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[–]trident765 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Sounds like they are transitioning from the growth stage to the milking stage. A good UI helps a company gain and keep users. Amazon is now stopping caring about UI because they realize they've saturated their user base, and they know they will never lose it. Now their sole focus is on maximizing their profits per user.

[–]fschmidt[S] 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

For the milking stage, they should have just left their UI alone. When was the last time Coke changed their recipe?

I think Amazon is just becoming evil and dysfunctional. Unlike social media companies, Amazon is not a natural monopoly. There are plenty of other online retail sites. Amazon became successful because they actually had a good service. They could easily lose their lead in retail.

[–]trident765 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If a company is indifferent to UI, this does not mean they will leave UI alone. When UI does not matter, this means the CEO has more reason to appoint his incompetent buddy to lead the UI development team than the most competent person for the job.

No one wants to use Facebook's competitor because none of their friends use Facebook's competitor. No one wants to buy from Amazon's competitor because there are no sellers who use Amazon's competitor. If a friend uses Facebook's competitor, no one will join them because of the overhead of signing up. If a seller does use Amazon's competitor, no one will buy from him because of the overhead of signing up. What is the difference?