I agree with the conclusions of the article, and I am no fan of Amazon or search ads on any product.
However, I would like to play devil's advocate for a moment to brainstorm another issue.
Let's say I build a product that is better than others in the market. We all agree that competition is good becuase it leads to better products and lower prices.
However, the algorithm favors entrenched players. A product that has been bought many times and has positive reviews will be the first in the search results and people usually buy that. Which means I have no way to compete other than paying my way at the top of the list.
I'm not stating this as the ultimate solution or even a good one. But I think it's worth to ask the question.
> Let's say I build a product that is better than others in the market.
This sounds like the same song as Evolution: the winner is not "the best", the winner is "good enough" and dethroning "good enough" with "better" absolutely requires a sufficiently strong advantage, not just any incremental advantage.
If the incumbent is not "good enough", then they won't get great reviews and whoever does try them will be looking for an alternative right away, so you have your foot in the door on either front.
If the incumbent is good enough, then you just cannot market "being very slightly better": you target a demand that is not already sated. You could be cheaper.. by a large enough delta and without sufficient loss in quality to drive away demand, or you could begin by targeting whatever portion of the market is not satisfied by the incumbent for whatever reason.
Marketing is hard (and harder still when one is aiming to be ethical and a good steward of the market instead of constantly scamming and cheating and ruining everyone's trust), and "paying to force your message in front of unsolicited eyeballs" is not the only game in town.
However, I would like to play devil's advocate for a moment to brainstorm another issue.
Let's say I build a product that is better than others in the market. We all agree that competition is good becuase it leads to better products and lower prices.
However, the algorithm favors entrenched players. A product that has been bought many times and has positive reviews will be the first in the search results and people usually buy that. Which means I have no way to compete other than paying my way at the top of the list.
I'm not stating this as the ultimate solution or even a good one. But I think it's worth to ask the question.