On the other end of the spectrum, try Digikey:
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/embedded/microcon...
or try McMaster Carr:
https://www.mcmaster.com/products/screws/socket-head-screws~...
Functional, well-tagged, data-driven parametric search. Rockauto.com sells auto parts, which requires a whole different type of search, but they deliver a pretty impressive product as well.
I suspect that much of this discrepancy is because there's enough of a chance that someone grocery shopping and looking for lentils will think "Oh, I need pancake mix too" and click on the ad. Meanwhile, someone looking for a specific grade of M8x25 socket-head cap screws or a low-power Cortex-M0 microcontroller with a particular set of peripherals is unlikely to abandon their work to add a hose clamp or electrolytic capacitor to their cart instead.
Market forces seem incapable of delivering a product with a better user experience if that hurts the bottom line even a little bit, they're doing gradient descent to local minima and powerless to say "no" to finance and climb out of the awful product that results.
> I've been impressed by Netflix search. I would search a name and they do not have that movie, but would suggest a mix of similar movies, movies with the same actors or director.
An excellent, early pirate feature. Good on Netflix for adopting it.
My main issue with the input search is the TV keyboard. There was a Netflix hack day that created a circular keyboard like a dial w/ the selector a joystick in the middle, so pressing up to 12 o'clock was A, 12:05 was B, etc. And the joystick would return to center per selection! It was everything I ever wanted in a thing, and now I can't even find the article on it.
I had waited so long for rating filters, my kids became adults.
However, I was wondering what Netflix got after 17 years of development at $215k-$700k per dev - and now I know.
That might make sense in an abstract way, but no, that's not what people expect. If I'm searching for something at Netflix, I don't want the answer to "does it exist?", I want the answer to "do you have available for viewing?".
In the more general sense of the search topic, I don't want a search to return things they don't have. If it's out of stock, say so prominently. Don't make the user click through to the item itself only to see "out of stock".