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100%. It's also arguably the most irreplaceable. Just go through the thought exercise of imagining if a big tech company just vanished overnight. We'd all remem

100%. It's also arguably the most irreplaceable. Just go through the thought exercise of imagining if a big tech company just vanished overnight. We'd all remember what they did and how the services work so companies could try to recreate the value proposition. This is how I imagine it playing out among the "Big 4." Apple: If Apple vanished tomorrow I could get an Android phone that lacked some of the polish of iOS, but my day-to-day would be largely unchanged. Their laptops are still the best IMO, but could deal with a Lenovo if needed. Google: Bing is fine. There are no shortage of online collaboration tools. Their dominance in AI is impressive, but it's not hard to imagine Microsoft reasserting themselves in Google's absence. Self-driving cars and life extension startups are well-capitalized. Their services are amazing, but not unique. Facebook: Social media will find a way. If FB vaporized, something would fill the gap. Twitter would be given a new lease on life. Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave. Who has the tech chops, willingness to deal with the grimy logistics and poor margins of retail, build out the cap ex of distribution, and deal with the politics of it all. Amazon is the most untouchable, irreplaceable company in tech. If I had to bet on one of these four companies existing 100 years from now it would be Amazon without question.

Gelob 10y ago
Walmart
- hacknat 10y ago
  Walmart is going to build the largest hosting company in the world?
  - ajamesm 10y ago
    If you're a tech company, and your stack is so tightly coupled to Amazon that it represents an existential threat to your server fleet, you were never going to make it anyway.
    - hacknat 10y ago
      Because Netflix could migrate over night, right?
      - hueving 10y ago
        Yes, they should have a contingency plan to bring things onto another hosting provider within 1 or 2 days. Anything else is negligence from a business continuity perspective for a company that size. Companies plan for utilities to go out, which don't even have competition. It's insane to operate just hoping Amazon doesn't get hacked, freeze your account, experience a catastrophic failure, or just decide to quadruple the price overnight. If uptime has any relevance to your company at all, have (and test!) a process to move everything to another provider in a mostly automated fashion.
  - justaman 10y ago
    Dont forget their early adoption of database technology led to their rise.
    - incongruity 10y ago
      That's interesting – I actually hadn't heard that before but it makes for a notable story. Got a link?
      - chuck8088 10y ago
        https://www.healthcatalyst.com/wal-mart-birth-of-data-warehouse/ https://www.healthcatalyst.com/wal-mart-birth-of-data-wareho...
  - maccard 10y ago
    MS already have Azure which would fill the gap I'm sure. There's also Google cloud compute.
- louhike 10y ago
  They do not have the international scale of Amazon. Walmart is non-existent in a lot of countries.
  - decebalus1 10y ago
    So? It's not like there's no online retail in those countries. Amazon is fighting the good fight against local retailers which will thrive until a 'replacement' comes along. I'm pretty sure Europe will not miss Amazon that much (not as much as the USA). I just searched for how much does Amazon sell outside of North America (which granted, includes Canada and Mexico) and it was about 40%[1]. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Amazons-revenue-comes-from-outside-the-US https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Amazons-revenue-com...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
ajamesm 10y ago
Wal-Mart, probably. They bought Jet.com, which is effectively Amazon retail. I've tried it and it works just fine. Amazon's definitely the 900 lb gorilla of convenience, but the BATNA of simply not using them is not really a material concern for the normative middle-class consumer who can drive to Target.
nso 10y ago
I think you are forgetting a big one. Microsoft. If they were to suddenly go legs up today that would have unimagionable consequences. The size of their offerings and the amount of companies using their stack is breathtaking. Sure, except for their online services the stack would still be there, but the prospects of no more security updates would cause real problems and a slow but steady meltdown. There would be scrambling like we have never seen before in the IT world. So much scrambling.
- ergothus 10y ago
