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> New tech is giving outsize advantage to the major players across almost every industry, who can afford to invest in creating internal teams for these big new
by mabbo 10y ago
> New tech is giving outsize advantage to the major players across almost every industry, who can afford to invest in creating internal teams for these big new technologies.
Oohh, this very much.
Inside Amazon warehouses, there are tens of thousands of employees called 'Pickers'. They walk around with these handscanners with 300x300 pixel screens that tell them where to go and what item to get next.
For two years, my job was to make the UX of that application a little bit faster. Not the order to pick the items (another team) not the decision of which shipments should be processed next (also different team) or which items should be picked by which picker (you guessed it- a different team). Just the UX for the 0.9MP of screen space in front of the user.
Labour costs for that job are in the hundreds of millions per year, so any team that made a 1% improvement to overall efficiency would be covering its own costs a many times over. And we did.
Amazon can afford to get those small 1% gains multiple times per year, but for smaller companies the gains wouldn't pay for the costs. If they want to beat Amazon, they'll need to find a very big win that Amazon didn't see first. The only company I can think of that did that was Kiva Robotics- wait, it's called Amazon Robotics now.
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoThis is exactly one of the processes I see happening, and thanks for the real world example.
- dexterdog 10y agoThat's actually a .09MP screen. Makes it sound as pathetic as it is.
- mabbo 10y agoOh God you're right. 300x300 pixel screen, IE 5.5, tiny tiny processor, 128MB of ram (64MB on the old ones). The only advantage that thing had was that if you dropped it from a fourth story window, the device would be fine. I was told we had tested this to be sure.
- nfriedly 10y agoI think the only realistic way for a small player to beat Amazon at selling physical goods is to charge more and convince customers that it's worth it.
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoWhat would keep Amazon from adjusting to this or Acquiring the company if it got big enough? Those are tiny tweaks that they could make easily. Plus Amazon is much more than just a place to buy. They are data services, logistics, analytics, seller services, infrastructure etc...
- nfriedly 10y ago> What would keep Amazon from adjusting to this Obviously not much. The point I was trying to make was that a small player probably can't compete with Amazon on price, but they may be able to compete some other way.
- zanny 10y agoIs it even a problem if they can't compete with Amazon on price? Generally the reason to fear monopolies is abuse of market capture for profit. If you own all the corn, you can set the price. But Amazon doesn't own all the commerce - it just undercuts everyone. But that is a win for consumers until Amazon tries to exploit its position. But the moment they do that, right there is where you can undercut Amazon. If they are abusing their competitive advantage by the nature of abusing it they are giving it up. At worse, they raise prices circumstantially to maximize profit, but that is more the benefits of winning the market than of exploiting a monopoly, because they would still be overall cheaper than any competitor could manage. As long as Amazon is cheaper (and not exploiting employees) than what a competitor could do, the consumer is winning.
- MawNicker 10y agoAs you've described it, the consumer's "win" is determined by Amazon's competitors. Every private advantage Amazon has serves to undercut the profits a competitor would need to develop their own productivity gains. Those are the gains that would actually show up for consumers. How are they winning?