The Information's TITV
00:28:27 · Akash Pasricha, Catherine Perloff
[00:28:27] S0: Amazon has been experimenting with a pretty shocking new way to list products on its website. The company has been listing two fifty million products that direct to rival retailer and brand websites, though merchants have largely been left in the dark on how any of this is actually working. My colleague, Catherine Perloff, who covers Amazon, wrote about that in a story out this week. I want to bring her on to share more of her reporting. Catherine, welcome back to the show. It is great to have you here. Tell me about these outside listings that Amazon is experimenting with. [00:28:59] S5: Yeah. Hello, Akash. Basically, on Amazon right now, you can shop, browse for products Amazon does not sell, which is kind of surprising. And the way that works is there will be listings that pop up that will say shop direct. So when you see that, you can click to another retailer's website and buy the product. Some of the prominent brands displayed are Alo Yoga, Warby Parker. Both of these companies don't sell on Amazon, but you can find their products on Amazon and then go to this site and buy them. Amazon also has an option for some products, a more limited selection to actually buy the product on Amazon, even if Amazon doesn't sell it, but they use an agent to go out to that retailer site and buy it for you.
00:28:59 · Catherine Perloff, Akash Pasricha
[00:28:59] S5: Yeah. Hello, Akash. Basically, on Amazon right now, you can shop, browse for products Amazon does not sell, which is kind of surprising. And the way that works is there will be listings that pop up that will say shop direct. So when you see that, you can click to another retailer's website and buy the product. Some of the prominent brands displayed are Alo Yoga, Warby Parker. Both of these companies don't sell on Amazon, but you can find their products on Amazon and then go to this site and buy them. Amazon also has an option for some products, a more limited selection to actually buy the product on Amazon, even if Amazon doesn't sell it, but they use an agent to go out to that retailer site and buy it for you. [00:29:51] S0: Okay. So this is like... This is pretty shocking. I'm not going to lie. I mean, like the idea that Amazon is going to let people buy things without the whole infrastructure, the delivery, I mean, like, did you see this coming when you started reporting this?
00:29:51 · Akash Pasricha, Catherine Perloff
[00:29:51] S0: Okay. So this is like... This is pretty shocking. I'm not going to lie. I mean, like the idea that Amazon is going to let people buy things without the whole infrastructure, the delivery, I mean, like, did you see this coming when you started reporting this? [00:30:07] S5: I mean, well, it's surprising because... Yeah. Right. Like, Amazon has been trying to sort of be the dominant retailer. This is supporting rival retailers. On the other hand, Amazon has actually had this... So this program, this Shop Direct Buy For Me program, they actually started experimenting within February of last year. It's almost been two years. And I mean, that's part of what our story gets into is that it's been kind of under the radar despite existing. But I think the real play is that, you know, as chatbots become more popular, as agents become more popular, there's a risk that websites get disintermediated, including websites as important as Amazon because if you can just buy something using a chatbot, you don't have to visit Amazon's website. So this is sort of a move for Amazon to fight back against that and say, You you can buy everything you need from amazon.com even if we don't sell it. And you know, that can lessen people's reliance on using, you know, newly popular consumer AI agents like, you know, maybe Muse, Meta's Muse that has gotten a bit of traction, Instinct, products from Google and OpenAI, etcetera, and still sort of have some skin in the game and maintain their position as the dominant place to find e commerce listings.
00:30:07 · Catherine Perloff, Akash Pasricha
[00:30:07] S5: I mean, well, it's surprising because... Yeah. Right. Like, Amazon has been trying to sort of be the dominant retailer. This is supporting rival retailers. On the other hand, Amazon has actually had this... So this program, this Shop Direct Buy For Me program, they actually started experimenting within February of last year. It's almost been two years. And I mean, that's part of what our story gets into is that it's been kind of under the radar despite existing. But I think the real play is that, you know, as chatbots become more popular, as agents become more popular, there's a risk that websites get disintermediated, including websites as important as Amazon because if you can just buy something using a chatbot, you don't have to visit Amazon's website. So this is sort of a move for Amazon to fight back against that and say, You you can buy everything you need from amazon.com even if we don't sell it. And you know, that can lessen people's reliance on using, you know, newly popular consumer AI agents like, you know, maybe Muse, Meta's Muse that has gotten a bit of traction, Instinct, products from Google and OpenAI, etcetera, and still sort of have some skin in the game and maintain their position as the dominant place to find e commerce listings. [00:31:26] S0: And remind me, I think they had blocked access to Muse. Is that still in effect for Amazon?
00:31:26 · Akash Pasricha, Catherine Perloff
[00:31:26] S0: And remind me, I think they had blocked access to Muse. Is that still in effect for Amazon? [00:31:35] S5: Yeah. So I mean, there's definitely an irony here that they are blocking Muse. To our knowledge, they're still blocking OpenAI, they're still blocking Google, but then they're going ahead and scraping other websites. So it's sort of like, you know, there can be... [00:31:50] S0: I would hate for one of those websites to block Amazon from accessing them. [00:31:57] S5: Well, know, any website can opt out of this program, so they're not like forcing anyone to be in it, but you have to opt out. It's not like automatic that you don't get to choose as a retailer whether you're a part of this, and I spoke to a lot of retailers that like didn't really know they were part of it until you know they kind of started noodling around. They're like, Oh, okay, I guess we have listings from here. Which that sometimes causes some controversy, especially because sometimes Amazon has gotten some of the details wrong about what those products actually are. But yeah, I mean merchants can opt out, but it's definitely different than other things Amazon has offered where, for example, they've been offering for several years Buy with Prime, which lets rival retailers use the Prime speedy delivery and checkout on a Shopify site, say. But you have to opt into that versus this is opt out.
00:31:57 · Catherine Perloff, Akash Pasricha
[00:31:57] S5: Well, know, any website can opt out of this program, so they're not like forcing anyone to be in it, but you have to opt out. It's not like automatic that you don't get to choose as a retailer whether you're a part of this, and I spoke to a lot of retailers that like didn't really know they were part of it until you know they kind of started noodling around. They're like, Oh, okay, I guess we have listings from here. Which that sometimes causes some controversy, especially because sometimes Amazon has gotten some of the details wrong about what those products actually are. But yeah, I mean merchants can opt out, but it's definitely different than other things Amazon has offered where, for example, they've been offering for several years Buy with Prime, which lets rival retailers use the Prime speedy delivery and checkout on a Shopify site, say. But you have to opt into that versus this is opt out. [00:32:51] S0: So when you say that this is a defensive play or maybe even an offensive play against these agents, so does Amazon have its own muse or instinct like agent? Or is the experience still that I put it in the search bar, I'm sure they have some AI search stuff as well. But is there sort of an AI personal assistant that can just go and buy things directly that competes with Muse?