Personally, Amazon's UI has a long way to go and doesn't look like it's going to get better anytime soon.
If you know what you're looking for, it's fine, but as soon as you try to comparison shop it falls apart fairly quickly.
I've gotten into the habit of looking for experts on other sites that do hands-on comparisons for the thing I want to buy (some recent examples: rain jackets and fitness meters). Amazon is honestly a terrible UI for this sort of thing.
I know that they're trying, but at this point they've lost my trust that what they show in search results is relevant unless I'm being extremely precise.
So, if the market shows that UI is what causes Amazon dearly, and that the market prefers a magic like messaging interface, how long will it take for Amazon to offer a magic like service at a price point that is affordable to everyone. Compare that with the time and effort required for Magic to become a retailer with Amazon's efficiency. I'll bet on the former.
The sad thing is - UIs generally don't matter if there's anything else making your product special. You can make your users as miserable as you want, and they will still use your service. Companies know it and prioritize effort accordingly.
Craigslist's UI is great! High contrast text. All links are obvious (no iOS style "is that colored text or a button"). It loads quickly. I can find the information I need without hunting around a bunch of ads masquerading as useful content.
As an added bonus, I don't have to relearn how to use it every 6 months when the design team gets bored and decides to redo the whole thing for no good reason.
There are a few additions I'd like to see (PadMapper style apartment search being the big one), but all things considered I like Craigslist a lot more than most websites.
Compare it to Amazon where half of the items are miscategorized, sort by price doesn't actually sort by price, and sort by average customer rating is way too literal. In what world do I want to see something with a single 5 star review over the one with 191 reviews, 94% of which are 5 star, and another 4% are 4 star? But that's tucked away on page 7 of the results after all the items with nothing but a single good review. Amazon's got issues to work out.
If you know what you're looking for, it's fine, but as soon as you try to comparison shop it falls apart fairly quickly.
I've gotten into the habit of looking for experts on other sites that do hands-on comparisons for the thing I want to buy (some recent examples: rain jackets and fitness meters). Amazon is honestly a terrible UI for this sort of thing.
I know that they're trying, but at this point they've lost my trust that what they show in search results is relevant unless I'm being extremely precise.