  ...I don't live in the MS stack, so I'm unclear on why MS leaving would be so irreplaceable. Shake up to businesses that rely on Windows? Sure, but honestly I don't have troubles imagining another vendor (Apple or a *nix vendor or one of the OSes that are known and beloved to only a few) stepping in - after all, there's nothing special Windows offers. Frankly, I think this would be good - businesses have long lagged behind in be able to change because they are hampered by locked-in software limitations. My current office uses Google Docs and Gmail, and I was amazed by how little that causes problems. If MS were to vanish, I foresee a period of panic and pain...but more panic than pain, and of limited duration. In particular, assuming Windows didn't vanish, everyone would have time to deal with it. Lack up feature updates, lack of keeping up with standards, lack of security updates...MS has shown in the past that these can be survived, and while recent MS behavior has been better, I don't see "unimaginable consequences". Heck, there are still people running IE6! (very few, relatively, but 0.25% market share is still a lot of people!) Then again, I've often noticed that being in or out of the MS stack is a bubble, and the other side sees things very differently, so I could definitely be wrong here. The only reason Amazon vanishing would be significant is because there's not really a competitor in the whole of their space. online booksellers aren't doing online non-book goods delivery aren't doing cloud services aren't doing grocery delivery, etc. Each of those services would be easily replaced, but not by a single company.
  - ChrisBland 10y ago
    You should count yourself as lucky for not having to work in either public sector, higher ed or just plain old companies. ActiveDirectory + Windows servers disappearing overnight would pretty much send us back to the 1980s with how prevalent it is.
edgyswingset 10y ago
Jet.com/walmart is something I use already, and often prefer it to Amazon's own shopping. The website is cleaner which appeals to me. Shipping isn't quite as fast, but it's easily something I can live with. Half of what I get via Amazon doesn't ship via Prime, anyways. I already use Netflix for my video streaming. Spongebob is on Amazon Prime, so I watch that. I use YouTube, XBOX, and Google Play for other stuff (other videos, some movie rentals, games, music). I use OneDrive for storing files on a company's servers. Works great. I normally just get books from a bookstore or library. Tried a Kindle, didn't care much for it. Truth be told, I'm not that big of a reader. Azure is a perfectly suitable replacement for AWS - VMs, storage, functions, etc. So is GCP, but I'm not familiar enough with it. I don't really do food delivery, though I game the coupon system a bit with Blue Apron from time-to-time, since they keep sending me $30 off a delivery when I cancel. I mainly just go to the grocery store. Amazon is absolutely not irreplaceable for me, nor do I think it's irreplaceable for others.
- dboreham 10y ago
  > I normally just get books from a bookstore or library Wow. Where do you live? I can't imagine being able to find 1/2 of the books I buy in any of the bookstores in San Francisco, for example. otoh most "books" I buy these days are actually Kindle downloads, or on O'Reilly Safari.
  - eridius 10y ago
    There's plenty of other online retailers for physical books. Literally every book you can buy at Amazon you should be able to find somewhere else. And for digital books, there's other vendors there too (such as iBooks).
    - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
      I avoid Amazon. I buy my books elsewhere and nothing Amazon has that I need can't be sourced somewhere else.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
losteric 10y ago
Walmart would replace Amazon. Not over night, but I'd say less than 5 years to fill the online void.
Keyframe 10y ago
Amazon being irreplaceable is not something I can agree at all with, living in Europe. I bought a book or few here and there and that's about it. AWS can be replaced, and is all the time. That's about it. Now, Ebay and paypal on the other hand... Also, Google is more Gmail and youtube to me than google.com. How are you going to replace that easily? Especially youtube with so much content now.
- sjg007 10y ago
  twitch would replace youtube. bing for search.
  - Keyframe 10y ago
    How would you replace youtube without its content though? That's where it's at.
    - sjg007 10y ago
      People would port stuff over.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    My bet would be on vimeo, not twitch.
    - Keyframe 10y ago
      Vimeo is amazing when their player doesn't suck.
deepGem 10y ago
Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave Absolutely true. Only some weird merger of Microsoft/Walmart/FedEx can perhaps replace Amazon. In my head, Amazon will be the first trillion $ company.
- 9erdelta 10y ago
  Yeah when I think about it, Amazon is only going to get bigger. Even Twitch, I think, is only scratching the surface of what it will become.
- superioritycplx 10y ago
  Why the said companies need to merge at all? Why not obtain specific services from all three separately?
  - deepGem 10y ago
    Agreed. There is no need to merge. I was just making a counter point from an entity/conglomerate perspective.
jansho 10y ago
> Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave. Well then there's the Chinese version. https://www.wired.com/2014/09/alibaba-already-bigger-facebook-amazon-ibm/ https://www.wired.com/2014/09/alibaba-already-bigger-faceboo...
wastedhours 10y ago
