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I don’t think that the world can quite fathom how dangerous Amazon actually is to virtually every industry. When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazo

by kbos87 9y ago

I don’t think that the world can quite fathom how dangerous Amazon actually is to virtually every industry. When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. Say goodbye to grocery stores and ground floor retail if they get their way. They are just smart enough to do it slowly enough where they don’t have any jarring sudden impact. In tech, Amazon has tremendous power to put anyone they want out of business. AWS puts them in the enviable position of understanding all sorts of intimate details of everyone else’s business models. Again, they are too smart to do it too quickly. It pains me that my generation, a generation of people who dream of being makers and business owners, don’t see the irony of the convenience of having toilet paper delivered and lower prices at Whole Foods for what they really are - a trick and a trap that strengthens a company that can and will have a real tangible negative impact on everyone’s employment and business prospects in the future if hasn’t already.

rtpg 9y ago
I understand the dangers of monopoly, but I wish there was a stronger argument here. We've seen this sort of thing happen before, with Walmart. And none of these arguments worked! Walmart is big and dominant. It killed off smaller places, but people don't care because it has mostly everything and is cheap. "This convenient good thing is actually bad!" isn't super convincing I guess.... EDIT: the ultimate irony being that Walmart/Amazon are the "ideal endgame" of market capitalism. Razor-thin margins everywhere, people get things cheap. But how do you get cheap goods? Pressure suppliers, pay workers as little as possible. The _best case scenario_ for this economic model leads to a terrible status quo. And the only difference between this and other industries is the size of the slice of the pie the C-suite gets.
- deevolution 9y ago
  We similarly give up our privacy in exchange for convenience. Even tho we know its bad, Its just too damn convenient and easy for the majority of the population.
- refurb 9y ago
  the _best case scenario_ for this economic model leads to a terrible status quo Terrible status quo? You realize that competitive pressure is what drives progress right?
  - asfasfgasgasg 9y ago
    > Terrible status quo? You realize that competitive pressure is what drives progress right? We know that that has been true in many cases, but we don't know that it always will be true in all cases. For example, I don't think there's a very good argument that competitive pressure has led to a super high quality healthcare system in the US vs. the rest of the industrialized world. Competitive pressure optimizes for certain things, and those things are not always what is best for the public. Especially, if "competitive pressure" is applied by a trust, it can cause market failures. I don't know that Amazon is that. Maybe it will be. But, last I checked, we do still have ground floor retail. I think there's an equilibrium that we'll reach at some point, where retail space commands lower rents and has to provide a high quality shopping experience. The Best Buys of the world are done for, but the Nordstroms are not.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
      > I don't think there's a very good argument that competitive pressure has led to a super high quality healthcare system in the US That's because there really isn't any competitive pressure. Not for consumers anyway. The way our healthcare is tied to our employment means we get little choice in providers ourselves, leaving that decision to our employers, who probably don't have our best interest at heart.
    - iamnotlarry 9y ago
      The supply of doctors in the U.S. is tightly controlled by interests best served when the supply is limited. This is not competitive pressure. Allow doctors to be "certified" by private organizations, then watch how quickly medical schools change, residency allotments open up, and doctor ranks swell. As the supply of seats in medical schools and number of residencies rises, the cost of medical school will decrease. More doctors with less debt will put downward pressure on medical prices. You may argue that quality would not increase under such competition, but I disagree. People who can't afford healthcare would be able to afford poor quality healthcare which is better than they currently enjoy. Rich people will still have vanity certified doctors. In general the cost of comparable quality healthcare would be lower. TLDR; don't complain about disappointing results of competitive pressure in a market with very limited competitive pressure.
