I have to say that in retrospect, it seems fairly pathetic that back in 94-95 we (Jeff, Shel and myself) did not even think about how the review system would eventually get gamed with this level of "sophistication".

I think if you had told us then that this sort of thing would eventually happen, we would not have believed you. This goes to show, perhaps, that imagining the significance of something when you're first building it is almost impossible. The notion that worldwide manufacturers and distributors would consider it so important to have "strong" amazon reviews that they would engage in this kind of behavior just would not have crossed our minds back when amazon itself had no significance.

So if you're building something right now, maybe stop and ask yourself "ok, so how does this all look if we end up taking over the world 25 years from now, and this thing is a gatekeeper between a lot of people and a lot of revenue?"