Leviathan explained

[supergee]

What is Amazon? [Zack’s Notes]

Thanx to andrewducker

Comments

[weofodthignen]

Interesting - I've seen the reaction of their customers to the ad placement, and I wonder whether Ourobouros/Jǫrmungandr, the dragon eating its own tail, isn't a better image.

But Walmart does have a cost to the taxpayer: the underpayment of its store staff, requiring them to have food stamps and state healthcare, and the ripple effect from destroying Main Street. Not appreciating that makes me wonder what else is inaccurate in this overview.

M

[arlie]

Interesting. The other thing they have in common, of course, is a reputation for abusing their own staff, as well as driving competitors out of business. That was the elephant in the room reading/skimming the article. Gievn the apparant approval of that (lowest possible price => most work, least pay from staff), I was surprised to find the author thought the demise of Amazon's search function (in favour of ads, ads, and more ads, often for somethign only vaguely related to the customer's search tems) was a bad thing.

I was an enthusiastic Amazon customer when they had good selection + effective search. The ultra-low, subsidized prices were a nice add on, but the key feature for me, was getting a book without placing a special order in person at a physical bookstore.

I also loved their recommendation feature (for books), back before it became all about pushing high margin (?) products - books in hardcover, latest releases rather than finding things the customer would probably like. (Now I use Library Thing - Goodreads was way too flashy for me, and once Amazon bought them, I didn't trust them not to be yet another source of "sponsored" misinformation, like Amazon's search feature.)

Amazon's non-book producs were never as easy to search as their books, and an attempt to but a specific tea would usually get me whatever the marketers thought someone who wanted that tea might buy (i.e. keyword abuse), though I originally took it for error. Then with their marketplace, if I wanted a particular tea, I'd get 20 or 30 results, 10 of which were the tea I wanted, packaged in various quantities at various prices, with various shipping fees, and no ability to sort by price. The "you ordered this before" links became less useful, as the vendors played "package this differently" games, forcing rechecking all these. It's still more convenient than touring local grocery stores, hoping to find one that has the tea - and FWIW, I'll buy locally anything that's available at a store I actually frequent. But these days, I go to the manufacturer's website first, if it has one. (So for Celestial Seasonings' hard-to-find teas, I don't have to deal with 'prooduct placement' etc.; unfortunately Mighty Leaf won't sell to me directly.)

At this point, Amazon's my last choice, for things I don't know how to get any other way. I haven't been in a Whole Foods store since Amazon bought them. And the local library is providing more than 90% of the books I read.