- reilly3000 9y ago
  Going off of your Walmart comment, I must say that company has shown the world what logistics can be. They have brought RFID to the state of the art, such that an entire container can be inventoried at the loading dock automagically. Amazon has 10X as many innovations, and keeps many of them pretty out in the open. I agree will OP’s chilling assessment, but appreciate the effect of innovation at scale on the rest of the world.
- tr1ck5t3r 9y ago
  Because anyone can setup on Amazon in the marketplace these traders benefit from the association of being in a location (all be it virtual) and due to the limitations of photos at being able to convey the metrics we consciously and unconsciously perceive when looking for goods in the real world, like touch, weight etc, these traders can exploit people's ignorance, which when coupled with oversea's trader's who are not bound by the same legal constraints to protect consumers can get away with very poor quality. This quality is traditionally what the buyer(s) working for the shop/store would undertake in order to not trash their reputation or brand names. In todays world where's its easy to start up and fail, arguably the brand & reputation is less important when you realise how easy it is to game the Amazon review's, but ultimately it demonstrates how price rules over everything else. So whilst the West has offshored its manufacturing pollution to China, China has sold us our landfill dumps.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  Consider software. Free market capitalism has driven the price of it to literally zero! How amazing is that?
- WalterBright 9y ago
  And before Walmart there was Sears, the unstoppable behemoth of its day. Few remember today the fear that people had of the unstoppable juggernaut that was IBM before 1990 or so. Nobody remembers that before IBM there was RCA.
- danstanflan 9y ago
  Let me add, not only are people paid very little, but they have no ownership (in the legal sense or otherwise) over the company they work for, and have less autonomy, which I believe leads to a less fulfilling work life.
- mgoetzke 9y ago
  which is why btw why Adam Smith (yes that Adam Smith) wanted a strong government to balance these interests out against agreed upon social standards.
- contingencies 9y ago
  ideal endgame It doesn't make it the ultimate endgame though. For example, Marx would say then the workers rise up, institute a state with differing priorities and either provide guiding regulation or take over Amazon and increase wages. We shall see!
- charlesdm 9y ago
  I think Amazon has one major advantage over Walmart: they don't care about profits and generally run things at break even. This in itself is super powerful, b/c Amazon investors can take their profits by selling the stock (e.g. capital gains) whereas Walmart needs to pay dividends from profits. A decline in profit will lead to a significant hit in the stock price for Walmart.
ams6110 9y ago
For me, Amazon is a long way off from threatening my local supermarket and other local retailers. Would I buy clothes from Amazon? No, I like to try them on first. Returning stuff by mail is a pain. Would I buy expensive home furnishings from Amazon? No, I like to see, touch, try these things before I spend a lot of money. Would I buy perishable groceries from Amazon? No, because deliveries happen when I'm at work and I don't want perishable food sitting in the sun for three hours on my front porch. Do I buy toilet paper from Amazon? No, because it's easier to pick it up at the store when I'm there for something else anyway, than to get it delivered and then have to deal with disposing of the cardboard box it came in. And with anything Amazon, I'm worried about counterfeit goods. So what do I buy from Amazon? Inexpensive, low risk, low margin goods, and the occasional book.
- kbos87 9y ago
  Then your Amazon buying habits roughly match what mine once were - but that’s far from how a lot of people I live amongst use Amazon. I come home to my apartment every day to find Amazon vans prowling the neighborhood delivering groceries (a year ago, I had never seen one, now they are literally everywhere) and piles upon piles of Amazon boxes in my apartment lobby. I know plenty of people who buy almost everything on Amazon, short of clothing, gas, and meals they eat away from home.
