A lot of large web sites are quietly using time-sliced random A:B testing. For example, my understanding is that Ebay continually tests incremental design changes with a sliver of their customers. They have their servers slice off .5% or 1% of their audience during a certain time slice, and then they can review the statistics for usage against the other users of the same area of the the site. That's probably why not everyone is seeing the changes to Amazon yet. It is that this is a lower risk way to test both the user experience and technology, to prevent anything from seriously going wrong. If anything does occur, they can shut off that server and everything keeps on ticking.
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