Home / Articles / When the customer becomes the commodity: where your customer sits on your Wardley map, why Google and Amazon lost my trust, and why local delivery should be infrastructure

When the customer becomes the commodity: where your customer sits on your Wardley map, why Google and Amazon lost my trust, and why local delivery should be infrastructure

By Dinis Cruz · 2026-10-19 · article v1.0.0 · newsroom v0.12.132 · wardley-mapsstrategytruststartupsgen-z-bookarticle

Abstract: When you draw a Wardley map of your business, ask where your customer sits on it. Are they something you care about, close to custom built? A product you sell? Or a commodity you do not care about? Companies that win their market and start to behave like monopolies tend to move the customer to the right, and I agree with Cory Doctorow that judging monopolies by price misses it, because price is only one measure. Google lost my trust when ads became the purpose of its search results; I now use Perplexity, because an alternative only has to be about as good once trust is gone. Amazon still has my trust to deliver, but with sponsored results I no longer trust it to be on my side, so buying there has become a cognitive load. Airports show the way back: they treated passengers as a new batch every day, until they realised that better service made people spend more. And there is a bigger opportunity: local fulfilment and delivery should be infrastructure, like roads, so the shop on the high street can sell online without building its own logistics. When people use a company because they have to and not because they want to, it is open for disruption, which is good news for the next generation of founders.

In short

• Ask where your customer is on your map. Custom built, product, or commodity?
• Winning companies drift the customer to the right. And price alone does not show it.
• Google lost my trust. Ads became the purpose of the results.
• An alternative only has to be equivalent. Once trust is gone, people move.
• Amazon still delivers, but is not on my side. Sponsored results make buying a cognitive load.
• Airports found the way back. Better service for passengers meant more spending.
• Local delivery should be infrastructure. Like roads, provided once for every shop.
• Used because they have to, not want to. That is where disruption comes from.

Where is your customer?

One of the most interesting questions to ask when you draw a Wardley map of your business and your processes is: where is your customer in the scheme of things? Is your customer something you care about, something that is close to custom built for you, quite unique? Are they a product, something you sell? Or are they a commodity, something you do not really care about?

How you answer changes how you act. When you start to see your customers as the product, or as a commodity, you treat them differently.

How the disruptors become the incumbents

As companies mature, get better at the process, start to win the market and end up with something like a monopoly, the disruptors become the incumbents. Cory Doctorow named the path. In his words, "Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die" (Pluralistic, 21 January 2023). He called it enshittification, and the word has since been a word of the year twice.

I also agree with him that the current definitions of monopoly are wrong, because they judge a monopoly mainly by whether prices go up. Doctorow summarises that school of thought, from Robert Bork, as "The only time the state should act against monopolies is when they use their market power to raise prices" (Pluralistic, 15 September 2022). Price is one metric. Trust is another, and here are two examples.

Google lost my trust

Google's cardinal sin, I think, was to start treating its users as a commodity. To be fair, search ads pay for it: in the last quarter of 2025, "Google Search & other" brought in about 55% of Alphabet's revenue (Alphabet's results). And so revenue became the purpose. Google was the one that started filling the search results with ads; in 2016 it moved the ads from the side of the page to the top, up to four of them above the first result. Where I used to trust Google for its answers, I now have to wade through ads to get them.

So I use it less and less, and for most things I have stopped. That is what happens when you lose trust. When an alternative comes along, it does not even have to be much better at the start. It just has to be equivalent. I use Perplexity, I trust it much more, and so far I have had few reasons to complain. Every time I use Google, I do.

Amazon is not on my side

Amazon has recently joined that club, which I think is a shame, because it is a great company. It still has my trust to deliver things, though next-day delivery is becoming a commodity too. The problem is the sponsored results. I do not trust Amazon to be on my side any more. When a product is at the top of the list, is that the best product for me, or the one that paid Amazon the most? Buying something on Amazon has become a cognitive load, because I do not know what is going on.

