> Is Google really all in on product search? Their product search is pretty bad at the moment and it's a very challenging search space, esp when you work with tens of thousands of retailers.

Honestly, Amazon's own product search is pretty terrible too, unless you're searching for a specific name-brand product. Google might not even have to be very good to be competitive.

The best product search I've actually found is NewEgg's (for computer parts, specifically). They're the only one who's collected enough accurate product metadata to facet their results effectively.

There are other specific sectors with great product search - RockAuto for car parts, for example. It's a striking example because the big auto parts stores (AutoZone, Advance Auto, Pep Boys, etc) all try to have an "Amazon style" search and it doesn't work. Heck, it doesn't work well on Amazon either.

In the specific sector of car parts, search is based on the year, manufacturer, model, and trim line/options of the vehicle. What's weird to me is that every one of these retailers has a point of sale system that works on the "specify vehicle, list and search within parts" model, yet they're using a traditional/"Amazon style" search on their own website.

RockAuto's site is ugly, but it's extremely functional. Their business model has complicated shipping (sometimes buying a more expensive item from the same warehouse as another item in your cart is less expensive after shipping than buying a less expensive item from a different warehouse) but there are UI affordances that make this easier to deal with. It's kind of sad that "show the shipping cost in the shopping cart, on the same page as the product list" is a noteworthy UI affordance, but it's so rare. (Also the option to select several items that meet spec, and it will automatically select the overall lowest cost after shipping set of products)

>RockAuto's site is ugly, but it's extremely functional.

I went to their site to see how ugly it was, and was absolutely blown away by how visually terrible it is. Truly function before form.

The shipping is why I don't buy from RockAuto anymore.

> Honestly, Amazon's own product search is pretty terrible too

If they could just include shipping when doing a "sort by price", or a price limit search, that alone would help SO MUCH.

I pick "prime only", "under $10", and I get results where some other non-prime seller is selling it for under $10, with $15 of shipping. Useless.

Actually even ignoring shipping, if the under $10 price is for a non-prime option, why is that being included in a "prime only" search for under $10?

They used to include a filter that said "including shipping". Honestly their search now is alot less functional than it used to be, which just makes it easier for them to push their ads-disguised-as-top-products crap.

Better product search means less money from search ads.

Google is unusable for product search. It's too heavily gamed and optimized not to show you things you want to buy, but things Google is paid to show you. It makes it too difficult to get the information you want to make the purchases you want. Try shopping for a car or hotel room sometime on Google. None of the information is reliable, and none if it is for what you want to see or ordered in a reasonable way to navigate. They're paying too much money to try and get your eyeballs at this point, and I wound up not making purchases because of it.

I generally agree, but 3 is in abeyance right now; I'm getting faster delivery times from other places. And regarding 2, Amazon has been training me for a while (via slow-ship discounts and the Amazon Day thing) that I don't need everything right away. I don't know about everybody else, but that has definitely made it easier for me to try out other vendors.

Precisely. I don't know when the switch happened but Amazon seems to be using their own drivers to deliver and not Fedex.

The delivery quality is worse than bad, and has lead to us getting boxes stolen because Amazon drivers dump them at the quickest most convenient place for them - like Amazon drivers are incentivized to maximize time efficiency and every second counts. It's super painful.

We're now using other websites to buy from simply because their delivery takes approximately the same but goes to our door.

Quality of service can never be high if employees need to piss in bottles

I’m not sure what’s going on with Amazon recently, but they’ve on multiple occasions told me that an item won’t ship or arrive until well into May, only for it to turn up next day. (edit: this is over the last 3 weeks for context)

I wonder how much of their slow delivery is them under promising and how much is them actually not being able to get things out in a day or two. None of the other vendors I’ve worked with, except Nespresso oddly enough, have been able to match Amazon’s actual performance.

I wonder if it’s just because I happen to be close to a lot of warehouses? Still very weird for Amazon to be sandbagging themselves regardless.

There was a giant banner at the top of their site that explained there was global health crisis and shipments of non-essentials could be delayed. They'd been asked (told in some cases) by governments and others to prioritize eseential product shipments, so they did. They also told suppliers to stop sending non-essentials for FBA. If they had capacity (and items on hand) they've been delivering non-essentials (I've gotten some of my stuff sooner too). There was a big article that blew up here about how France was going to fine them for shipping non-essentials/putting workers at risk and gave them 24 hours to change their entire warehouse workflow/technical systems (Amazon responded by saying they'd need to shutdown for a bit to avoid the fines as they reworked everything to comply).

And on this note, I was talking with my neighbor yesterday and he's having a related issue that only became an issue when Amazon enacted this covid-response policy. It used to be that it didn't particularly matter if your products were accurately mapped into Amazon's categories as long as they were searchable. Now, however, Amazon is refusing to ship (or receive FBA stock) for non-essential categories. My neighbor is a shoe salesman for a brand that has a full medical & industrial line ... but they weren't tagged into medical equipment categories at Amazon so he can't ship replenishment inventory. Amazon isn't allowing these mapping adjustments to be made at all right now for fear of abuse.

Also, when FBA stock depletes, sellers have the individual option of whether to direct ship or not. Some are, and some are using expedited shipping, but others are either not shipping at all or are using the cheapest freight possible.

Yep. And in the circles I'm in, some are already setting up stores outside Amazon... that's not going to bode well for Amazon when all these sellers suddenly realize they don't need Amazon anymore.

