade
Woo-Woo brand.

------
PascLeRasc
Could we take a break with these articles for a bit? I’m all for
redistributing Jeff Bezos’s money, and I'd be happy to have mine redistributed
as well if that happened, but this and the Apple App Store algorithm news are
so insignificant in the world. We're arguing about if online stores can
organize their shelves how they want to while people are dying because they
can't afford insulin or drink their tapwater. Yeah, you can care about two
issues at once, but this isn't really an issue. I don't care to read the same
comment about Microsoft with Internet Explorer every day. Maybe it's unfair to
them but I really do not care, they clearly survived just fine.

~~~
CGamesPlay
Honestly and without sarcasm, maybe just take a break from this site? If those
are the kinds of issues that you want to find more about, I don’t think this
is the right venue. Yes, HN does dabble in politics sometimes but for the most
part, this isn’t a place to talk about the “big issues”.

------
specialist
When we finally decide to chop up these monopolies, I'd like "competing with
your own clients" to be a consideration.

I don't mind that Apple runs an App Store. I mind that they have an unfair
advantage over their competition.

I don't mind that Google reams advertisers. I mind that they sit on both sides
of the brokerage, thereby taking advantage of their own clients.

It's like the "firewall" between financial advisors and investment ratings for
those bankers. That crap needs to be kept separate, to prevent perverse
incentives, self-dealing, conflicts of interest, fraud, unfair advantages,
etc.

------
raz32dust
I see folks saying that it is good for consumers because Amazon products are
better quality that the other sellers who tend to be unreliable. However, we
are missing the long-term impact of this - (a) It will slowly kill
competition, at which point Amazon products no longer have to be better
quality. (b) It kills innovation because anyone who wants to sell stuff online
knows Amazon is going to copy the product soon enough.

Why is this not an antitrust case? Amazon has the monopoly on online retail I
assume, so isn't ranking it's own products higher an antitrust violation?

------
nojvek
Amazons in a weird boat. Like building a marketplace where they are the most
dominant player and they favor themselves.

But I guess that’s how supermarkets are too. I buy Krogers brands because I
know they'll be vetted and meet a certain bar. If I don’t like it, I can
always return it for a refund.

It’s not great for competition and Amazon can easily boost crappy cheap
products.

Amazon is a massive beast. What is the alternative with better experience ?

------
swrobel
Wow, had no idea they were still using the A9 moniker at all. I'll always
remember it as their ill-fated Google competitor that they tried to make cool
by shoehorning into perhaps the cringeworthiest moment of an already-
cringeworthy show:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNZ-3KLF7A0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNZ-3KLF7A0)

------
nickfromseattle
>Amazon says it operates in fiercely competitive markets, it represents less
than 1% of global retail and its private-label business represents about 1% of
its retail sales.

While the graph towards the end of the article indicates Amazon captures ~35%
of online retail in the US

What a disingenuous way for Amazon to communicate - I hope the people their
original quote was directed to saw right through this.

------
rc_kas
Anytime a competitor to Amazon wants to step up and play the game, I'd be more
than excited to switch the place where I do my shopping.

------
jerhewet
I never use Amazon's site search to try and find anything, because it's just
horribly bad and broken. In my experience the more specific my search terms
are, the worse the results.

If I'm looking for something on Amazon I use Google and the "site:" prefix,
and use the meta returned by Google's search engines to find what I'm after.

------
AcerbicZero
Was there some level of assumption that Amazons search isn't going to favor
Amazon to some degree? When I search on Wal-Mart's website, the top results
are _normally_ the wal-mart label, or they're at least on the first page.

The value of Amazon to me, is similar to Steam. Amazon's influence of product
reviews is more concerning to me, anyway.

------
ajoy
Wonder how the new shipping agreement (or rather a break up of the old
international shipping agreement :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20810142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20810142)
) will affect this. This might make it less attractive for items from China.

------
yalogin
They do that with their content also. There is no way to only see prime
videos. They constantly push their paid content onto the main feed. On top of
that there is no way to restrict purchase or gate it with a password on smart
TVs so it’s a bad experience. Of course amazon doesn’t much care about user
experience.

~~~
janesvilleseo
I have to enter a pin every time on my smart TVs. I thought every smart tv had
that feature.