I guess the UK is such a compact market that most ecommerce plays are easier compared with larger markets so Amazon's "USP" is simplicity rather than uniqueness. I could get a decent number of products from Argos the same day, my food (/homewares) delivered in a 2 hour window the next day from any number of suppliers (and if rumours are true that the aforementioned Argos might merge with a supermarket, challenger right there). Their main benefit is in selection, price (that isn't quite as dominant in some things as it was - although it's potentially going to destroy their competitors before they themselves match Amazon) and having a slick checkout process with all of my info in there. Obviously this is why they're focusing on own-brand, specialised products and selling infra, but then do we see a day where Amazon has its fingers in so many pies in such a big way that they have to be broken up?
javajosh 10y ago
Uh, what? Amazon is competing with retailers, so if Amazon goes away you'd buy from other retailers. In a big city get your books and music from local independent booksellers and record stores (in the country or for esoteric things you get them from alibris and discogs). Electronics you can get from Best Buy, Target, Wal Mart, Newegg. Or you can go to a secondary market for all the things, a little company called "eBay". Why do I know this? Because I don't use Amazon anymore at all for anything after they blatantly screwed me over as a seller. Sometimes I feel like engineers on HN have centralization on the brain. We are so impressed with scale and complexity of Amazon! We forget this size and complexity arose because it's trying to compete with (and presumably supplant) an enormous, biologically evolved distribution and retail ecosystem. If Amazon dies, we all simply go back to that ecosystem, like I did, both online and real life. (And you know what? It's better. Newegg is better for electronics because they only do electronics, and they fight patent trolls; Alibris is better because they have a better selection, better prices, and support local business; Discogs is better for the same reason; all are better because they are focused.)
- yannickt 10y ago
  " In a big city get your books and music from local independent booksellers and record stores" Except in many cities, many of those went out of business in large part because of Amazon. Amazon is still often more competitive compared with those that remain, from a price/shipping perspective.
  - javajosh 10y ago
    That's a vague claim, but such as it is, it rings hollow. Actually, it sounds like a rationalization for using Amazon (which is easy) instead of looking around for a local alternative, and going there (which is hard). I've recently travelled fairly extensively through the US and every city of any size I visited still has a handful of independents, and they are doing okay, if not great. The next time you want an album, instead of opening up iTunes or Amazon, I suggest opening up google maps and typing in "record store", and then going there.
    - 10y ago
mercer 10y ago
Excellent comment! I disagree about one thing though: I think, at least here in Holland, Google would be missed quite a bit more than Amazon. I don't know anyone who uses Amazon, so them disappearing wouldn't have too much of an effect on my world. Google, on the other hand, is a crucial part of the lives of many people around me. Almost everyone I know uses Gmail, and Google Docs (spreadsheets, etc.) are not only used all over the place by various people collaborating, but often crucial parts of the infrastructure of many of their business. Everyone I know who has tried other search engines keeps coming back to google, about half of my friends are on Android phones and use google calendar and their assistant. Basically, Google seems to have multiple tentacles into each and everyone I know. Amazon, in contrast, is a 'web shop' that most of the people I know don't even use because there are local, more popular alternatives (Bol.com, for one). I suspect if Amazon went under, the businesses relying on their cloud services would panic, but just move to another service. Google, on the other hand, would be sorely missed by tons of people in tons of small and big ways.
- kmonsen 10y ago
  I used to live in Europe and would agree with you 100%, but now living in the Bay area Amazon is a key part of life almost. I have tried to stop using them a few times but it is just ridiculously convenient and cheap. Order something and have the almost always cheapest option on the door today or tomorrow. Another reason for this is that going to stores is a serious hassle here. When I was living in London and even NYC I just walked to the stores instead, but in gridlocked suburbia that is almost not an option.
johnchristopher 10y ago
My personnal experience mirrors your for the first three points but I wouldn't miss amazon because I only ordered twice from them. Which goes to show that any of these points could be irreplaceable - or not - for anybody. I agree with you final stance though, that Amazon is highly likely to be still around in 100 years unless they are back to square one with everyone else if an energy crisis (oil, transport, etc.) crushes us all.
mnm1 10y ago
If Amazon disappeared tomorrow, my work as an ops person will become a joy. I truly cannot imagine any other vendor being this shitty and in business. Home life is already a joy (and a lot less expensive / cluttered) because that relationship has already been severed. I can't think of a tech company I'd miss less. Not to mention how good it'd be for competition and quality in the retail and especially in the cloud computing business.
