Let's Make Amazon into a Dumb Pipe
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Maybe it's good to counteract that bias by accepting a bit of extra friction in the shopping process. Make space for a modicum of contemplation prior to making an impulse purchase.
Here's a tip, sign out of amazon.com. They obscure the button but it's there! Set a complex password and put it somewhere that needs to be manually copy-pasted into the login prompt. You just added a minute of friction to your next purchase. You can also delete saved payment cards so that you need to type them in again. (Also, start a habit of comparison shopping online. What if it's cheaper/faster to buy on eBay? Local big box store?)
Often, when accepting this friction, I'll decide that I don't actually need something. That decision is usually a win for both the climate and my bank account. Less plastic junk in the world.
That said, Library Extension is my favorite kind of technology and I'm happy to learn someone has made it.
I have many hobbies. I derive nearly 100% of my enjoyment and satisfaction in life from my hobbies. My hobbies take up a lot of space and require “stuff”.
Some people really enjoy collecting things. What’s wrong with that? Personally, I really like when someone gets excited and shows of their collection and all the knowledge they’ve accumulated about it. Their joy is infectious.
There are many valid ways to live. Some of them happen to involve buying things. For me, buying and owning things has substantially enriched my life.
Edit: this extension is pretty rad, though.
They just said it might be good to add a minute of friction so that you may end up skipping some impulse buys.
I've just found it useful to stop and consider alternatives before spending money, moreso than people are encouraged to do by modern e-commerce platforms with teflon-coated conversion funnels.
It's not that we "should make" - it's already the case. We live in a society built on consuming things. All the personal hacks in the world will not change that fact, opting out is a delusion. The only choice is between letting the market follow its natural monopolistic instincts, and nudging it towards sharing profits more widely.
Not saying it's wrong. It just feels bad.
Right now, if you visit Amazon (as untold millions do), clicking Amazon's buy button is extremely low friction[1].
This browser extension would add buy-local alternatives, each of which typically will be higher friction[2]. And there's a compelling motivation (supporting smaller, local businesses) to actually choose those higher-friction alternatives.
And it also increases friction in a second way: it adds an extra step to the process. You have to make a decision whether to buy through Amazon or through some local retailer. Decisions can be very high friction.
Of course, you can look at this at an individual level (changes that an individual might make) or a societal level (how the existence of this extension would change things for the entire populace), and the conclusions might be different for each of those.
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[1] By design, of course. They've spent decades collecting everyone's payment methods, getting people subscribed to Prime, and building the largest and most sophisticated fulfillment network the world has ever seen.
[2] You may have to create an account. They may not have your payment method or shipping address on file. The ordering process is probably less familiar. You may have to go in person since many local stores aren't set up for fast, affordable shipping.
Hmm, barely. Amazon is very smart and actually allows you to add items to your cart while logged out, and they remain between sessions. So you might still find yourself on the couch mindlessly shopping, and then, the next day or so, you say "I want to order those 20 things" and it takes only one login to make the purchase.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
Or do you mean the following? for a given product, some sellers are Prime-compatible and some aren't, and if you're a Prime customer the price they'll show you is for a Prime-compatible seller who may be more expensive.
Both of these mean that if you follow the path of least resistance you'll pay more as a Prime customer, but it feels like there's an important difference: in the latter case, but not the former, a Prime customer can get the same prices as the non-Prime customer without having to log out or otherwise try to make Amazon not know who they are.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not claiming that you do mean the second of those things, or that they don't do the first of them. I wouldn't trust Amazon any further than I could throw Jeff Bezos, and I am 100% unsurprised if they offer different customers different prices for whatever scrutable or inscrutable reasons they might have.)
https://www.quora.com/Does-Amazon-stealthily-raise-the-price...
See Also: “I haven’t watched TV in 20 years. You don’t have to watch Tv”
I absolutely love the fact that if I order anything from Amazon, I can return it just by clicking a few buttons and taking it to a UPS store, Kohls, Whole Foods, among other options without even boxing it up.
The problem with these other solutions, is that they are not responsible for the whole experience. Package lost in the mail, that is between you and the seller. Need to return, that is between you and the seller. Amazon, however makes that pretty frictionless for the consumer.
Ironically, I feel like they are acting in some ways like a union of purchasers, imposing the consumer will on merchants. Not sure if it is possible to achieve this without centralization.
I also think shaking the "machine learning" stick at the counterfeit problem is going to be fraught with newer problems that expose the deeper monopoly issues on the logistics and seller platforms that would also be the back end for what this article proposes.
If you care about the products you buy, and they have actual value to you, you're harming your own interests by using the Amazon monopoly power to "impose consumer will on merchants." Functional marketplaces don't and probably can't operate like that.
Most merchants don’t, and won’t, which is why regulators step in on the customers’ behalf, with e.g. lemon laws, right to return laws.
