Amazon Purges Billions of Product Listings in Cost-Cutting Drive (businessinsider.com) 27
Amazon has quietly removed billions of product listings through a confidential initiative called "Bend the Curve," according to Business Insider. The project planned to eliminate at least 24 billion ASINs -- unique product identifiers -- from Amazon's marketplace, reducing the total from a projected 74 billion to under 50 billion by December 2024. The purge targets "unproductive selection" including poor-selling items, listings without actual inventory, and product pages inactive for over two years.
The initiative represents a shift for the company that built its reputation as "The Everything Store" through three decades of relentless catalog expansion. Bend the Curve forms part of CEO Andy Jassy's broader cost-cutting strategy, saving Amazon's retail division over $22 million in AWS server costs during 2024 by reducing the number of hosted product pages.
The initiative represents a shift for the company that built its reputation as "The Everything Store" through three decades of relentless catalog expansion. Bend the Curve forms part of CEO Andy Jassy's broader cost-cutting strategy, saving Amazon's retail division over $22 million in AWS server costs during 2024 by reducing the number of hosted product pages.
Billions? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
One of the reasons why it was getting so hard to find things when I stop using Amazon years ago. It would probably be easier for them to just delete all the ASINs associated with companies residing in China.
Re: (Score:3)
Then they'd delete the counterfeit stuff, which is among their best sellers.
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, the very reason I left in the first place.
Re:Billions? [No, "billions and billions"!] (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent funny and the Subject change is with apologies to Carl...
But the billions I'm thinking about are the Amazon profits and you could even make money betting that Amazon is not dropping any products that contribute significantly to the black ink.
In search of a fresh joke, in the category of the "I just know it's true" genre, has anyone managed to measure how the rankings of the Amazon search results are tilted in favor of the products with larger profits for Amazon?
Or perhaps I should try to revive and mutate the light bulb joke genre?
Q: "How many applied psychologist does it take to change an Amazon customer?"
A: "More. Always more."
[Also triggered by recent reading of books criticizing "pure psychologists". Academia may be collapsing, but the money grubbers seem to be doing quite well for themselves.]
However, whenever Amazon is the topic I feel like I have to disclaim that my second and final Amazon purchase was decades ago. Nothing that I've seen since thing has moved my sentiments in a positive direction. Rather always more negative.
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How would that affect Amazon's customers in China?
Or, for that matter, in, say, Brazil? Or indeed, any country not actually America, and not affected (directly) by the Tangerine Shitgibbon's latest rant.
Judging from the vans still trundling around town, Amazon are still active in this country.
Re:Billions? (Score:4, Interesting)
24 BILLION...that doesn't happen by accident and that doesn't happen with the platform knowing. This is a sign of a platform that embraced the fraud wholeheartedly.
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Yeah, Billions. If you have any doubts about the hidden items that you might not need but someone does, try searching for "2.5mm screws".
There are tens of thousands of items with so many options: Brand, Head Style, Drive Style, Material, Exterior Finish, Length, Thread Size, Thread Direction, Grade, Quantity, etc.
And that's just ONE item. Try searching for nails, washers, drill bits, bolts, or automotive parts. If you want to see another endless selection of items, try searching for "Toyota grills". Af
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But those are all significant differences. If your device build uses only PoziDriv00 fittings, and you care about the people who maintain/ repair your products, then it can really matter if you order 10kg of M2.5*10mm cheese-head Pozi0 instead of M2.5*10mm cheese-head Pozi00 bolts.
For entirely unrelated reasons (trying to understand the cutting-tool insert terminology) I recent
Re:Billions? Bots. (Score:3)
Why sell one thing when you can sell the same thing under 20 different names. It's why AZ marketplace sucks.
If something is out of stock for more than one month it should simply be de-listed for new searches.
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I don't believe they sell 50 billion unique products.
50 million would even be a stretch.
If true they have thousands of ASIN's for most of each of their products. That's a management nightmare.
They better watch out - a few companies are developing agents to find what you want on manufacturing companies' websites and providing an Amazon-like shopping experience without Amazon.
Fulfilment is still a factor so it's not like Prime but very much like Sold and Shipped by orders.
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Am I the only one who had to reread this to make sure I actually read "billions"?
No, I did a cartoon double take while eating dinner while reading this.
Billions. Didn't know there was that much crap in the world to sell.
to under 50 billion by December 2024. (Score:3)
I hope they don't delete the info on their working time machines.
I want to buy one of those.
Here's a better idea (Score:2)
Eliminate the endless duplicates of cheap Chinese crap
I usually see many repetitions featuring the same photo, each from a seller with a different nonsense name
Wookiee Brands (Score:2)
I call those Wookiee Brands, as the brand names appear to be random Wookiee names that aren't necessarily pronounceable by humans. If Amazon's search did a good job of showing me the cheapest options first, then I wouldn't mind them, as seeing all the Wookiee Brands for a product make it clear what it is, and I can check the reviews on one that has been around longer, knowing they're all the same. But automatically combining them into a single listing would be much better, along with a note "Product may c
More time machine stuff (Score:1)
"reducing the total from a projected 74 billion to under 50 billion by December 2024"
Nice to know this happened last year, or the summary is a HUGE glaring typo.
This is what happens when no actual human reviews stuff, and every-day-Joes decide to become Amazon "resellers" or eBay "resellers" and just cut and paste the entire listing (it takes too much time to snap a couple pics and type a paragraph about an item).
0.035% of their annual revenue (Score:3)
Their 2024 operating income was $68.59 billion and the online selling business is more than half of their sales. Of course that's doesn't mean it's as profitable as the other parts of their business. But $22 million isn't much compared to 24 billion ASINs and a third of the total ASINs.
dump the competition (Score:2)
I wonder what percentage competed against the Amazon Basic brand?
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Now they can just be the Almost Everything Store (Score:2)
badum ching
Pffft... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bend the Curve forms part of CEO Andy Jassy's broader cost-cutting strategy, saving Amazon's retail division over $22 million in AWS server costs during 2024.
$22 million? Bezos probably spends more than that in one year just on tips. It's nice that they're pruning the deadwood, but is it really newsworthy?
As others are saying, plus ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Get rid of the knockoffs
Get rid of the counterfeits
Highlight the country of origin in every listing and allow searches based on the country of origin
Make the search tool better, a lot better
I wish eBay would do this (Score:1)
Shits me how often you buy something on eBay from a "local seller" that indicates stock only to have to wait 1-2 weeks for it to start its journey through local courier services (because it's been coming from Shenzen in the meantime).
They have been at this for a while (Score:2)
In ye olden days, every seller on Amazon created an ASIN (Amazon Single Identification Number) for every item they listed for sale on the site. There would be tens of ASINs for every item, because each seller created their own. You could list under an existing ASIN, but then you were at the mercy of someone else's description and picture -only the "owner" could modify the listing details. Then they started allowing anyone listing an item to modify the details of the ASIN. This led to sellers taking over
If this saves... (Score:2)
...Then there's an inefficiency in the design.
You should store in the primary database in the most compressed, compact form you can that can still be accessed in reasonable time. Tokenise as well, if it'll help.
The customer should never be accessing the primary database, that's a security risk, the customer should access through a decompressed subset of the main database which is operating as a cache. Since it is a cache, it will automagically not contain any poorly-selling item or item without inventory, a