Amazon's editorial department, which was responsible for writing copy to advertise products and deciding which products to focus on, suffered as the company progressed. Editorial staff members would write clever ad copy for items ("This adorable Goliath Backpack Pal is a grrreat way to scare away those first-day-of-school jitters," a 1999 Amazon ad for a lion backpack read), but they soon found themselves in trouble as Amazon began to increasingly rely on analytics to decide which products to recommend to customers based on what they'd already bought. Most of the editorial writers and editors were fired or switched to other departments.
An algorithm titled Amabot, which could create the recommendations for customers based on past items he or she had bought, was blamed by many editorial employees for the downfall of the department. An unknown person, presumably an Amazon employee, sent a classified ad to the Seattle newspaper the Stranger in 2002 which read, "Dearest Amabot, If you only had a heart to absorb our hatred... Thanks for nothing, you jury-rigged rust bucket. The gorgeous messiness of flesh and blood will prevail!"