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  You're a dying breed though. Every trend is moving away from your status quo. Also, depending on where you are many people's "local super market" is Whole Foods - so yes Amazon literally "threatens" a large percentage of the US' local supermarket.
  - harryh 9y ago
    Whole foods has 1.2% market share.
    - AndrewKemendo 9y ago
      Doesn't matter, they are in every major market. Which means Amazon Fulfillment Centers (What Whole Foods really is now) "threaten" everything around them. [1] http://fortune.com/2017/06/16/amazon-whole-foods-stores-locations/ http://fortune.com/2017/06/16/amazon-whole-foods-stores-loca...
gigatexal 9y ago
As long as competent politicians exist (a misnomer?) to break up true monopolies I say let incumbent industries pay the price for failing to innovate. Why should we have car salesmen for example? A new car is more or less a homogeneous good so why does it need a middleman? I would buy a car from amazon in a heartbeat. Why should I have to wait in line for a teller or a free lane for self checkout at a grocer? Because that’s how we have done things for years we should? Because Amazon began as a book seller and has no business in disrupting other industries? Haha that’s laughable.
- kbos87 9y ago
  Your argument overlooks all of the negative externalities associated with a single large player that dominates all of these disparate industries. When smaller businesses can’t compete, there are hundreds of downstream effects. Businesses close. Real estate values fall. People lose a connection to the places they actually live in. The money we spend is funneled somewhere else. Our choices of employers become more and more limited. Wages fall, as do the prospects for anyone who wants something other than a future working as an undervalued cog in a big tech machine.
  - ewzimm 9y ago
    If small businesses can’t compete, it’s time for them to get creative and adjust their business models to become relevant again. There are all sorts of negative externalities involved in everyone just doing business as usual. No business has the right to stand still in the face of technological innovation and increased efficiency. For all the damage Amazon might do, they’re also forcing their competition to get better and know their customers.
    - scryder 9y ago
      > It’s time for them to get creative and adjust their business models to become relevant again You’re assuming that at present small businesses can do this, or, at least will be able to make this transition before companies like Amazon have crowded them out of the space they operate in. I don’t think current evidence suggests that’s likely. By analogy, small businesses right now are a bit like ants, and Amazon a child with a magnifying glass. The child and ants are categorically different, and the ants that the child chooses to melt can’t “get creative” or “adjust their model” from being the prey of a quasi-predator: they merely die, the threat is too powerful and their biology too slow to let them escape. There is such a mismatch in scale between the ants and child that even though both could, in vague terms be described as “living creatures”, and even although the ants, at their most powerful, can sting, the vast majority are merely at the child’s mercy, with the other ants only being safe by nature of being hidden. What’s key is we’re not really seeing new small business competitors emerging who, were your model correct, should be “getting creative” and then successfully taking on Amazon locally, BUT INSTEAD we’re seeing what we expect in the unbalanced ant scenario, almost all companies and lines of business Amazon targets being taken over by them or destroyed. Based on this, I’m inclined to believe the view you have is flawed. Not only is there not a level playing field in which getting creative would be meaningful, there isn’t even room to actually compete, were you creative, unless you’re the child’s size. And even if you’re his size, the child is a vicious fighter.
throwawayjava 9y ago
> It pains me that my generation, a generation of people who dream of being makers and business owners... Not just business owners, but startup founders. Also, emphasis on the "owner" not the "maker". There's no real fetish for hackers disconnected from business ownership in the zeitgeist. Why would a temporarily embarrassed monopolist support monopoly busting?
- kbos87 9y ago
  Would there be so many “temporarily embarrassed monopolists” if people had an easier time imagining a world in which they didn’t have to be the end all be all winner in order to build and be proud of something sustainable?
  - piaste 9y ago
    Practically everybody can imagine that just fine. The HN bubble is tiny.
thinkling 9y ago
