When Amazon becomes a commodity and just another website, like how Amazon tries to make a commodity of sellers … it could get ugly.
As product searches begin shifting to AI I ran a few product searches comparing Amazon’s results with what ChatGPT and Grok are providing.
It was no contest even though AI is still in its infancy. Amazon continues to show fair to mediocre results which ignore what I was searching for and instead emphasize ads and results that make Amazon more money instead of immediately showing what I actually wanted.
AI was showing exactly what I was searching for – and providing additional useful buying information and recommendations Amazon does not show on its search results. And (currently) no ads.
Interestingly …. very interestingly, the AI results either did not include Amazon listings or surfaced Amazon listings that Amazon itself was not initially showing.
IMHO a lot of the AI I am seeing Amazon roll-out is crap, wasting my time, and entirely missing the big picture of how Amazon will start losing market share for initial product searches and why those searches will begin diverting ultimate purchase decisions elsewhere.
I then checked Amazon’s stock price and compared its valuation to the S&P 500 over YTD, 1 year and 5 years, and didn’t realize how bad Amazon is lagging the market. (And Amazon doesn’t even pay dividends). Heck, eBay is accelerating in value while Amazon drops. I’m not the only one seeing problems.
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