I don't think you put much thought into the article before you carelessly bandied about the phrase "Thoughtless take."

You certainly didn't read it in much depth. The author is talking about search ads explicitly and narrowly within a category where Amazon has plenty of signals it could use to steer customers towards the highest satisfaction product.

If you make a new better product, advertise everywhere you want. And if Amazon took seriously its customer obsession, it would start driving people towards your product if it was better. Not because you paid them to.

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billyp-rva 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have to agree with OP, this phrase specifically reveals it isn't a good take:

> sales [the best product] were entitled to in the first place

Unfortunately, this is not, and has never been, how it works. The best product is never entitled to sales. Marketing, which very much includes advertising, is a massive, massive factor in sales.

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forestrywat 5 hours ago | parent [-]

So advertising entitles you to sales?

	▲	billyp-rva 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Of course not. A terrible product may not sell well even if it has great ads, for instance.

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paytonjjones 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> advertise everywhere you want

Except, apparently, the surface that's actually closest to the purchasing decision? Why must that surface be forbidden?

	▲	forestrywat 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The case is laid out pretty clearly in the article. Spend some time thinking about it.