Thank you for the write-up on this! Like you, that has been a pet-peeve of mine as well.
I wonder if we can get a comment from Amazon or Nycto, on why the search box is not auto-focused though. This seems like such a natural thing to do, and saves your users a mouse move and click every time they come to the site.
I suspect that being forced to move your mouse to the search box pushes your eyes to scan the page as you do so, which increases the likelihood you'll find something interesting between your cursor and the search box.
I wonder if we can get a comment from Amazon or Nycto, on why the search box is not auto-focused though. This seems like such a natural thing to do, and saves your users a mouse move and click every time they come to the site.