------
senderista
Amazon already lost all my "customer trust" when I found out they not only
sold but endorsed untested, toxic Chinese toys. The slogan seemed sincere
enough when I worked there. I guess it's a casualty of the recent drive for
profitability.

------
Tepix
I‘m so annoyed with the inferiority of the search experience on Amazon. For
example when i search for shoes in my size, why doesn‘t it show the price for
the shoes in my size? It‘s super inconvenient.

------
ilaksh
People want the large networks and platforms that tech monopolies provide. In
order to get that without the private centralized control, we need to turn to
decentralized technologies.

------
mrweasel
Does that mean search on Amazon will finally work? How is it possible to have
so many products and not care about the ability for customers to actually find
what they’re looking for?

------
stefek99
Excuse me, what's the news here?

A company wants to maximize its profit.

If it is wasn't that way, they would be acting illegaly.

(publicly trading company must seek shareholders profit)

So what is the news once again?

~~~
diffeomorphism
> If it is wasn't that way, they would be acting illegally.

Common misconception.

> Corporate directors are not required to maximize shareholder value.

[https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/academics/clarke_business_...](https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/academics/clarke_business_law_institute/corporations-
and-society/Common-Misunderstandings-About-Corporations.cfm)

~~~
stefek99
Interesting.

"Usually maximizing shareholder value is not a legal obligation, but the
product of the pressure that activist shareholders, stock-based compensation
schemes and financial markets impose on corporate directors."

------
dqpb
Amazon should be required to display product origin.

------
stjohnswarts
Well as long as they present -some- other options I'm fine with it. I always
look through the first 2 or 3 pages.

------
CriticalCathed
>Amazon’s lawyers rejected an initial proposal for how to add profit directly
into the algorithm, saying it represented a change that could create trouble
with antitrust regulators, one of the people familiar with the project said.

I wonder in what was they tweaked it so that the lawyers approved this change?
I wonder if regulators will care if it skirts the letter of that law when the
intention was to attempt to sneak by oversight by the FTC and the DOJ?

~~~
overkill28
Later on in the article they explain that the initial approach was to include
the profitability of an item directly in its metadata so that the algorithm
could use that in its ranking criteria.

They changed their approach to instead measure how much profit Amazon makes on
a given search. This allows them to analyze whether various changes to the
search algorithm increase or decrease profit, and optimize for those that do.

It's a subtle distinction but it means that instead of explicitly promoting
their products in search, they are instead making changes based on other
product attributes that naturally boost the ranking of their products (and
thus increase their profits).

It's kind of like a blind study: they're telling the engineers, "we won't tell
you which products are ours, but we'll see if you can figure it out based on
these 100 other traits."

------
privateSFacct
I just wish they'd bring the "Ships and sold by amazon.com" checkbox back.

The rest is pretty much garbage.

------
grumpy8
"Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products", and the
sun is hot

~~~
charlesism
Read between the lines: "Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Lower
Customer Satisfaction." That's less obvious because Amazon traditionally has
been a customer-focused company, and this is a step away from that.

------
vkaku
We need a browser plugin which can read a product name and tell us: Amazon
brand or not?

------
Insanity
It's within their rights to do so and frankly a move most of us would make,
no?

~~~
pb7
Google got fined $3B for this exact thing on Google Shopping in the EU.
"Within their rights" is highly dependent on location.

------
noego
The article is disappointingly misleading and buries one of the key details

 _" Amazon’s lawyers rejected the overt addition of contribution profit into
the algorithm...

They turned to the metrics Amazon uses to test the algorithm’s success in
reaching certain business objectives, said the people who worked on the
project.

When engineers test new variables in the algorithm, Amazon gauges the results
against a handful of metrics. Among these metrics: unit sales of listings and
the dollar value of orders for listings. Positive results for the metrics
correlated with high customer satisfaction and helped determine the ranking of
listings a search presented to the customer.

Now, engineers would need to consider another metric—improving
profitability—said the people who worked on the project. Variables added to
the algorithm would essentially become what one of these people called
“proxies” for profit: The variables would correlate with improved
profitability for Amazon, but an outside observer might not be able to tell
that. The variables could also inherently be good for the customer."_

Tldr: some people in Amazon wanted to give a boost to Amazon-products. The
search team fought them vociferously and refused to budge. The lawyers came
out against it as well. Amazon's internal A/B testing framework measures a
number of metrics, including both revenue and profit, when determining whether
a specific feature/change should be deployed.

The fact that the A/B testing framework measures the profit impact of any
change, is hardly earth shattering. This is one of the core features that any
A/B testing framework attempts to accomplish.

This also doesn't tell you anything about what the search algorithm is
actually doing. An A/B testing framework can only help you evaluate the
relative effectiveness of different algorithms. It doesn't actually
create/influence the algorithm in any way. As WSJ themselves reported,
Amazon's search algorithm does not take profitability as an input.

WSJ has done a fantastic job in unearthing this very interesting internal-
debate that's happening in Amazon. But they have reported it in a way that is
very misleading and gives laypeople the impression that they have a smoking
gun. In reality, the only thing they have produced is the fact that Amazon's
A/B testing framework is profit-aware.