Costco, Amazon, Apple, some others, step in on the consumers’ behalf, which creates (as comments you are replying to) consumer loyalty and a kind of “brand halo” of consumer trust that the merchants all benefit from.
To say the marketplace platform shouldn’t be allowed to empower customers at the expense of sellers is to say markets shouldn’t be allowed to decide how much service customers can have and how much profits merchants are willing to forgo to be where customers want.
You're implying that regulators just show up out of nowhere and make tasteful decisions for a market. That's not at all how it typically works, and you should look into the history of the "lemon law" you reference. Customers have remedies of their own that don't require regulation or monopolies to exist.
> Costco, Amazon, Apple, some others, step in on the consumers’ behalf, which creates (as comments you are replying to) consumer loyalty and a kind of “brand halo” of consumer trust that the merchants all benefit from.
Costco is membership based. People have lost their memberships for gaming the return system. Amazon just passes the costs on. And Apple mostly manufactures their own devices. And, I can guarantee you, every single one of them has been sued by their customers at some point because of one of their practices.
Arguing that monopoly power is the "secret sauce" to achieving this is absurd.
> To say the marketplace platform shouldn’t be allowed to empower customers at the expense of sellers
The purpose of a marketplace is to create beneficial arrangements for everyone involved. Amazon interferes in this arrangement and then tilts it solely in their favor at the expense of both the customer and the seller.
> is to say markets shouldn’t be allowed to decide how much service customers can have and how much profits merchants are willing to forgo to be where customers want.
Markets should do this. A single monopoly player controlling a market shouldn't. You're splitting the argument right at it's fundamental point.
I thought it is the other way around. Because they are really a pro-consumer platform, they became this big.
This effectively gave Amazon a ~7% pricing advantage against businesses with physical presence in a state, and Bezos has mentioned it was a factor in choosing to be based in Washington rather than California, so as to not have to collect and remit sales tax to California’s 40M residents.
The Supreme Court changed this in Jun 2018 when it ruled that states could collect sales taxes from sellers without physical presence in the state.
I didn't know about this practice in EU, this seems to be a setup made for abuse
https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-business/intel...
The extension mentioned in the original post, for example, would not infringe it.
>If a co-operative were to write modules that converted between ASINs and the inventory codes used by common inventory management systems, and offer this as a plug-in to common inventory management systems, then you could run a plugin that let you shop on Amazon…but that automatically replaced the Amazon “Add to Cart” button with a button to order the product from one of your local merchants.
I guess I'm looking for a fully cohesive end to end logistics network using open standards and compensating local actors appropriately, rather than relying on the (quite convenient) logistics network that Amazon has set up.
Oh yeah, while I'm wishing for ponies, I also want something like Google Maps where I can type in "dinosaur shaped jello mold" and have it drop pins on every store in the area that has something like that, so I can drive straight there and pick it up. Maybe even include the aisle info etc. All the data seems to be out there, but no one has put it into one slick app.
> for many years lead was the preferred spelling for the introductory section of a news story _ellipsis_ we didn't enter lede in our dictionaries until 2008 _ellipsis_ The spelling of lede is allegedly so as to not confuse it with lead
[0]https://capitaloneshopping.com/blog/is-amazon-actually-givin...
When you actually click to go to the capital one shopping site:
> When You Use or Visit Our Site: Capital One Shopping may also partner with certain third parties to deliver advertisements and monitor activities on our own website and other websites. Our partners may also use cookies, web beacons, and/or other monitoring technologies to compile statistics about website visitors.
And the actual meat:
> We may use browser data we have collected (if browser extension is downloaded) for a variety of additional reasons. For example, we may use this type of data: to provide customized advertisements, content, and information;
> Capital One Shopping may customize content and advertisements for our products and services on the website or mobile apps we own. In order to make the content and advertising as informative and useful as possible, we may use information about your relationship with us (such as your purchase history)
And
> If we send you an email advertisement, it will include instructions on how to opt out of receiving such emails in the future.
So the money comes from their advertisement engine, and they get your full browsing history to aid in targeting those advertisements, and they most likely get a large kickback when they successfully redirect people from Amazon and onto a third-party retailer to purchase an item. They also automatically collect discount codes that have worked for other people (much like Honey, acquired by PayPal).
https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/add-on-p...
> Prohibited Data Collection
> Collecting, or facilitating the collection of ancillary information (e.g. any data not required for the add-on’s functionality as stated in the description) is prohibited.
It’s moronic, I can’t understand why they dropped the option to select the location and currency.
They would just make it impossible for the extension to do its job and laugh all the way to the bank.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en
In fact, none of your data in any Workspace product is used for advertising or personalization purposes. Your web search history is used to generate ads on consumer gmail, and if you're a paid gmail user, there are no ads at all.
(Disclosure: I worked on Workspace for three years until about a year ago. The amount of controls and security on user data is quite intense.)
