Why Amazon Is Google's Real Competition 129
New submitter wreakyhavoc writes "Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider maintains that Amazon's reviews and One-Click ordering will undercut Google's shopping ad revenue, and that Google is 'terrified.' From the article: 'Google is a search company, but the searches that it actually makes money from are the searches people do before they are about to buy something online. These commercial searches make up about 20 percent of total Google searches. Those searches are where the ads are. What Googlers worry about in private is a growing trend among consumers to skip Google altogether, and to just go ahead and search for the product they would like to buy on Amazon.com, or, on mobile in an Amazon app. There's data to prove this trend is real. According to ComScore, Amazon search queries are up 73 percent in the last year. How could Google fight this possible threat? Perhaps they could expose the astroturfing of Amazon reviews. Of course, this could backfire, as it would also draw attention to the astroturfing, link farming, and SEO games in Google's search results."
Google tossed this away (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a prime membership, so why wouldn't Amazon be the first place to look? Free quick shipping is pretty compelling. I think that is a huge reason more and more people are turning to use Amazon as first search for products.
But also, Google totally tossed this away. I used to use Google first (even when I was a prime member), searching for *product name* buy. That used to yield a lot of great price comparisons. Google changed things so that product searches suck now, it pretty much never yields good comparison results.
What can Google do to get this traffic back? The only way, would be to become a better search engine...
Re:Google shopping (Score:5, Insightful)
Ditto. I shop amazon because, when you are using prime, it generally has an excellent total cost+shipping, an insanely fast delivery, and a uniform no surprises return policy with people who actually will answer the phone or e-mail. For everything I buy if it's within 5$ dollars I'll always buy it from amazon because it's just not worth the risk and hassle and susprise shipping charges, and slow shipments or return policies to get it elsewhere.
I used to shop around but I've found that amazon consistently has the near-lowest price, so why bother. Now for big ticket items I first go to amazon, then I check it out with pricegrabber or nextag ot a general seach to see if the price is about right before I buy.
Amazon is winning my loyalty not because I'm lazy but because they offer great service and quick painless shopping. I'd say their generous returns policy is what makes me less hesitant to buy there. Same reason other first class merchants like lands end, ll bean or even sierra trading post. no hassles and fair prices.
When I try to get too clever and get the very best deals I usually find I've wasted hours on the internet. My time has value.
Re:Amazon's search quality is so appalling (Score:5, Insightful)
If the balance right now is Google's superior search vs. Amazon's superior convenience/prime shipping, I think that still gives the advantage to Amazon.
Amazon can improve their search mechanism over time, but it's much harder for Google to match Amazon's advantages.
Re:Google tossed this away (Score:4, Insightful)
>> Google changed things so that... searches suck now
This pretty much explains why Google has jumped the shark. They have borrowed Yahoo's big "suck" filter and applied to everything they do. I want a substitute for almost every Google tool I use, and have found a few. More will be created to fill the voids Google is creating.
Re:Astroturfing on Amazon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google shopping (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is winning my loyalty *because* I'm lazy. And I'm lazy because I almost never find anything cheaper somewhere else.
I was actually really surprised to find my last purchase was $10 cheaper at a Wal Mart store. But it weighed 20lbs! I bet the prime shipping was more than $10 so it made sense to me. But I still didn't care--I bought it on Prime. It showed up at my desk at work ready to go. No driving, parking, waiting in line to check out.
The only other thing I haven't bought on Amazon lately is a board game which I found at a local store. But that was a case of "I only discovered this because I was in the store, I'm not going to be a douche and then buy it for $10 cheaper online after using their store for a discovery engine."
I simply trust now that Amazon has the lowest price. And I think they know that we are lazy. And as long as they fight to stay the cheapest they know we won't bother shopping somewhere else. If they got greedy and started exploiting our laziness they would just lose more sales from people shopping around. Amazon really really really wants people to buy *everything* through them and make up any loss of profit in volume. Keeping us justifiably fat and lazy is in their best interest.
And then like you say there is the great service and return policy on top of that. One of their shipments was once listed as "Delivered" even though I didn't get it. They immediately sent another one overnight so that I would have it in case the delivery company had trouble figuring out where it ended up.
This Has Been My Use Case for Some Time Now (Score:4, Insightful)
I always go to Amazon first for product searching, then turn to Google for reviews. Google shopping is simply pathetic -- sorry Newegg and Nextag, never used you never will -- and their listed vendors simply can not match Amazon's pricing and turnaround -- especially since I am a Prime Subscriber.
Recently however, I've largely stopped even using Google for searching for reviews and comparative products since I've found Amazon's reviews to be more than adequate and with plenty of competitive products listed on their site.
Honestly, I think Google should reconsider their misguided foray into shopping -- it's just a ham-fisted ploy to capture data on the shopping preferences of their "user-commodities" and just doesn't stack up because it's a half-assed attempt at entering a market that they really don't understand and isn't core to their company.
Re:Amazon not necessarily the best place to shop. (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, they don't take paypal. ;)
It's a feature.
Re:Astroturfing on Amazon? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's really smart.
And there's a whole lot of gaming that goes on in Amazon's books and music reviews. I met someone who works for one of the "New Media Strategies" companies. He's an out-of-work post-doc and is getting paid (poorly, I might add) to corrupt social media and online reviews in order to try to gain some perceived advantage for their clients big and small.
It gets worse: even little niche-y online communities like Slashdot are targeted by these companies for their clients. Insurance companies, politicians, big-name media companies, even sports franchises are using sock puppets to promote everything from candidates to soap to software. People can rely less and less that the entities encountered in social media are actually human beings posting their thoughts in good faith.
This could break bad for google and amazon alike, as people start to see online information as noise. Their seeming inviolability could disappear in a big hurry.
People are already starting to see that the bottom could fall out of a lot of big name dot.com businesses with not a lot of warning, and not just because of uncertainties about the economy as a whole.
It wouldn't take a whole lot to have Google and Amazon become dinosaurs real quick. I just think it's a mistake to believe that five years from now these companies are going to have the same kind of fundamental strength that the big manufacturing companies had in the post-WWII world. There are a lot of companies built on perception and that are very vulnerable to shifting habits.
Re:Astroturfing on Amazon? (Score:4, Insightful)
It wouldn't take a whole lot to have Google and Amazon become dinosaurs real quick. I just think it's a mistake to believe that five years from now these companies are going to have the same kind of fundamental strength that the big manufacturing companies had in the post-WWII world. There are a lot of companies built on perception and that are very vulnerable to shifting habits.
Really? Both of these companies have massive, massive investments in infrastructure. These aren't some mom-and-pop, dot com, one trick pony shows. Hell, Government is starting (if not already) to rely on Google. Amazon is investing in same day delivery and is one of the biggest players online. It would take quite a bit IMHO for these two companies to become dinosaurs. This isn't 1999.
Re:How come Google doesn't have user rating? (Score:3, Insightful)
+1
Re:Astroturfing on Amazon? (Score:4, Insightful)
So did Studebaker.
I'm not saying they'd disappear, but they'd become something very different from what they are.