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I’m getting increasingly uncomfortable with the sheer number of markets Amazon is getting into. I don’t like putting all my eggs in one basket, and I tend to mo

I’m getting increasingly uncomfortable with the sheer number of markets Amazon is getting into. I don’t like putting all my eggs in one basket, and I tend to move my business elsewhere when I see a company getting to big for its britches like this. I’ve moved to target for most things I’d get on amazon and am quite content for now.

notyourwork 8y ago
As a consumer why do you care?
- solarkraft 8y ago
  I want to support competition, encouraging all companies to give me a fair offer. Amazon seems to do that for now, but their power is increasing by the day. I'm not really a fan of that.
  - notyourwork 8y ago
    Supporting competition exists and I think everyone on theory wants to support it. However, at the end of the day consumers prioritize their own immediate concerns over long term economic concerns. I find it fascinating how humans have such trouble operating in context of big picture and make so many short sighted decisions.
- sct202 8y ago
  For me personally, the more a company tries to do, the less I trust them to do everything right.
  - Ours90 8y ago
    +1 on that one. What I don't get is that they are already giants, why would they undermine and hinder other companies from developing? I found this article very interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices
  - notyourwork 8y ago
    I agree which makes me wonder, where do we draw the line with Amazon or any other company for example.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Some of us aren't consumers, we are people.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    And so you want to do business with the company that will pretend hardest that it just doesn't want to get in your wallet?
  - notyourwork 8y ago
    We are all people but you are being ignorant if you don't consider yourself a consumer in the global economy.
solarkraft 8y ago
I tend to do a similar thing. Amazon's core product is virtually unusable to me anyway.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  I don't even know what their core product is anymore.
2_listerine_pls 8y ago
Retailers like Amazon or Walmart shouldn't be allowed to make their own competing brands.
- skrowl 8y ago
  Should the government seize the means of production, comrade? Businesses should be allowed to create whatever products they want, as long as they don't do anti-competitive things like work together with their competitors to fix prices. Free markets are important.
  - wgerard 8y ago
    > Businesses should be allowed to create whatever products they want, as long as they don't do anti-competitive things like work together with their competitors to fix prices. Or say, if they owned a huge marketplace and eventually started producing a product, and then refused to stock their competitor's product in the huge marketplace.
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      Do you demand that the local supermarket carry every brand of chili on earth?
      - wgerard 8y ago
        I don't think that's a good analogy; there are significant differences between a local supermarket (local, items must fit in the store) and Amazon's marketplace (global, items can be located anywhere globally within reason).
      - mistermann 8y ago
        The justice department(?) demanded that Microsoft stop bundling (or forcing, can't remember the specifics) IE on Windows. Laissez faire capitalism has both benefits and risks, casual/militant dismissal of concerns can sometimes have negative consequences, sometimes very severe.
skrowl 8y ago
Target via Google Express is pretty nice. Also, why is Amazon launching this for just dogs? My cats are offended that they were left out!
- kartan 8y ago
  > Also, why is Amazon launching this for just dogs? My cats are offended that they were left out! They have the data of what is what people buys. They have that info for all kind of products. If it for dogs, it makes sense that it may be the best option.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  If your cats are like my cats, they will only eat one brand, and Amazon isn't going to change their palettes. The dogs I've had, for the most part, will eat anything from lettuce to cat poop. Amazon could sell cans of cat poop with bits of lettuce in it, and they'd wolf it down.
  - skrowl 8y ago
    Coming in 2019 - Cat poop prime with 1 hour delivery, for when your dogs are really hungry.
mtgx 8y ago
Others are free to disagree with this, but I believe corporations being so large and so profitable that they have no choice but to enter multiple markets, or to do increasingly more ethically questionable things in order to keep increasing the quarterly profits and revenues, is all because of a weak anti-trust system and weak anti-trust legislation. Companies should not be allowed to grow so large and so powerful that they can threaten multiple industries at once. I'm not necessarily saying they should be broken up as soon as they pass say $50 a year billion a year in revenues, but at the very least they should be disallowed from buying any other company as soon as they pass a similar mark or as soon as certain conditions for it being in "anti-trust mode" are met. How are we going to have real competition in say AI, if Google keeps buying all the promising startups that come up with breakthrough AI technologies? Same for Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp. And now Amazon is doing the same thing. The only answer to that right now is "maybe we're lucky and some other large corporation will buy that startup instead?" But that doesn't make me feel much better. In the end, it all leads to at least an oligopoly across multiple industries, and a monopoly in specific industries. That's not good for consumers. And I won't even go into how this much power and money concentrated into singular entities is bad for democracies, too. Even if you don't believe that these rich people and companies are literally buying the politicians and their votes, at the very least you should agree that they have disproportionate leverage in the government, for the same reason big banks do. A more decentralized marketplace made-up of many more smaller companies is much better for consumers and democracies, too.
dnomad 8y ago
How on earth is Amazon getting too big for its britches? The company does absolutely nothing but help customers by destroying margins. This idea that Amazon should be avoided is very, very strange.
QuinnyPig 8y ago
Indeed. "I'm going to boycott Amazon!" as a kneejerk reaction is becoming an increasingly laughable statement. You can pass on one or two offerings, but they're getting increasingly hard to avoid across the board.
- dingaling 8y ago
  About the only Amazon product I can't avoid is AWS, since without digging in DNS beforehand it's not obvious which websites are running on it.
djrogers 8y ago
I get it, but target is an odd choice to flee this - they have a house brand for almost everything they sell, from BBQ gear to baby wipes...

