Amazon launches Part Finder, using technology acquired from Partpic in 2016
I remember when Amazon bought CDNow ages ago.  CDNow let me easily find specific CDs by artist and title AND they even had a great recommendation algorithm.  I discovered some great new music that way.<p>In 2002 Amazon shut down CDNow with the idea that you&#x27;d just use Amazon.com.  Unfortunately, search has been one of Amazon&#x27;s weakest features.  Sixteen years later and I still miss CDNow.  Amazon rarely shows exactly what I&#x27;ve searched for and the filtering is almost entirely useless.  I want to sort by price or filter by vendor without having to guess which one of the twenty different categories an item is in (often times it&#x27;s in multiple categories).  I want the price of the item to mach what you&#x27;ve shown in the search results (or an explanation why there&#x27;s a significant difference).  If you can&#x27;t ship something to California or the USA I want know BEFORE I try to check out.  It should go without saying I don&#x27;t want ads in the search results either.<p>To me this &quot;fancy&quot; search by picture is not helpful (instead it&#x27;s entirely useless).  If I want a fastener, I want to be able search by its attributes (something Amazon is terrible about in general).  Let&#x27;s say I want a pretty common metric bolt (M8) in a standard thread pitch (1.25mm).  I&#x27;ll go search or &quot;M8x1.25 bolt&quot;.  I get a bunch of useless filters, including:<p>Fastener Material: Stainless Steel, Stainless Steel 304, Steel.  Right.  What sort of stainless steel is the first option?<p>System Of (sic) Measurement: Metric.  Nice that this is unchecked and the only option.<p>Fastener Thread Size - Mating (eh?): No Thread Size Selected, M8-1.25.  This one is a combo box with a &quot;Go&quot; button for some reason.  I literally just entered the thread size and pitch I wanted in the search query.  They can parse a picture but they can&#x27;t figure out I&#x27;ve entered this information in already?  Ugh.<p>Fastener Grade &amp; Class: Class 10.9.  Aside from the lack of selection, this is where the stainless classification SHOULD go.<p>Categories... well, you&#x27;ve got bolts, hex bolts, eyebolts... Powersports Wheel Spacers?  AmazonFresh? WTF?<p>Meanwhile rather important filters are missing like: finish and length.<p>Edit: Contrast this with Grainger (whose site is good, but not great) or McMaster-Carr (the gold standard).