- j2bax 10y ago
  Wait, so you are saying that having the most innovative competitor (in the retail space) would be good for competition? Maybe for THE competition, but surely not the consumer.
  - mnm1 10y ago
    I'm definitely NOT talking about the most innovative competitor in the retail space because I'm talking about Amazon. What I'm saying is that if Amazon disappeared, the retail space would be more competitive. I highly doubt that is at all controversial.
- cwilkes 10y ago
  > I truly cannot imagine any other vendor being this shitty and in business. I see you haven't used Softlayer
amenghra 10y ago
It's not only about the services these companies provide but the data that they currently hold. I would hate to loose all my Google docs overnight or all my Facebook photos. Sure, you can regularly back things up, but there's no guarantee that importing those backups on the replacement service will be painless.
Balgair 10y ago
Meh, I know I am anecdata, but I don't use them that much, maybe once every 6 months for a book or something. I know some people use them every day, but I just don't and don't really ever see myself doing so. I mean, it just isn't hard at all to pick up the stuff I need/want from the store on the way home* *Caveat: I live in the suburbs of a larger-ish city, not in the rural areas of the world.
marvindanig 10y ago
> Amazon is the most untouchable, irreplaceable company in tech. 100%, yes. Totally agree! And it is probably a very non-ideal situation to be in from the customer POV. For example, Amazon ate up the .book TLD away from consumers and very few eyebrows were raised. Their strength and position in business is an impressive thing to talk about until someone at the top decides to flip the switch. ;)
Klockan 10y ago
> Amazon is the most untouchable, irreplaceable company in tech. I disagree, Amazon is the only big player which have yet to master the international market. I live in Europe and there are plenty of small players here which offers similar or better deals with faster shipping so most don't even bother with Amazon. Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are as dominant as everywhere else though.
- cmrdporcupine 10y ago
  Amazon can't even master localizing to their nearest neighbour in Canada. Amazon music and video are still not here, over 10 years after the rolled out in the US. Their online shopping offerings are not as in depth here. Their Canadian presence is an after thought, and is arguably one of the easiest localization efforts to undergo. Compare this to Apple who, when they decided to bring iTunes outside of the US launched it almost simultaneously across a huge number of locales. IMHO Amazon is already losing ground in areas it has only recently tried to stick its nose into. And its online marketplace has started to suck, started to fill with dubious merchants with prices all over the map.
  - cvasquez 10y ago
    I agree that Amazon in Canada is not as good as in the US but we do have prime video now (primevideo.com) and, at least in Vancouver we now have 1 day shipping which is amazing.
superioritycplx 10y ago
>Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave... My local grocery and book stores?.. Some another cloud provider for hosting?.. It'll be very hard to replace the _combination_ of services Amazon provides. The separate services by themselves are hardly unique.
Shivetya 10y ago
while it cannot completely fill the space, people never take ebay seriously. the amount of stuff I can buy there shipped free or just in total cheaper than Amazon makes it worth my time to cross shop. what keeps me off other 'retailer' sites is merely how badly some are implemented, from clutter to just outright being buried under items that are listed but you cannot get in your area.
bogomipz 10y ago
>"Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave" So you would make do with substitutes to deal with Apple, Google and Facebook disappearing but if Amazon disappeared you can't imagine yourself or others walking into a store to buy goods?
- barsonme 10y ago
  Well, part of the reason I use Amazon is how little free time I have. Amazon has lots of stuff that I either can't find elsewhere or don't have the time to go and purchase in-person.
bogomipz 10y ago
>"Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave" So you would make do with substitutes to deal with Apple, Google and Facebook disappearing but if Amazon disappeared you can't imagine yourself or others walking into a store to buy goods?
lsh 10y ago
> 100%. It's also arguably the most irreplaceable. As an Australian who doesn't have access to Amazon, it's easy to imagine Amazon being replaced.
rajacombinator 10y ago
You're really underestimating the power of markets if you think any company is irreplaceable. Copying/replicating is a lot easier than doing something for the first time.
zxcvb 10y ago
I live in Australia - there is no Amazon here - it's rarely the go-to for anything. Regardless, it's still nice here.
manicstoic 10y ago
Alternatives outside the US / Euro centric HN perspective: Alibaba et al.
javier2 10y ago
Amazon: Alibaba/taobao

