I am not 100% sure about this, I wish it were so. Maybe it's just that we get this feeling because of the people we usually talk to, the people in our close circle of connections who are likely to be like us in terms of this kind of rasoning/thinking. I think most people may not be aware of it.
> They had little short-term interest in doing so
I just want to add a possible scenario here and I would like to hear opinions about it:
As we all know, people really tend to buy products with 4.5+ stars and we think twice if the product has 3 or even 4 stars. On the other hand, let's suppose that since everyone is selling on Amazon now, worse products are likely to be put on sale, so the average scores start to decrease.
Having said the above, if I, as a user, periodically look for products on Amazon, I will probably start seeing/finding bad products, so it may be that in a long period of time, I will start looking for alternatives other than Amazon and may attribute the image of "not high quality products" to Amazon as an e-commerce.
[Edit]: So if my two previous scenarios are correct, if you follow the money, they actually have some long-term interest in allowing some fake(good) reviews and eliminating some real bad ones. In the end, most people will not be aware of these fake reviews and the quality of the products will be perceived as higher, resulting in more sales and in a better reputation of Amazon products, thus avoiding the scenario discussed in the second answer.
> I am not 100% sure about this, I wish it were so.
Well, not everyone, but there's growing knowledge about it, and popular media podcasts that do whole episodes on it, etc.
> I will probably start seeing/finding bad products, so it may be that in a long period of time, I will start looking for alternatives other than Amazon and may attribute the image of "not high quality products" to Amazon as an e-commerce.
I think that depends on whether the ratings are for product quality or product accuracy/authenticness/amazon fulfillment issues.
> they actually have some long-term interest in allowing some fake(good) reviews and eliminating some real bad ones.
I think the important part of that is some. While it may be in Amazon's interest to manipulate the reviews to some degree, it's definitely not in their best interest to let people know or assume they or anyone else is doing so.
I’m wondering how long it will take for large companies to realize that people are gradually adapting and starting to look for information on sites other than Google search bar.
Today, Google results are a big problem in the sense discussed in the article, there are no more sources of information that can be trusted like in the old days. Some days I reflect with myself trying to figure out how it can be solved…I hope someone ends up finding a solution.
I still for the most part would put site:reddit.com or site:news.ycombinator.com into the google search bar. Mostly out of muscle memory, habit, and speed. If I need to use other tools to find something, its because google has failed.
On a similar note, Google deranking Wikipedia (which used to be the first result for like half of my searches) makes it so much less useful. I now need to add wikipedia to my searches.
With DuckDuckGo as your default search, you can use "!w" to direct a search to Wikipedia, "!g" to send it to google, "!gi" for google images, "!a" for amazon, "!ais" for archive.is, and a lot of other options.
If you're using search as a shortcut to get to some other service, it can be nice to go straight there instead of sifting through whatever garbage has been SEOed to the top of Google.
Those are two examples where I might not do it because the built-in search on reddit and HN are worse at finding things than searching the same site through Google. For wikipedia search though, no reason to put that through Google.
> I’m wondering how long it will take for large companies to realize that people are gradually adapting and starting to look for information on sites other than Google search bar.
Hopefully it will take them a very long time. I don't want companies to start poisoning online communities with their hidden advertising. When I visit an online community, I want to read about the real thoughts of real people that are hopefully much smarter than I am, and maybe even post a few of my own. No community wants paid members with ulterior motives and conflicts of interest.
I think a lot of people here aren’t seeing the high picture.
Becoming more productive at this level makes the programmer environment significantly tougher and it has negative consequences over time to every human being. It’s a fact that many people don’t even think about it. If you optimize yourself to near –let’s say 95% of your actual capability, you are making everyone else optimize themselves to this number over time. This is great on the context of capitalism and economic growth, you produce more in less time, but we are forgetting that we are humans, not machines being optimized. Of course it’s okay to strive in this life to progress and achieve certain goals, but as happens in almost everything in this world, there should be some limits. If you are getting to the point where you have to monitor yourself, schedule every part of the day and establish X number of controls on yourself, you are being a company, not a human being, and you really aren’t understanding the point of life.
This is a common trend I’ve been realizing for years, we have been sold the idea that we should improve more and more and be more competitive, but without any limits, this is going to negatively affect our lives, indeed, it’s happening right now.
I am not 100% sure about this, I wish it were so. Maybe it's just that we get this feeling because of the people we usually talk to, the people in our close circle of connections who are likely to be like us in terms of this kind of rasoning/thinking. I think most people may not be aware of it.
> They had little short-term interest in doing so
I just want to add a possible scenario here and I would like to hear opinions about it:
As we all know, people really tend to buy products with 4.5+ stars and we think twice if the product has 3 or even 4 stars. On the other hand, let's suppose that since everyone is selling on Amazon now, worse products are likely to be put on sale, so the average scores start to decrease.
Having said the above, if I, as a user, periodically look for products on Amazon, I will probably start seeing/finding bad products, so it may be that in a long period of time, I will start looking for alternatives other than Amazon and may attribute the image of "not high quality products" to Amazon as an e-commerce.
[Edit]: So if my two previous scenarios are correct, if you follow the money, they actually have some long-term interest in allowing some fake(good) reviews and eliminating some real bad ones. In the end, most people will not be aware of these fake reviews and the quality of the products will be perceived as higher, resulting in more sales and in a better reputation of Amazon products, thus avoiding the scenario discussed in the second answer.