If a product is actually generating more revenue, what makes it "artificial"? Do you disagree with the use of products to complement an ecosystem, or do you disagree with the use of products that are not intended to turn a profit on their own, like loss leaders?
For example, have a free water fountain and then replacing it with a coin operated water fountain that dispenses warm water is using artificial with my original intent.
My main disagreement is in the use of verticialy integrated products that reduce consumer value but yield higher marginal value to the producer. I’m a huge fan of complementary products within an ecosystem that increase consumer value. I’m also fine with loss leaders, but again I prefer ones that lead to increased consumer value.
Instead, Google gets me the same results, quicker, 99% of the time.
There was a time when Google Shopping was both free and paid listings which was probably a better balance. Even if it still was like this I think having people submit product feeds still leads to much better results than just scraping.
It seems obvious to me that this is just an artificial product to make more revenue.
Froogle was actually better for results a decade ago when they just sorted the normal web scraping for shopping items. Adding the forced ads to show up resulted in worse deals for consumers. This was part because advertisers had t pay for ads, thus raising prices. And part because advertisers didn’t have the best products, just the most efficient ads.