Gelob 10y ago

Walmart

hacknat 10y ago
Walmart is going to build the largest hosting company in the world?
- ajamesm 10y ago
  If you're a tech company, and your stack is so tightly coupled to Amazon that it represents an existential threat to your server fleet, you were never going to make it anyway.
  - hacknat 10y ago
    Because Netflix could migrate over night, right?
    - hueving 10y ago
      Yes, they should have a contingency plan to bring things onto another hosting provider within 1 or 2 days. Anything else is negligence from a business continuity perspective for a company that size. Companies plan for utilities to go out, which don't even have competition. It's insane to operate just hoping Amazon doesn't get hacked, freeze your account, experience a catastrophic failure, or just decide to quadruple the price overnight. If uptime has any relevance to your company at all, have (and test!) a process to move everything to another provider in a mostly automated fashion.
- justaman 10y ago
  Dont forget their early adoption of database technology led to their rise.
  - incongruity 10y ago
    That's interesting – I actually hadn't heard that before but it makes for a notable story. Got a link?
    - chuck8088 10y ago
      https://www.healthcatalyst.com/wal-mart-birth-of-data-warehouse/ https://www.healthcatalyst.com/wal-mart-birth-of-data-wareho...
- maccard 10y ago
  MS already have Azure which would fill the gap I'm sure. There's also Google cloud compute.
louhike 10y ago
They do not have the international scale of Amazon. Walmart is non-existent in a lot of countries.
- decebalus1 10y ago
  So? It's not like there's no online retail in those countries. Amazon is fighting the good fight against local retailers which will thrive until a 'replacement' comes along. I'm pretty sure Europe will not miss Amazon that much (not as much as the USA). I just searched for how much does Amazon sell outside of North America (which granted, includes Canada and Mexico) and it was about 40%[1]. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Amazons-revenue-comes-from-outside-the-US https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Amazons-revenue-com...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

ajamesm 10y ago

Wal-Mart, probably. They bought Jet.com, which is effectively Amazon retail. I've tried it and it works just fine. Amazon's definitely the 900 lb gorilla of convenience, but the BATNA of simply not using them is not really a material concern for the normative middle-class consumer who can drive to Target.

nso 10y ago

I think you are forgetting a big one. Microsoft. If they were to suddenly go legs up today that would have unimagionable consequences. The size of their offerings and the amount of companies using their stack is breathtaking. Sure, except for their online services the stack would still be there, but the prospects of no more security updates would cause real problems and a slow but steady meltdown. There would be scrambling like we have never seen before in the IT world. So much scrambling.

ergothus 10y ago
...I don't live in the MS stack, so I'm unclear on why MS leaving would be so irreplaceable. Shake up to businesses that rely on Windows? Sure, but honestly I don't have troubles imagining another vendor (Apple or a *nix vendor or one of the OSes that are known and beloved to only a few) stepping in - after all, there's nothing special Windows offers. Frankly, I think this would be good - businesses have long lagged behind in be able to change because they are hampered by locked-in software limitations. My current office uses Google Docs and Gmail, and I was amazed by how little that causes problems. If MS were to vanish, I foresee a period of panic and pain...but more panic than pain, and of limited duration. In particular, assuming Windows didn't vanish, everyone would have time to deal with it. Lack up feature updates, lack of keeping up with standards, lack of security updates...MS has shown in the past that these can be survived, and while recent MS behavior has been better, I don't see "unimaginable consequences". Heck, there are still people running IE6! (very few, relatively, but 0.25% market share is still a lot of people!) Then again, I've often noticed that being in or out of the MS stack is a bubble, and the other side sees things very differently, so I could definitely be wrong here. The only reason Amazon vanishing would be significant is because there's not really a competitor in the whole of their space. online booksellers aren't doing online non-book goods delivery aren't doing cloud services aren't doing grocery delivery, etc. Each of those services would be easily replaced, but not by a single company.
- ChrisBland 10y ago
  You should count yourself as lucky for not having to work in either public sector, higher ed or just plain old companies. ActiveDirectory + Windows servers disappearing overnight would pretty much send us back to the 1980s with how prevalent it is.

