Do you typically down-vote posts that don't happen to agree with your world view? I don't see how your points are any more well-founded than mine as they are al

Do you typically down-vote posts that don't happen to agree with your world view? I don't see how your points are any more well-founded than mine as they are all based on conjecture and not facts. Arguments like "Cloud's margin is very good" may make sense to you, but typically a well-reasoned argument states a thesis followed by evidence supporting it and I'm not seeing that. You are also making all sorts of erroneous assumptions about what I said. I never said that I wasn't "impressed" by Amazon, in fact I think I actually said that what they've done is extraordinary. I also never said that online shopping, or Amazon for that matter, were "doomed." And to your point about Wal-Mart being the "everything" store- name all the retailers on Earth that are larger than Wal-Mart. I'd be interested to hear what you came up with because last time I checked, there weren't any. Wal-Mart is the everything store, and has been for a long time. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that most shoppers are price-conscious? If your argument is simply that ecommerce hasn't overtaken brick-and-mortar yet, fine, but then why does Wal-Mart absolutely dominate every other brick-and-mortar? It's because they've always relentlessly focused on figuring out ways to lower prices for their customers. In fact despite what a lot of people think, Wal-Mart has one of the most sophisticated distribution and inventory management systems ever created. It wasn't so long ago that Wal-Mart was being cast as evil because of their tactics bullying product manufacturers, but now people are writing their eulogy. Sorry, but the idea that mass-market customers are highly price-sensitive is well-founded and beyond dispute. If you can't come up with a single potential threat to a business, you should probably take a step back and ask yourself if you're really looking at the situation objectively.