People said this 20 years ago about Microsoft. They were king of the PC, imposing a Windows (and Office-) tax on every other business. They were trying to extend that dominance to the internet: Internet Explorer, CitySearch, Expedia, MSN portal, MSN Shows, MSN Messenger, you name it. They were building interactive TV, software for cars, and a mobile phone platform. For a while they were building a bill presentation and payment service. They had an e-reader platform and tried to sign up publishers for it. You name, if it had software in it, Microsoft was trying to dominate it. They knew they were the new IBM and that IBM had stumbled, and they were paranoid about that happening to them. And here we are.
- Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
  So you're saying Amazon is no different -- they'll try and take on nearly every industry, but will really only have one core competence in 20 years?
  - kogepathic 9y ago
    > So you're saying Amazon is no different -- they'll try and take on nearly every industry, but will really only have one core competence in 20 years? I think that 20 years ago people couldn't see a competitor coming along that could disrupt Microsoft, because they were so big and into everything. But that's because no one foresaw the coming of the smartphone. Microsoft is still king on PCs, but the PC market has been in decline for years. Back in the early 00's no one predicted the iPhone and Android, and what a massive impact they would have on the PC market. I would argue that Microsoft actually has two core competencies today: Office, and services (e.g. Windows/Azure). But yes, they definitely went from "king of everything" to "well enterprise still uses them" remarkably quickly. tl;dr - Something will likely disrupt Amazon, but it's difficult for us to predict what that will be until it happens
    - biocomputation 9y ago
      Totally agree. Amazon's problem is that it has a very large surface area. To competitors, that can be a feature or a bug.
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
Apparently Amazon is only able to do this because Sears left a void in the market 50 years ago. Sears ditched their convenient mail system, a differentiator at the time, for brick and mortar stores, the big box carcasses of suburbia we all loath yet yearn for. If this was the end game of capitalism, sears would have done it 100 years ago, while Standard Oil was masquerading as the end game of capitalism. Yes, but this time its different. Not to trivialize the threat, just to point out the irony. The capitalist pressures are such that Amazon may drop some less profitable lines, eventually, and others get to fill the void, again.
specialist 9y ago
Amazon won (thus far) due to low-cost capital and tax avoidance. Yayaya, Bezos is smart, hired smart people, has many accomplishments, etc. But what makes Bezos unique, his primary innovation, was convincing Wall St that marketshare was more important than quarterly results.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
>When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. They'll put a lot of people out of work, which is what proponents of basic income and automation have been warning us about for a while now. In fact, we should want this, because an Amazon that can automate a large amount of its workforce will paint the clearest picture possible because of the perception and (frankly) importance of Amazon to the US economy.
banku_brougham 9y ago
I think there is a simpler explanation. For example, they are not going slowly so nobody notices. Amazon is good at executing business ideas, they are doung that as fast as they can.
dilemma 9y ago
Bricks and mortar isn't going anywhere. Alibaba is opening their own set of stores, so is Xiaomi, and Amazon owns and runs them.
earlybike 9y ago
OT: Is ‘fathom’ a common word in written and spoken American English (parent used it two times)?
- Wildgoose 9y ago
  It is in "English" (UK) English - the author of the parent comment may not necessarily be American.
- cpr 9y ago
  "can fathom" is a common English (American, too) phrase.
s_kilk 9y ago
At least it'll be cool when the revolution comes, because we'll only need to nationalise one company.
westiseast 9y ago
I get shot down occasionally for my preference of Taobao over Amazon, but one of the key reasons is: taobao let's companies build their own strong brands on its platform On Amazon, independent sellers are an after thought, hidden away and barely able to offer anything that distinguishes them from any other seller. On Taobao you can apply your own branding much more comprehensively and build a customer base that will follow you.