~~~
throwawaysea
Thank you. I was struggling to understand what the article was trying to tell
me or why it was so lengthy. It feels like news has evolved to
buzzword/sensationalist headline + enough content/data (even if irrelevant) to
provide a sense of comprehensiveness/substance.

------
supyus
and have a look at how they are even using fake reviews on their own products:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819344)

------
Apofis
This should be a massive lawsuit on behalf of all 3rd party sellers.

------
jmlon
Would you have done something different? It's business as usual.

------
woah
How is this worse than the sponsored results?

------
TwoQ
In other news, people get older as they age.

------
isostatic
Put a check box saying “amazon choice only”

World gets better.

------
paggle
I cannot imagine using Amazon search if they didn’t do this and let 3rd party
garbage sit at the top of the rankings.

------
Takiya
Interesting

------
test111111
who does not now a days.

------
AFascistWorld
Should have just put the ones who pay the most ahead.

------
billman
Amazon is not a search engine. You are doing it wrong!

------
tachyonbeam
It's not surprising that, given this kind of power, they would use it. What's
a little unsettling is how little concern they have for people selling on
their platform. If they treat their vendors like shit, and compete with them
directly, that will incentivise said vendors to look for alternative
platforms. You might say "who cares, there is no real competition for Amazon",
but competition will come. What is Amazon going to do, are they planning to
make their own version of every single product out there? I don't think that
can scale.

~~~
imglorp
The competition is not zero. Walmart and alibaba to name two, not aws scale
but aspiring.

Also some alliances like Target + Shipt are nipping at their heels with same
day delivery.
[https://www.target.com/c/shipt/-/N-t4bob](https://www.target.com/c/shipt/-/N-t4bob)

------
simplecomplex
Of course. Good for them. It’s their fucking store!

> Amazon has adjusted its product-search system to more prominently feature
> listings that are more profitable for the company

Unthinkable. A store trying to make a profit selling things. How crazy.

~~~
berdon
Is this only being down voted because of tone?

I am curious if there _actually_ are any laws relevant to this situation. As
far as I can tell, this is exactly like Walmart or BigBoxCo pushing their own
brands. It's not illegal and, generally, it's not even a bad thing for the
consumer (in the short term).

It really feels like most of the people taking issue with this are doing so
because of their personal sentiments rather than legality.

~~~
edoceo
I think it's downvotes because Amazon is not a store, it's a marketplace. And
it's well different than BigBox because there is way less capital outlay for
both property and goods.

Downvotes for bad information, not snark

~~~
simplecomplex
“marketplace” is just a word, not a legal fiction/status like “corporation”.

AFAIK US antitrust law does not have any concept of “marketplaces.”

------
samstave
Here is what i want to shop by on amazon:

* kitchen

* wash

* garage

—-

Basically, id like to setup a standard or select a standard product lineup and
say “refill my kitchen”

“Refill my bathroom set”

“Refill my washing supplies”

Etc...

And you could see the averaged products used to supply each area of the
home...

This goes in line with a previous YC application i had submitted which was
called “standard pantry”

The idea was that a pantry cabinet would be delivered to you, with ingredients
and recipes on how to make various healthy dishes based on the whole pantry of
ingredients. The goal being to raise nutritional health, especially among
lower income.

And with a smart pantry it would give you recipe ideasbased on what you have
and know what ingredients you lack and auto order

Like a netflix for healthy food...

YC hated it...

