Amazon Flaw Presented Gently, Very Gently
July 30, 2019
If you are an avid Amazonoid, you don’t want to hear bad news. “Amazon as Experiment” tries to explain a flaw, but the write up goes about the task carefully.
The main idea is that if you know what you want and know the terms used to describe that which you want to buy, view, or listen to — Amazon delivers.
The write up points out:
Amazon, of course, is the Sears Roebuck of our time, but it’s more than that. Amazon is systematically going through every branch of the idea tree around what retail is, and doing it without any pride.
I agree. The Bezos bulldozer is doing old things more MBA-ishly. (I pronounce this em-bee-a-ish-lee. The term means get money and skate as close to the edge of appropriate behavior as humanly possible. I love those MBAs, don’t you?)
The write up draws a parallel with the Google, another outfit which does things and then tries to figure out how to maximize return.
Now the flaw, presented gently:
This has always been the gap in the Amazon model. It’s ever more efficient at finding what you already know you want and shipping it to you, but bad at suggesting things you don’t already know about, and terrible whenever a product needs something specific—just try finding children’s shoes by size. This is probably inherent in the model.
What’s this mean? The experience of wandering around an olive market in Paris or poking into stalls in Istanbul’s indoor market are not part of Amazon.
In short, without a mechanism that allows finding something, deciding it has value, and in some cases touching the product — Amazon has become sterile.
Now, Amazonoid, does that matter? Wall Street wants to see growth. Discovery to an MBAish person means more money. What about Amazon’s competitors? Are they able to deliver discoverability?
Why do people wander around looking at stuff in cities? Why do professionals attend conferences and visit booths? Why do people expose themselves to different contexts?
The answer is, DarkCyber believes is to discover. An algorithm does not discover. It presents probable matches.
What will Amazon do to remediate this problem presented gently?
Stephen E Arnold, July 30, 2019
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