by kbos87 9y ago

rtpg 9y ago

I understand the dangers of monopoly, but I wish there was a stronger argument here. We've seen this sort of thing happen before, with Walmart. And none of these arguments worked! Walmart is big and dominant. It killed off smaller places, but people don't care because it has mostly everything and is cheap. "This convenient good thing is actually bad!" isn't super convincing I guess.... EDIT: the ultimate irony being that Walmart/Amazon are the "ideal endgame" of market capitalism. Razor-thin margins everywhere, people get things cheap. But how do you get cheap goods? Pressure suppliers, pay workers as little as possible. The _best case scenario_ for this economic model leads to a terrible status quo. And the only difference between this and other industries is the size of the slice of the pie the C-suite gets.

deevolution 9y ago
We similarly give up our privacy in exchange for convenience. Even tho we know its bad, Its just too damn convenient and easy for the majority of the population.
refurb 9y ago
the _best case scenario_ for this economic model leads to a terrible status quo Terrible status quo? You realize that competitive pressure is what drives progress right?
- asfasfgasgasg 9y ago
  > Terrible status quo? You realize that competitive pressure is what drives progress right? We know that that has been true in many cases, but we don't know that it always will be true in all cases. For example, I don't think there's a very good argument that competitive pressure has led to a super high quality healthcare system in the US vs. the rest of the industrialized world. Competitive pressure optimizes for certain things, and those things are not always what is best for the public. Especially, if "competitive pressure" is applied by a trust, it can cause market failures. I don't know that Amazon is that. Maybe it will be. But, last I checked, we do still have ground floor retail. I think there's an equilibrium that we'll reach at some point, where retail space commands lower rents and has to provide a high quality shopping experience. The Best Buys of the world are done for, but the Nordstroms are not.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    > I don't think there's a very good argument that competitive pressure has led to a super high quality healthcare system in the US That's because there really isn't any competitive pressure. Not for consumers anyway. The way our healthcare is tied to our employment means we get little choice in providers ourselves, leaving that decision to our employers, who probably don't have our best interest at heart.
  - iamnotlarry 9y ago
    The supply of doctors in the U.S. is tightly controlled by interests best served when the supply is limited. This is not competitive pressure. Allow doctors to be "certified" by private organizations, then watch how quickly medical schools change, residency allotments open up, and doctor ranks swell. As the supply of seats in medical schools and number of residencies rises, the cost of medical school will decrease. More doctors with less debt will put downward pressure on medical prices. You may argue that quality would not increase under such competition, but I disagree. People who can't afford healthcare would be able to afford poor quality healthcare which is better than they currently enjoy. Rich people will still have vanity certified doctors. In general the cost of comparable quality healthcare would be lower. TLDR; don't complain about disappointing results of competitive pressure in a market with very limited competitive pressure.
reilly3000 9y ago
Going off of your Walmart comment, I must say that company has shown the world what logistics can be. They have brought RFID to the state of the art, such that an entire container can be inventoried at the loading dock automagically. Amazon has 10X as many innovations, and keeps many of them pretty out in the open. I agree will OP’s chilling assessment, but appreciate the effect of innovation at scale on the rest of the world.
tr1ck5t3r 9y ago
Because anyone can setup on Amazon in the marketplace these traders benefit from the association of being in a location (all be it virtual) and due to the limitations of photos at being able to convey the metrics we consciously and unconsciously perceive when looking for goods in the real world, like touch, weight etc, these traders can exploit people's ignorance, which when coupled with oversea's trader's who are not bound by the same legal constraints to protect consumers can get away with very poor quality. This quality is traditionally what the buyer(s) working for the shop/store would undertake in order to not trash their reputation or brand names. In todays world where's its easy to start up and fail, arguably the brand & reputation is less important when you realise how easy it is to game the Amazon review's, but ultimately it demonstrates how price rules over everything else. So whilst the West has offshored its manufacturing pollution to China, China has sold us our landfill dumps.
WalterBright 9y ago
Consider software. Free market capitalism has driven the price of it to literally zero! How amazing is that?
WalterBright 9y ago
And before Walmart there was Sears, the unstoppable behemoth of its day. Few remember today the fear that people had of the unstoppable juggernaut that was IBM before 1990 or so. Nobody remembers that before IBM there was RCA.
danstanflan 9y ago
Let me add, not only are people paid very little, but they have no ownership (in the legal sense or otherwise) over the company they work for, and have less autonomy, which I believe leads to a less fulfilling work life.
mgoetzke 9y ago
which is why btw why Adam Smith (yes that Adam Smith) wanted a strong government to balance these interests out against agreed upon social standards.
contingencies 9y ago
ideal endgame It doesn't make it the ultimate endgame though. For example, Marx would say then the workers rise up, institute a state with differing priorities and either provide guiding regulation or take over Amazon and increase wages. We shall see!
charlesdm 9y ago
I think Amazon has one major advantage over Walmart: they don't care about profits and generally run things at break even. This in itself is super powerful, b/c Amazon investors can take their profits by selling the stock (e.g. capital gains) whereas Walmart needs to pay dividends from profits. A decline in profit will lead to a significant hit in the stock price for Walmart.

ams6110 9y ago

For me, Amazon is a long way off from threatening my local supermarket and other local retailers. Would I buy clothes from Amazon? No, I like to try them on first. Returning stuff by mail is a pain. Would I buy expensive home furnishings from Amazon? No, I like to see, touch, try these things before I spend a lot of money. Would I buy perishable groceries from Amazon? No, because deliveries happen when I'm at work and I don't want perishable food sitting in the sun for three hours on my front porch. Do I buy toilet paper from Amazon? No, because it's easier to pick it up at the store when I'm there for something else anyway, than to get it delivered and then have to deal with disposing of the cardboard box it came in. And with anything Amazon, I'm worried about counterfeit goods. So what do I buy from Amazon? Inexpensive, low risk, low margin goods, and the occasional book.