edgyswingset 10y ago

Jet.com/walmart is something I use already, and often prefer it to Amazon's own shopping. The website is cleaner which appeals to me. Shipping isn't quite as fast, but it's easily something I can live with. Half of what I get via Amazon doesn't ship via Prime, anyways. I already use Netflix for my video streaming. Spongebob is on Amazon Prime, so I watch that. I use YouTube, XBOX, and Google Play for other stuff (other videos, some movie rentals, games, music). I use OneDrive for storing files on a company's servers. Works great. I normally just get books from a bookstore or library. Tried a Kindle, didn't care much for it. Truth be told, I'm not that big of a reader. Azure is a perfectly suitable replacement for AWS - VMs, storage, functions, etc. So is GCP, but I'm not familiar enough with it. I don't really do food delivery, though I game the coupon system a bit with Blue Apron from time-to-time, since they keep sending me $30 off a delivery when I cancel. I mainly just go to the grocery store. Amazon is absolutely not irreplaceable for me, nor do I think it's irreplaceable for others.

dboreham 10y ago
> I normally just get books from a bookstore or library Wow. Where do you live? I can't imagine being able to find 1/2 of the books I buy in any of the bookstores in San Francisco, for example. otoh most "books" I buy these days are actually Kindle downloads, or on O'Reilly Safari.
- eridius 10y ago
  There's plenty of other online retailers for physical books. Literally every book you can buy at Amazon you should be able to find somewhere else. And for digital books, there's other vendors there too (such as iBooks).
  - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
    I avoid Amazon. I buy my books elsewhere and nothing Amazon has that I need can't be sourced somewhere else.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago

losteric 10y ago

Walmart would replace Amazon. Not over night, but I'd say less than 5 years to fill the online void.

Keyframe 10y ago

Amazon being irreplaceable is not something I can agree at all with, living in Europe. I bought a book or few here and there and that's about it. AWS can be replaced, and is all the time. That's about it. Now, Ebay and paypal on the other hand... Also, Google is more Gmail and youtube to me than google.com. How are you going to replace that easily? Especially youtube with so much content now.

sjg007 10y ago
twitch would replace youtube. bing for search.
- Keyframe 10y ago
  How would you replace youtube without its content though? That's where it's at.
  - sjg007 10y ago
    People would port stuff over.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  My bet would be on vimeo, not twitch.
  - Keyframe 10y ago
    Vimeo is amazing when their player doesn't suck.

deepGem 10y ago

Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave Absolutely true. Only some weird merger of Microsoft/Walmart/FedEx can perhaps replace Amazon. In my head, Amazon will be the first trillion $ company.

9erdelta 10y ago
Yeah when I think about it, Amazon is only going to get bigger. Even Twitch, I think, is only scratching the surface of what it will become.
superioritycplx 10y ago
Why the said companies need to merge at all? Why not obtain specific services from all three separately?
- deepGem 10y ago
  Agreed. There is no need to merge. I was just making a counter point from an entity/conglomerate perspective.

jansho 10y ago

> Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave. Well then there's the Chinese version. https://www.wired.com/2014/09/alibaba-already-bigger-facebook-amazon-ibm/ https://www.wired.com/2014/09/alibaba-already-bigger-faceboo...

