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Federal Court OKs Amazon's System of Suggesting Alternative Products
concealment writes "Many of us have had the experience of going to Amazon to buy one thing but checking out with a huge shopping cart of items that we didn't initially seek—or even know were available. Amazon's merchandising often benefits Amazon's customers, but trademark owners who lose sales to their competition due to it aren't as thrilled. Fortunately for Amazon, a California federal court recently upheld Amazon's merchandising practices in its internal search results."
Seriously, cry some more.
Or you could actually put effort into selling a better product for competitive pricing and stop bitching that people don't choose you when they get a view of better alternatives.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Go to a store and you'll generally see competing products next to each other and that's okay. But try to do something similar on-line? Horror! Unfair! Must file lawsuit! It's become our culture but the practice of suing for anything and everything has become utterly ridiculous in the last decade or so.
"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion"
Stores have been doing this for years. Go in looking for one thing and other brands or items are placed prominently to catch your eye. If you want a better shelf location, you pay the retailer for it.
If you don't like Amazon (or other on-line vendors) from switching "your" customers to their preferred partners, build your own storefront web site. Amazon is the price you pay for getting your stuff up on the web without having to do development work yourself.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm so glad Amazon got permission from a Federal Court to engage in commerce. How did this case even make it to Federal Court?
I really don't understand why the legal system needs to be bothered to deal with this. My tax dollars have better things to do than get wasted deciding "It's acceptable to display multiple products in one place."
If the argument is from $company that "They searched for my expensive product, but bought a cheaper alternative instead! We demand that they not see other items!", then it seems obvious that these people have never shopped anywhere, ever. Generic acetaminophen is sitting right next to Tylenol, but how often does Tylenol lobby to make that illegal?
If anything, the more expensive product company marketing goons need to realize that places like Amazon are doing them a favor because the opposite happens too. A cheap coffee-maker has two stars, but something 50% more expensive has 4.5, so people look to see why it's reviewed so much higher. I know I do.
Peer-reviews have helped many people avoid buying garbage unwittingly, and steered many people to something better suited to their needs.
Many of us have had the experience of going to Amazon to buy one thing but checking out with a huge shopping cart of items that we didn't initially seek—or even know were available.
Honestly, no idea what are you talking about. I only see ads for the stuff I JUST BOUGHT from them. Which I find pretty funny and stupid.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I of course look for technical things and get marketing results.
When I type in "Bluetooth Keyboard" I want a stupid Bluetooth Keyboard that operates on the Bluetooth Protocol and does not require that I plug an extra dongle into my machine. I do not want to be offered a single Bluetooth Keyboard followed by a dozen Logitech and Microsoft wireless keyboards where when I hit Ctrl+F the term bluetooth isn't even on the page!
Try going through the games section without even touching your keyboard to type and click through the game categories until you get Linux games. Dozens of games not compatible with Linux.
Try looking for a specific Android tablet, every other result or so is a Kindle Fire, and NOT a Transformer or whatever.
Legal? Yes. Annoying? Certainly.
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As far as I can tell from the article, the basis of the complaint is that vendors object to the fact that searching on their brand name or model name brings up stuff that's not theirs, and they believe that having these search results show up confuses consumers about who made the products in the search result.
So, if this is the case, then it's like, I go into a physical store, and say to the salesman, "I would like to buy an Apple laptop computer," and the salesman produces a computer, and says "Here is an Inspiron laptop computer, it has many wonderful features." The salesman neglects to mention that the Inspiron is an alternative to, rather than an example of, an Apple computer. The accusation is that the salesman is trading on Apple's good name to sell non-Apple merchandise.
It's similar to when people complain about sponsored search results not being easily distinguished from non-sponsored results.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
but really? Why was this even a lawsuit?
and as for "Many of us have had the experience of going to Amazon to buy one thing but checking out with a huge shopping cart of items that we didn't initially seek"
Never done that. I go find what I want order it. Other things that might be interest might go on the Wih List, but never gone in for one thing and got a ton more at the same time.
Sounds like really really poor impulse control issues...
I find it really funny that Amazon is patenting their suggestion system since it's responsable for nearly every mis-purchased item I buy from Amazon. I wind up with GSM phones intead of CDMA (but in a better color), asus keyboards for a laptop I don't own, and a wireless access point instead of a wireless range extender! They should try to think of/patent a system for suggesting items that have the same important attributes and basic utility. It wouldn't kill Amazon to patent something that's not blaitantly obvious.
You're right, in the search results for "mtm special ops" Amazon does not state anywhere that it didn't find the exact phrase that was searched for. To be a little clearer, you'd think they could say that, along with "similar products:" Of course, none of the results have that exact phrase in their model name, not even "special ops."
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
What I find hilarious about the entire thing is that, Amazon will never find exactly what the customer is searching for.
Know why?
The manufacturer refuses to sell their product on Amazon!! They then sue Amazon when they sugest something else. What in the...
I don't know if it was a case of "if you can't beat them join them" but when I searched for "MTM watch" on Amazon there was a sponsored link by the plaintiff on a resulting page. So they appear to be paying Amazon ( directly or indirectly ) when someone searches there to give them a link back.
That explains it - MBAs. Here, I just thought their programmers were too incompetent to write a decent search algorithm. If the algorithm is designed for max profit rather than user results, I change my opinion from lousy to sleezy.
RIGHT!
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=mtm+special+ops
It doesn't say that if you don't include quotes, which I suspect most users won't.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
You're right, in the search results for "mtm special ops" Amazon does not state anywhere that it didn't find the exact phrase that was searched for.
You're wrong. It repeats the search words at the top of the page, but at the bottom is shows you (well, it shows ME) the words it actually used, and "mtm" is lined out.
Two of the 7 watches have one of the words in the title ("special" and "ops"). While 7 of the nine search results are watches, two are books. Amazon's search engine is no different than Google, where the results are based on an "any" search, not an "all."
It's actually a little more complicated; the search results I just looked at shows "mtm special ops" with mtm lined out, with several items listed below that, and then "mtm special ops" with ops lined out, and several items listed below that. In each case, you can click a link to "see all X results"
So the top of the page shows watches and doesn't specifically indicated that the search didn't match exactly. You have to look for the 'modified' searches, and even then it doesn't really tell you that the original search term didn't get an exact match.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.