kbos87 9y ago
Then your Amazon buying habits roughly match what mine once were - but that’s far from how a lot of people I live amongst use Amazon. I come home to my apartment every day to find Amazon vans prowling the neighborhood delivering groceries (a year ago, I had never seen one, now they are literally everywhere) and piles upon piles of Amazon boxes in my apartment lobby. I know plenty of people who buy almost everything on Amazon, short of clothing, gas, and meals they eat away from home.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
You're a dying breed though. Every trend is moving away from your status quo. Also, depending on where you are many people's "local super market" is Whole Foods - so yes Amazon literally "threatens" a large percentage of the US' local supermarket.
- harryh 9y ago
  Whole foods has 1.2% market share.
  - AndrewKemendo 9y ago
    Doesn't matter, they are in every major market. Which means Amazon Fulfillment Centers (What Whole Foods really is now) "threaten" everything around them. [1] http://fortune.com/2017/06/16/amazon-whole-foods-stores-locations/ http://fortune.com/2017/06/16/amazon-whole-foods-stores-loca...

gigatexal 9y ago

As long as competent politicians exist (a misnomer?) to break up true monopolies I say let incumbent industries pay the price for failing to innovate. Why should we have car salesmen for example? A new car is more or less a homogeneous good so why does it need a middleman? I would buy a car from amazon in a heartbeat. Why should I have to wait in line for a teller or a free lane for self checkout at a grocer? Because that’s how we have done things for years we should? Because Amazon began as a book seller and has no business in disrupting other industries? Haha that’s laughable.

kbos87 9y ago
Your argument overlooks all of the negative externalities associated with a single large player that dominates all of these disparate industries. When smaller businesses can’t compete, there are hundreds of downstream effects. Businesses close. Real estate values fall. People lose a connection to the places they actually live in. The money we spend is funneled somewhere else. Our choices of employers become more and more limited. Wages fall, as do the prospects for anyone who wants something other than a future working as an undervalued cog in a big tech machine.
- ewzimm 9y ago
  If small businesses can’t compete, it’s time for them to get creative and adjust their business models to become relevant again. There are all sorts of negative externalities involved in everyone just doing business as usual. No business has the right to stand still in the face of technological innovation and increased efficiency. For all the damage Amazon might do, they’re also forcing their competition to get better and know their customers.
  - scryder 9y ago
    > It’s time for them to get creative and adjust their business models to become relevant again You’re assuming that at present small businesses can do this, or, at least will be able to make this transition before companies like Amazon have crowded them out of the space they operate in. I don’t think current evidence suggests that’s likely. By analogy, small businesses right now are a bit like ants, and Amazon a child with a magnifying glass. The child and ants are categorically different, and the ants that the child chooses to melt can’t “get creative” or “adjust their model” from being the prey of a quasi-predator: they merely die, the threat is too powerful and their biology too slow to let them escape. There is such a mismatch in scale between the ants and child that even though both could, in vague terms be described as “living creatures”, and even although the ants, at their most powerful, can sting, the vast majority are merely at the child’s mercy, with the other ants only being safe by nature of being hidden. What’s key is we’re not really seeing new small business competitors emerging who, were your model correct, should be “getting creative” and then successfully taking on Amazon locally, BUT INSTEAD we’re seeing what we expect in the unbalanced ant scenario, almost all companies and lines of business Amazon targets being taken over by them or destroyed. Based on this, I’m inclined to believe the view you have is flawed. Not only is there not a level playing field in which getting creative would be meaningful, there isn’t even room to actually compete, were you creative, unless you’re the child’s size. And even if you’re his size, the child is a vicious fighter.

throwawayjava 9y ago

> It pains me that my generation, a generation of people who dream of being makers and business owners... Not just business owners, but startup founders. Also, emphasis on the "owner" not the "maker". There's no real fetish for hackers disconnected from business ownership in the zeitgeist. Why would a temporarily embarrassed monopolist support monopoly busting?

