Comment by ianferrel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ianferrel | Hacker News Reader

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>The marketplace that builds "agent-friendly" commerce (verified listings, structured data, transparent pricing, API access) becomes the default backend for AI shopping.

I'd like to believe this, but claims like this have been made since the early days of internet commerce. After all, it's not hard to specify structured data about items and run queries against it. But it largely has not materialized outside of a few special suppliers.

You can't actually search Amazon or eBay or Wayfair for things with specified dimensions or characteristics. You can, however, find lots of listings for things like "Gzsbaby 6 Piece Jumbo Dinosaur Toys for Kids 3-5 and Toddlers, Large Soft Dinosaur Toys for Lovers - Perfect Party Favors, Birthday Gifts "

Perhaps this time is different? But why is it different? What economic incentives will lead to good structured data and transparent pricing, rather than whatever the AI equivalent of glurge/slop listings is?

Because agentic AI can parse unstructured data and make purchasing decisions regardless of whether your site allows it, which avoids the chicken-and-egg problem.

It's similar to DoorDash. If your restaurant didn't want to sign up, they added you anyways and took orders on your behalf, then sent a physical courier over with a prepaid card to order takeout. Sometimes the menus were parsed incorrectly and customers blamed the restaurant.

This forced restaurants to sign up, claim their page, and keep their menus up to date, since not offering delivery wasn't an option.

At least 1 agentic AI tool will ignore these new terms and buy stuff on eBay anyways. Inevitably there'll be bugs or it won't get the best deal. At first this won't matter, but eventually competitors will offer a bug-free purchasing experience and consumers will move over.

>Because agentic AI can parse unstructured data and make purchasing decisions regardless of whether your site allows it, which avoids the chicken-and-egg problem.

People can do that too, and also benefit from actual structured data. But the avoidance of the chicken and egg problem didn't seem to result in widespread structured data stores beating out the SEO-spam-style listings.

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