It’s also worth noting that paid users were never subject to this, including people who were free google apps for your domain users.
This stuff is decided at a higher pay grade than worker bees, who are unaware barring leaks.
If you still believe them, would you be interested in a bridge? I have one for sale at a very good price, email in my profile!
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/free-money-of-a-sort-paribus-...
Everyone is always to blame for their own actions! (Maybe legal requirements not withstanding)
Is that a US thing? Amazon Germany certainly has the details in the confirmation mail.
In Canada, all I get is Your Amazon Order #foobar. No product name, no product image. No CC info (even last 4). The address only lists the city name; no street name or street number. There's a full price in the email. There's a guaranteed delivery date. There's a button View Order Details which, when clicked, shows the product info on amazon.ca, full address, last 4 of CC, etc
Product name, image (not visible because I blocked it), payment type (though no details beyond the method name, as it should be imo), sums, delivery
So street info and payment details are missing, neither of which I want/need in the conformation mail.
I’m curious if this is really a US-Germany thing or if it’s just a Gmail/Google thing.
amazon is not worried about fastmail selling the data to Google, so amazon is willing to include product info in emails to fastmail addresses.
That’s the conspiracy theory, anyways :)
This is where both our intuitive and literal "intellectual property" type ideas just go too far. I don't care that they were first or even that they worked hard or whatnot, when you can look at the thing today and see undue harm, take it apart.
Case in point: I recently wanted a outdoor breakfast table. I went to all the local stores, but quickly noticed their products were the same as what Amazon and Wayfair had, only 10x more expensive. Would the carbon footprint of the Amazon warehouse + Fedex delivery for mine be 10x worse than that of the yard and garden stores’ shipper + warehouse?
+ driving to and from the store.
Amazon delivers to hundreds of houses in the same neighbourhood, I'm sure it is almost always more carbon efficient than buying yourself in a local shop.
In any case, any sale that wasn't lost to Amazon is still a win for these stores.
This is to say nothing of the nightmare that would be mapping the many to many relationship of ASINs to local inventory. We also face a very similar issue where retailers 'accidentally' map that shiny new GPU to a dusty old brick that just happens to be named the same thing (but with a 10% discount..and free shipping!). How would we enforce honesty and fairness in such a proposal?
What I would rather see is geizhals add books and groceries than have to go on Amazon for the same features.
Compare what is comparable.
And the winner is the one with the storefront that is most in front.
Interesting game ...
Anyway, we can also turn Amazon into a utility. See: https://stallman.org/amazon.html
I know that not many people are defending capitalism, and even less people think that Amazon is basically OK. However, at the very least, they most definitely won't be happy about it, and will do everything to shut down this ability. Which would be bad, as Amazon product IDs can be fairly used for many other nice things.
Cory can argue Amazon is a monopoly and those are bad no matter what all day long, but the reality for consumers is monopolies are bad because no competition allows sellers to raise prices and degrade customer experience, neither of which has happened with Amazon (because hint, they don't actually have a monopoly on anything they sell). As he says himself, their prices are consistently low and the customer experience seems to be good enough that he would prefer using them to find things to buy even if he doesn't buy from them. If you tried to turn them into a kayak.com for retail, they'd either have to take a cut of every transaction, raising prices for all other sellers, or they'd have to make money purely from ads instead. How is that better? Whatever else you want to say about Amazon, unlike, say, Google or Facebook, at least they're monetizing the delivery of real value to consumers. They're not just delivering value to advertisers. The one truly bad thing about the Amazon customer experience, which is the unreliability of product ratings and the proliferation of counterfeit and low-quality goods, would be made even worse if all a seller needed to do to get your business is convince a browser extension their good is equivalent to what you're looking at on Amazon, without even needing to get onto the marketplace.
* https://www.amazon.com/Ziploc-Freezer-Bag-Gallon-Count/dp/B0... * https://www.amazon.com/Ziploc-Freezer-Bags-Value-Gallon/dp/B...
Amazon also has some strange item counts. I'd expect a local store so carry a low count and a high count. Amazon has some interesting clustering of counts: [24, 26, 28, 30], [60, 72, 75, 80] [144, 152, 160]. This made it harder to cost compare boxes.
I suspect ASINs are mostly unique, but manufacturers will have some incentives to flood the space with many slightly different products (each correctly with a different ASIN).
Amazon's search is pretty terrible for stuff like this. There's room for someone to build a better system. Why can't I search for `bag count > 10 and < 30` `sort by lowest unit cost` `type: freezer`? Amazon doesn't even implement the price filter correctly... try `price < $25` and you'll still see stuff for $30. Presumably high profit items Amazon is tricking you into buying.
When a product is newly created on Amazon, it receives its own ASIN. ASINs are only used on Amazon, and are closely tied to the UPC/GTIN/EAN barcodes that are used in worldwide retail.