kbos87 9y ago
Would there be so many “temporarily embarrassed monopolists” if people had an easier time imagining a world in which they didn’t have to be the end all be all winner in order to build and be proud of something sustainable?
- piaste 9y ago
  Practically everybody can imagine that just fine. The HN bubble is tiny.

thinkling 9y ago

People said this 20 years ago about Microsoft. They were king of the PC, imposing a Windows (and Office-) tax on every other business. They were trying to extend that dominance to the internet: Internet Explorer, CitySearch, Expedia, MSN portal, MSN Shows, MSN Messenger, you name it. They were building interactive TV, software for cars, and a mobile phone platform. For a while they were building a bill presentation and payment service. They had an e-reader platform and tried to sign up publishers for it. You name, if it had software in it, Microsoft was trying to dominate it. They knew they were the new IBM and that IBM had stumbled, and they were paranoid about that happening to them. And here we are.

Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
So you're saying Amazon is no different -- they'll try and take on nearly every industry, but will really only have one core competence in 20 years?
- kogepathic 9y ago
  > So you're saying Amazon is no different -- they'll try and take on nearly every industry, but will really only have one core competence in 20 years? I think that 20 years ago people couldn't see a competitor coming along that could disrupt Microsoft, because they were so big and into everything. But that's because no one foresaw the coming of the smartphone. Microsoft is still king on PCs, but the PC market has been in decline for years. Back in the early 00's no one predicted the iPhone and Android, and what a massive impact they would have on the PC market. I would argue that Microsoft actually has two core competencies today: Office, and services (e.g. Windows/Azure). But yes, they definitely went from "king of everything" to "well enterprise still uses them" remarkably quickly. tl;dr - Something will likely disrupt Amazon, but it's difficult for us to predict what that will be until it happens
  - biocomputation 9y ago
    Totally agree. Amazon's problem is that it has a very large surface area. To competitors, that can be a feature or a bug.

ringaroundthetx 9y ago

Apparently Amazon is only able to do this because Sears left a void in the market 50 years ago. Sears ditched their convenient mail system, a differentiator at the time, for brick and mortar stores, the big box carcasses of suburbia we all loath yet yearn for. If this was the end game of capitalism, sears would have done it 100 years ago, while Standard Oil was masquerading as the end game of capitalism. Yes, but this time its different. Not to trivialize the threat, just to point out the irony. The capitalist pressures are such that Amazon may drop some less profitable lines, eventually, and others get to fill the void, again.

specialist 9y ago

Amazon won (thus far) due to low-cost capital and tax avoidance. Yayaya, Bezos is smart, hired smart people, has many accomplishments, etc. But what makes Bezos unique, his primary innovation, was convincing Wall St that marketshare was more important than quarterly results.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

>When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. They'll put a lot of people out of work, which is what proponents of basic income and automation have been warning us about for a while now. In fact, we should want this, because an Amazon that can automate a large amount of its workforce will paint the clearest picture possible because of the perception and (frankly) importance of Amazon to the US economy.

banku_brougham 9y ago

I think there is a simpler explanation. For example, they are not going slowly so nobody notices. Amazon is good at executing business ideas, they are doung that as fast as they can.

dilemma 9y ago

Bricks and mortar isn't going anywhere. Alibaba is opening their own set of stores, so is Xiaomi, and Amazon owns and runs them.

earlybike 9y ago

OT: Is ‘fathom’ a common word in written and spoken American English (parent used it two times)?

Wildgoose 9y ago
It is in "English" (UK) English - the author of the parent comment may not necessarily be American.
cpr 9y ago
"can fathom" is a common English (American, too) phrase.

s_kilk 9y ago

At least it'll be cool when the revolution comes, because we'll only need to nationalise one company.

westiseast 9y ago

I get shot down occasionally for my preference of Taobao over Amazon, but one of the key reasons is: taobao let's companies build their own strong brands on its platform On Amazon, independent sellers are an after thought, hidden away and barely able to offer anything that distinguishes them from any other seller. On Taobao you can apply your own branding much more comprehensively and build a customer base that will follow you.