I am not the only one asking. The US Federal Trade Commission, suing Amazon in 2023, accused it of "replacing relevant, organic search results with paid advertisements" and of "deliberately increasing junk ads that worsen search quality" (FTC, 26 September 2023). Those are allegations, and the case has not been tried. But the shape is the one Doctorow describes: I am now the product, sold to the sellers, who pay Amazon for the ads.

Maybe they do it because they can get away with it, and will change when there is competition. Maybe they cannot change; some companies are too set in their ways.

The airports found the way back

The opposite example is airports. For a long time, because a new batch of passengers arrived every day, many airports did not care much about them: who cares about bad service if there is a fresh crowd tomorrow? It was a race to the bottom, bad food, bad service, bad everything. Then the airports realised: hold on, we have all these people here, and if we give them a better environment and better shops, they spend more. That created a positive feedback loop. Now many have good shops and good service. Before the pandemic, roughly two fifths of airport revenue worldwide came from things other than airlines, such as shops, food and parking, by ACI World's figures.

Social media is the same story the other way. If you are not paying, you are the product, as the saying goes. But many of these companies do not let you pay, even by micropayment, so you are caught. And it is not enough to say "just do not use it", when there is so much social pressure, and so many basic services and things you want to do require it. These companies are very good at hooking you in.

Local delivery should be infrastructure

Here is what I think should really happen, and again it comes from looking at the map. We should start to see local fulfilment and local delivery as infrastructure, provided by local councils and by government, the same way they provide roads.

Today I bought printer cartridges, which I needed for my book, from a shop on the high street. Why can I not buy them from that shop's website? And why should that shop have to build an entire logistics operation, stock management, fulfilment, collection and delivery, when what it should do is provide the goods?

We saw a version of this during COVID, when restaurants started offering takeaway through delivery services. Restaurant owners told me what they liked about it: it evened out their peaks, they could control when they took more orders or fewer, they got orders even when they were quiet, and it could be more profitable, because they made better use of their stock. They basically got traffic for free. Some delivery companies may charge far too much, and the same play can happen there; that is exactly why it should be infrastructure.

I would like to support my local community, because it is good for me and good for the community. We used to have a sports shop where I live. We do not any more: because buying online is convenient, not enough people bought there, which is a tragedy of the commons, the term Garrett Hardin made famous (Science, 1968). I was lucky to find the cartridge I needed today, but it is not guaranteed that the shop will survive, and I would like it to. Think how many people near me buy printer cartridges every week. It is just not efficient.

This is a good example of deciding what a utility is. And there is room in the market for founders: now that you can create custom environments, custom interfaces and custom integrations cheaply, you could build a custom setup for every single shop on the high street. That is market efficiency.

Used because they have to

My point is that companies like Amazon and Google are in a dangerous position. They built brands, and now people use them not because they like them but because they are used to them. It is very dangerous to be used because people have to, not because they want to. That leaves you open to disruption, which is good news for the next generation of founders and companies.

So when you draw your map, put your customer on it, and keep checking where they are.

What this does not claim

• My trust is my experience. Others may still trust Google and Amazon.
• The FTC's case is allegations. It has not been decided.
• Not every airport improved. The feedback loop is the point, not a universal fact.
• Local delivery as infrastructure is a proposal. Nobody is building it as I describe.
• Some search engines and platforms change course. Competition can bring them back.

Where this comes from

A voice memo from me on 19 October 2026. Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, 21 January 2023 and 15 September 2022; his book Enshittification (2025). Alphabet's Q4 2025 results. WordStream on Google's 2016 ad layout. The FTC's case against Amazon. ACI World's figures via the Moodie Davitt Report. Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, Science, 1968. Related: why I love Wardley maps, the expert founders, the SaaS apocalypse. Written up and checked by this site's agent, newsroom.writer; the editorial responsibility is mine.

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