This article starts by citing problems which could be solved using a more "open web." But then the author proposes their own centralized discovery service, Insight, as an aggregated platform for comparison. It seems pretty obvious that the endgame of this product would be just another Amazon. Why would it turn out any differently for the "curators" on the Insight "platform"?
Beyond that the author's specific arguments don't feel very convincing to me:
> Think about the last time you did some research, e.g. choosing a phone plan. You asked your friends, compared on forums, looked at the official sites, scribbled some notes and made a decision. Even if this journey was quick, you likely traversed a dozen services and products to do this.
The only site I went to is reddit. reddit is where I go to get on the ground crowdsourced recommendations (e.g. I buy coffee equipment by researching on r/coffee). In fact I avoid searching for this kind of thing widely, because I get a bunch of random blogs and content marketing sites of questionable provenance and accuracy.
> Over the years you keep shopping there, until you've forgotten that
- free 2 day shipping is now near universal
- amazon isn't often the cheapest place
Well no, free 2 day shipping is not "near universal." I still find most sites which aren't themselves backed by giant corporations (and even so which are!) don't even have multiple shipping speed options, let alone free 2 day shipping. I also have a degree of trust in Prime shipping and I've never personally had a painful experience returning anything to Amazon.
Beyond that the author's specific arguments don't feel very convincing to me:
> Think about the last time you did some research, e.g. choosing a phone plan. You asked your friends, compared on forums, looked at the official sites, scribbled some notes and made a decision. Even if this journey was quick, you likely traversed a dozen services and products to do this.
The only site I went to is reddit. reddit is where I go to get on the ground crowdsourced recommendations (e.g. I buy coffee equipment by researching on r/coffee). In fact I avoid searching for this kind of thing widely, because I get a bunch of random blogs and content marketing sites of questionable provenance and accuracy.
> Over the years you keep shopping there, until you've forgotten that
- free 2 day shipping is now near universal - amazon isn't often the cheapest place
Well no, free 2 day shipping is not "near universal." I still find most sites which aren't themselves backed by giant corporations (and even so which are!) don't even have multiple shipping speed options, let alone free 2 day shipping. I also have a degree of trust in Prime shipping and I've never personally had a painful experience returning anything to Amazon.