notyourwork 8y ago

As a consumer why do you care?

solarkraft 8y ago
I want to support competition, encouraging all companies to give me a fair offer. Amazon seems to do that for now, but their power is increasing by the day. I'm not really a fan of that.
- notyourwork 8y ago
  Supporting competition exists and I think everyone on theory wants to support it. However, at the end of the day consumers prioritize their own immediate concerns over long term economic concerns. I find it fascinating how humans have such trouble operating in context of big picture and make so many short sighted decisions.
sct202 8y ago
For me personally, the more a company tries to do, the less I trust them to do everything right.
- Ours90 8y ago
  +1 on that one. What I don't get is that they are already giants, why would they undermine and hinder other companies from developing? I found this article very interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices
- notyourwork 8y ago
  I agree which makes me wonder, where do we draw the line with Amazon or any other company for example.
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Some of us aren't consumers, we are people.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  And so you want to do business with the company that will pretend hardest that it just doesn't want to get in your wallet?
- notyourwork 8y ago
  We are all people but you are being ignorant if you don't consider yourself a consumer in the global economy.

solarkraft 8y ago

I tend to do a similar thing. Amazon's core product is virtually unusable to me anyway.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
I don't even know what their core product is anymore.

2_listerine_pls 8y ago

Retailers like Amazon or Walmart shouldn't be allowed to make their own competing brands.

skrowl 8y ago
Should the government seize the means of production, comrade? Businesses should be allowed to create whatever products they want, as long as they don't do anti-competitive things like work together with their competitors to fix prices. Free markets are important.
- wgerard 8y ago
  > Businesses should be allowed to create whatever products they want, as long as they don't do anti-competitive things like work together with their competitors to fix prices. Or say, if they owned a huge marketplace and eventually started producing a product, and then refused to stock their competitor's product in the huge marketplace.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Do you demand that the local supermarket carry every brand of chili on earth?
    - wgerard 8y ago
      I don't think that's a good analogy; there are significant differences between a local supermarket (local, items must fit in the store) and Amazon's marketplace (global, items can be located anywhere globally within reason).
    - mistermann 8y ago
      The justice department(?) demanded that Microsoft stop bundling (or forcing, can't remember the specifics) IE on Windows. Laissez faire capitalism has both benefits and risks, casual/militant dismissal of concerns can sometimes have negative consequences, sometimes very severe.

skrowl 8y ago

Target via Google Express is pretty nice. Also, why is Amazon launching this for just dogs? My cats are offended that they were left out!

kartan 8y ago
> Also, why is Amazon launching this for just dogs? My cats are offended that they were left out! They have the data of what is what people buys. They have that info for all kind of products. If it for dogs, it makes sense that it may be the best option.
reaperducer 8y ago
If your cats are like my cats, they will only eat one brand, and Amazon isn't going to change their palettes. The dogs I've had, for the most part, will eat anything from lettuce to cat poop. Amazon could sell cans of cat poop with bits of lettuce in it, and they'd wolf it down.
- skrowl 8y ago
  Coming in 2019 - Cat poop prime with 1 hour delivery, for when your dogs are really hungry.

mtgx 8y ago

Others are free to disagree with this, but I believe corporations being so large and so profitable that they have no choice but to enter multiple markets, or to do increasingly more ethically questionable things in order to keep increasing the quarterly profits and revenues, is all because of a weak anti-trust system and weak anti-trust legislation. Companies should not be allowed to grow so large and so powerful that they can threaten multiple industries at once. I'm not necessarily saying they should be broken up as soon as they pass say $50 a year billion a year in revenues, but at the very least they should be disallowed from buying any other company as soon as they pass a similar mark or as soon as certain conditions for it being in "anti-trust mode" are met. How are we going to have real competition in say AI, if Google keeps buying all the promising startups that come up with breakthrough AI technologies? Same for Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp. And now Amazon is doing the same thing. The only answer to that right now is "maybe we're lucky and some other large corporation will buy that startup instead?" But that doesn't make me feel much better. In the end, it all leads to at least an oligopoly across multiple industries, and a monopoly in specific industries. That's not good for consumers. And I won't even go into how this much power and money concentrated into singular entities is bad for democracies, too. Even if you don't believe that these rich people and companies are literally buying the politicians and their votes, at the very least you should agree that they have disproportionate leverage in the government, for the same reason big banks do. A more decentralized marketplace made-up of many more smaller companies is much better for consumers and democracies, too.

dnomad 8y ago

How on earth is Amazon getting too big for its britches? The company does absolutely nothing but help customers by destroying margins. This idea that Amazon should be avoided is very, very strange.

QuinnyPig 8y ago

Indeed. "I'm going to boycott Amazon!" as a kneejerk reaction is becoming an increasingly laughable statement. You can pass on one or two offerings, but they're getting increasingly hard to avoid across the board.

dingaling 8y ago
About the only Amazon product I can't avoid is AWS, since without digging in DNS beforehand it's not obvious which websites are running on it.

djrogers 8y ago

I get it, but target is an odd choice to flee this - they have a house brand for almost everything they sell, from BBQ gear to baby wipes...