wastedhours 10y ago

I guess the UK is such a compact market that most ecommerce plays are easier compared with larger markets so Amazon's "USP" is simplicity rather than uniqueness. I could get a decent number of products from Argos the same day, my food (/homewares) delivered in a 2 hour window the next day from any number of suppliers (and if rumours are true that the aforementioned Argos might merge with a supermarket, challenger right there). Their main benefit is in selection, price (that isn't quite as dominant in some things as it was - although it's potentially going to destroy their competitors before they themselves match Amazon) and having a slick checkout process with all of my info in there. Obviously this is why they're focusing on own-brand, specialised products and selling infra, but then do we see a day where Amazon has its fingers in so many pies in such a big way that they have to be broken up?

javajosh 10y ago

Uh, what? Amazon is competing with retailers, so if Amazon goes away you'd buy from other retailers. In a big city get your books and music from local independent booksellers and record stores (in the country or for esoteric things you get them from alibris and discogs). Electronics you can get from Best Buy, Target, Wal Mart, Newegg. Or you can go to a secondary market for all the things, a little company called "eBay". Why do I know this? Because I don't use Amazon anymore at all for anything after they blatantly screwed me over as a seller. Sometimes I feel like engineers on HN have centralization on the brain. We are so impressed with scale and complexity of Amazon! We forget this size and complexity arose because it's trying to compete with (and presumably supplant) an enormous, biologically evolved distribution and retail ecosystem. If Amazon dies, we all simply go back to that ecosystem, like I did, both online and real life. (And you know what? It's better. Newegg is better for electronics because they only do electronics, and they fight patent trolls; Alibris is better because they have a better selection, better prices, and support local business; Discogs is better for the same reason; all are better because they are focused.)

yannickt 10y ago
" In a big city get your books and music from local independent booksellers and record stores" Except in many cities, many of those went out of business in large part because of Amazon. Amazon is still often more competitive compared with those that remain, from a price/shipping perspective.
- javajosh 10y ago
  That's a vague claim, but such as it is, it rings hollow. Actually, it sounds like a rationalization for using Amazon (which is easy) instead of looking around for a local alternative, and going there (which is hard). I've recently travelled fairly extensively through the US and every city of any size I visited still has a handful of independents, and they are doing okay, if not great. The next time you want an album, instead of opening up iTunes or Amazon, I suggest opening up google maps and typing in "record store", and then going there.
  - 10y ago

mercer 10y ago

Excellent comment! I disagree about one thing though: I think, at least here in Holland, Google would be missed quite a bit more than Amazon. I don't know anyone who uses Amazon, so them disappearing wouldn't have too much of an effect on my world. Google, on the other hand, is a crucial part of the lives of many people around me. Almost everyone I know uses Gmail, and Google Docs (spreadsheets, etc.) are not only used all over the place by various people collaborating, but often crucial parts of the infrastructure of many of their business. Everyone I know who has tried other search engines keeps coming back to google, about half of my friends are on Android phones and use google calendar and their assistant. Basically, Google seems to have multiple tentacles into each and everyone I know. Amazon, in contrast, is a 'web shop' that most of the people I know don't even use because there are local, more popular alternatives (Bol.com, for one). I suspect if Amazon went under, the businesses relying on their cloud services would panic, but just move to another service. Google, on the other hand, would be sorely missed by tons of people in tons of small and big ways.

kmonsen 10y ago
I used to live in Europe and would agree with you 100%, but now living in the Bay area Amazon is a key part of life almost. I have tried to stop using them a few times but it is just ridiculously convenient and cheap. Order something and have the almost always cheapest option on the door today or tomorrow. Another reason for this is that going to stores is a serious hassle here. When I was living in London and even NYC I just walked to the stores instead, but in gridlocked suburbia that is almost not an option.

johnchristopher 10y ago

My personnal experience mirrors your for the first three points but I wouldn't miss amazon because I only ordered twice from them. Which goes to show that any of these points could be irreplaceable - or not - for anybody. I agree with you final stance though, that Amazon is highly likely to be still around in 100 years unless they are back to square one with everyone else if an energy crisis (oil, transport, etc.) crushes us all.

mnm1 10y ago

If Amazon disappeared tomorrow, my work as an ops person will become a joy. I truly cannot imagine any other vendor being this shitty and in business. Home life is already a joy (and a lot less expensive / cluttered) because that relationship has already been severed. I can't think of a tech company I'd miss less. Not to mention how good it'd be for competition and quality in the retail and especially in the cloud computing business.

