Its a flat simple ad free bullet proof model that seems like it has the potential to beat out Google’s business model.
They simply use their search engine to match buyers and sellers and then take a small piece of any actual purchase completed through the service. They use some analytics but they don’t have to. They don’t seem to have any ads because they are direct commerce search engine that strictly matches buyers to sellers. If it does its job right ads aren’t needed. It aligns the interests of buyers, seller and itself. What is revolutionary here, even if it sounds a bit like brokerage or retail, is that they simply match buyers to sellers and only get paid based on how well they do that. There is no conflict of interest here to be gamed. They seem to match any buyer and any seller, no need for it to be a business, no Ebay antics. Its purity in the good sense.
To make it revolutionary they would just have to strip away any analytics (at least make it opt in by default) and then offer search of the wider universe of content for free funded as a vital overhead for the actual business of matching buyers to sellers. This would finally be a basis for honest search. And this general honest search would only yield more informed buyers better able to use the commerce side of the engine and possible in a better position financially for having had access to honest information. Of course they (search engine service) would have to commit to never ever taking any money from sellers, or buyers, keep it strictly to a flat fee percentage of successful actual purchases for the vital trust worthy level playing field. The general search could turn into a more honest more general real time funded Wikipedia that could help us get rid of the media and rid of the sponsored media for sure.
You get rid of the type of middle man that turns the world into a lie. You get rid of the paid for shill type paid of politician.
For years I tried to think of a such a concept. I couldn’t. I had other ideas, they always seemed to involve addition to a subscription or skimming off micropayments. I could see that search might be based on past successful searches- something Google already does. The only thing that was clear for me was that even abstracted approaches like Duck Duck Go were still ultimately based on sponsorship and based on a conflict of interest that in the larger context that was still deadly to democracy. This Etsay approach was so obvious and so old fashioned I wasn’t able to see it
Now for the obvious punch line, It would be nice to add to the SAFE universe. It would make a nice business model on SAFE on free SAFE mesh and the current internet.
If I’ve missed something important about Etsy or the way it could work or does work, sorry in advance.