I wonder what major global event could have caused that in the last two months.

The issue isn’t that things are delayed, the issue is they are saying an item isn’t going to get here until May when they know full well that it’s been put on a truck and will arrive today.

They are advertising their shipping speed as being worse than it is, causing people to think competitors are faster, when, typically, Amazon is still superior.

Edit: needlessly inflammatory language

Using Amazon for reviews seems ironic to me. Product reviews highlight Amazon's single biggest weakness: trust. You can't trust any Amazon review. Many of Amazon's other failings also center around trust.

You can't trust Amazon. period. full stop. Their reviews are total shite, that's for sure. However, you can't trust their product listings either that you'll actually receive what you thought you purchased.

I don't disagree. But for some products it's sometimes hard to find reviews outside of Amazon. I also learned how to spot products that have fake reviews.

Agree. If folks have come across better sources for product reviews, would love to get your recommendation.

There are no universal sources. Each source should be viewed with skepticism. That said, I have found small discords to be pretty good for PC hardware/tech related recommendation. Reddit on the other hand seemed a bit terrible at times with outdated or overly fishy marketing power speaking instead of the consumer.

Yes and no. They have a fake review problem, for sure. But it's usually fairly obvious which reviews are fake and which are not. And Amazon reviews have something I don't really see anywhere else -- pictures. That's a feature I really like.

And when pictures are of a product not actually being sold in the listing... just yesterday I received a product that was NOT what was in any of the photos on the listing including the listing itself. Argh.

That's the primary way fake reviews happen. The seller gets thousands of sales of a high quality, good product, gets great reviews, pictures etc. and then they bait and switch to a cheaper, lower quality product at the same (or higher, because REVIEWS) price with a bigger margin.

Huge problem over there and Amazon has done nothing to stop it.

I wonder how the trustworthy review issue could actually be solved in a non-gameable way. Is this even possible? Truly unbiased opinion?

1. The problem for me is that for any given product category, I don’t know who the online retailers are. For electronics there is microcenter.com, frys.com, tigerdirect.com, circuitcity.com, and many many more.

2. I think this is something that is burned into people’s heads but not actually true. Most retailers do offer pretty fast shipping. Even with prime you’re paying for fast shipping (in the membership fee).

I started finding deals subreddits to be a good source of alternative shops. Now I'm not going to claim that their not gamed (there are more then one site banned for trying and failing) but ones like /r/frugalmalefashion have pointed me to a lot of other retailers I wouldn't have considered.

> * For electronics there is microcenter.com, frys.com, tigerdirect.com, circuitcity.com, and many many more.*

Definitely drop frys.com from the list, they are going out of business. Actually, except for microcenter.com, I wouldn't buy from the others either. newegg.com seems to have the best attribute filtering by far.

Wow... didn't know that. Haven't been back to the US in years. End of an era... I built several computers from trips to Frys.

Yeah, it is a shame.

I've been purposely going to Microcenter, and buying stuff there in the hopes that they'll stay in business. There's no other computer stores in the area of note.

If frys hasn't gone out of business yet, they're not going to - last one I was in only sold gift bags and batteries in a massive retail space and yet somehow they were still there. The retail gods must love Mr. Fry.

> If frys hasn't gone out of business yet, they're not going to - last one I was in only sold gift bags and batteries in a massive retail space and yet somehow they were still there.

I really don't understand why Fry's isn't out of business.

Do they own the real estate they're sitting on or something? Are their online operations that profitable?

Sure, a private company can carry losses for as long as they have money. But, why would you?

>Do they own the real estate they're sitting on or something?

A quick search gives some mixed results. They own their San Jose property¹ through an affiliate company. This affiliate doesn't appear to own any other Fry's property though². Conversely, the Palo Alto location was closed when the lease ran out³.

¹https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/10/industrial-mega-devel...

²https://www.corporationwiki.com/California/Menlo-Park/caraco...

³https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/08/29/frys-to-close-its-pal...

> They own their San Jose property¹ through an affiliate company.

Ah! That probably explains it.

Any residual money can be drained into the affiliate companies before filing bankruptcy so that there is nothing left in "Fry's".

A lot of people have been wondering the same thing:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Is-Fry-s-Electr...

https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/10/frys-electronics-isnt-res...

Tigerdirect has a pitiful selection as far as PC building goes, and usually their prices are not even remotely competitive. I'm not even sure how they're still in business.

I think just about everyone with a 401k owns Amazon stock at least indirectly, and I think it's a safe bet that unless an HN comment is coming from Daddy Bezos himself, it's unlikely-bordering-impossible to move the stock price either way.

Amazon is really good at being the ‘signal gateway’ in between inputs and outputs. Whether it is ecommerce or AWS. They take care of everything in the middle that many people don’t think about.

Investing heavily in logistics connected to transactions is what made Amazon excel over Walmart, Target, UPS, Fedex, etc. How many companies setting out in online commerce have the amount of backbone infrastructure as Amazon?

The closest I can think of is Taobao/Alibaba.

Furthermore Amazon has warehouses all over the world. I see a product on the US site, I order it while in Greece, it ships from Germany or UK. Ordinary e-commerce can't provide that. If I order a product from a US based e-commerce firm I'll end up paying custom fees. Google's intervention doesn't provide any facilitation in this aspect.

Google was all in on cloud, and they have already had some layoffs in cloud, froze hiring, and are reducing spending on data center.

Either Google never goes all in, or they do not know what all in means