It seems like the main problem everyone has with Amazon is their curation. Or, to put it more amusingly, “they have too much stuff!” (They have the good stuff you want, but it’s buried in bad stuff that you don’t, too.)
Is this really Amazon’s problem to solve, though? Or is this just a symptom of a bad value-chain ecosystem? Shouldn’t other players be cropping up to be external “shopping search engines” that find you the real, quality items on Amazon’s (and other stores’) huge junk-piles, the way that Google finds you real, quality web pages among the junk-pile that is the web?
Sure, it’d be nice if Amazon solved the problem itself. But I don’t see a reason that it has to be the one to solve the problem. Amazon can just provide infrastructure to allow anyone to sell anything, and then someone else can build “retail experiences” on top. Just like AWS isn’t trying to be Salesforce with a full platform experience.
Of course it's Amazon's problem to solve. I am, generally speaking, no longer and Amazon customer because they've chosen not to solve it. Amazon's search functionality is the least of their problems. The fundamental issue with Amazon right now is that even if I only buy "ships and sold by Amazon.com" items, I'm still at a high risk (depending on product category) of receiving a fraudulent item that originated with a third-party seller. That's a problem that no one buy Amazon can solve.
Is this really Amazon’s problem to solve, though? Or is this just a symptom of a bad value-chain ecosystem? Shouldn’t other players be cropping up to be external “shopping search engines” that find you the real, quality items on Amazon’s (and other stores’) huge junk-piles, the way that Google finds you real, quality web pages among the junk-pile that is the web?
Sure, it’d be nice if Amazon solved the problem itself. But I don’t see a reason that it has to be the one to solve the problem. Amazon can just provide infrastructure to allow anyone to sell anything, and then someone else can build “retail experiences” on top. Just like AWS isn’t trying to be Salesforce with a full platform experience.