j2bax 10y ago
Wait, so you are saying that having the most innovative competitor (in the retail space) would be good for competition? Maybe for THE competition, but surely not the consumer.
- mnm1 10y ago
  I'm definitely NOT talking about the most innovative competitor in the retail space because I'm talking about Amazon. What I'm saying is that if Amazon disappeared, the retail space would be more competitive. I highly doubt that is at all controversial.
cwilkes 10y ago
> I truly cannot imagine any other vendor being this shitty and in business. I see you haven't used Softlayer

amenghra 10y ago

It's not only about the services these companies provide but the data that they currently hold. I would hate to loose all my Google docs overnight or all my Facebook photos. Sure, you can regularly back things up, but there's no guarantee that importing those backups on the replacement service will be painless.

Balgair 10y ago

Meh, I know I am anecdata, but I don't use them that much, maybe once every 6 months for a book or something. I know some people use them every day, but I just don't and don't really ever see myself doing so. I mean, it just isn't hard at all to pick up the stuff I need/want from the store on the way home* *Caveat: I live in the suburbs of a larger-ish city, not in the rural areas of the world.

marvindanig 10y ago

> Amazon is the most untouchable, irreplaceable company in tech. 100%, yes. Totally agree! And it is probably a very non-ideal situation to be in from the customer POV. For example, Amazon ate up the .book TLD away from consumers and very few eyebrows were raised. Their strength and position in business is an impressive thing to talk about until someone at the top decides to flip the switch. ;)

Klockan 10y ago

> Amazon is the most untouchable, irreplaceable company in tech. I disagree, Amazon is the only big player which have yet to master the international market. I live in Europe and there are plenty of small players here which offers similar or better deals with faster shipping so most don't even bother with Amazon. Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are as dominant as everywhere else though.

cmrdporcupine 10y ago
Amazon can't even master localizing to their nearest neighbour in Canada. Amazon music and video are still not here, over 10 years after the rolled out in the US. Their online shopping offerings are not as in depth here. Their Canadian presence is an after thought, and is arguably one of the easiest localization efforts to undergo. Compare this to Apple who, when they decided to bring iTunes outside of the US launched it almost simultaneously across a huge number of locales. IMHO Amazon is already losing ground in areas it has only recently tried to stick its nose into. And its online marketplace has started to suck, started to fill with dubious merchants with prices all over the map.
- cvasquez 10y ago
  I agree that Amazon in Canada is not as good as in the US but we do have prime video now (primevideo.com) and, at least in Vancouver we now have 1 day shipping which is amazing.

superioritycplx 10y ago

>Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave... My local grocery and book stores?.. Some another cloud provider for hosting?.. It'll be very hard to replace the _combination_ of services Amazon provides. The separate services by themselves are hardly unique.

Shivetya 10y ago

while it cannot completely fill the space, people never take ebay seriously. the amount of stuff I can buy there shipped free or just in total cheaper than Amazon makes it worth my time to cross shop. what keeps me off other 'retailer' sites is merely how badly some are implemented, from clutter to just outright being buried under items that are listed but you cannot get in your area.

bogomipz 10y ago

>"Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave" So you would make do with substitutes to deal with Apple, Google and Facebook disappearing but if Amazon disappeared you can't imagine yourself or others walking into a store to buy goods?

barsonme 10y ago
Well, part of the reason I use Amazon is how little free time I have. Amazon has lots of stuff that I either can't find elsewhere or don't have the time to go and purchase in-person.

bogomipz 10y ago

lsh 10y ago

> 100%. It's also arguably the most irreplaceable. As an Australian who doesn't have access to Amazon, it's easy to imagine Amazon being replaced.

rajacombinator 10y ago

You're really underestimating the power of markets if you think any company is irreplaceable. Copying/replicating is a lot easier than doing something for the first time.

zxcvb 10y ago

I live in Australia - there is no Amazon here - it's rarely the go-to for anything. Regardless, it's still nice here.

manicstoic 10y ago

Alternatives outside the US / Euro centric HN perspective: Alibaba et al.

javier2 10y ago

Amazon: Alibaba/taobao