5 ms·

How Big Is Amazon? Its Many Businesses in One Chart

60 points by kungfudoi 8y ago

lalaithion 8y ago
I'm confused; this "chart" seems to just be a list. Am I missing something?
- notyourwork 8y ago
  It meets the definition of a chart, perhaps it isn't your expectation for a chart to represent the title.
  - travisjungroth 8y ago
    Calling formatted lists with headers and clipart a chart is quite a stretch.
    - navan 8y ago
      Agree. I thought the length of each box may have some meaning. But it just seems to be stretched to fit the text.
mywittyname 8y ago
Most of these aren't separate businesses, they are just products offered in a space. Like, surprise, you can buy produce, clothing, shoes, and books on Amazon and pay with one of two rewards cards.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > Most of these aren't separate businesses, they are just products offered in a space. I'm not sure I follow. > Like, surprise, you can buy produce Through a completely different brick-and-morter grocery business, While Foods, which was bought when already a supermarket chain.[1] > clothing, shoes Through Zappos, which is its own online identity with its own shopping portal, which caters specifically to clothes. Also bought when it was already an online specialty retailer.[2] > books Of course you can buy books. That's what Amazon started doing. Goodreads, is a social network for books and book recommendations, Amazon publishing does publishing, Audible makes audio versions not just sells them, and AbeBooks is listed as selling Art and collectibles. > on Amazon and pay with one of two rewards cards. And they provide financial services and transaction processing. Amazon Pay works anywhere that supports it, just like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. I really, really don't understand where you're coming from. Yes, you should be surprised that one company can do all that, since I don't think any other company ever has before. 1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-buy-whole-foods-for-13-7-billion-1497618446 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-buy-whole-foods-for-1... 2: https://techcrunch.com/2009/07/22/amazon-buys-zappos/ https://techcrunch.com/2009/07/22/amazon-buys-zappos/
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    You can buy all of those products directly through Amazon. I've bought clothes, shoes, groceries, produce, and books on amazon.com, not through Zappos or Whole Foods, but literally on Amazon.com. They sold shoes before they acquired Zappos, and AmazonFresh predates the Whole Foods acquisition.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      > You can buy all of those products directly through Amazon. I've bought clothes, shoes, groceries, produce, and books on amazon.com You completely ignoring the substance of my comment to reiterate your point without addressing what I noted. What does what goods you were able to buy on Amazon have to do with digital publishing or the production of audio content, or providing financial services/transaction processing? > not through Zappos or Whole Foods, but literally on Amazon.com. > AmazonFresh predates the Whole Foods acquisition. AmazonFresh as a beta rollout predates the Whole Foods acquisition by less than three months. I struggle to see how you equate a physical retail network with hundreds of locations with what was a food delivery service or just in beta at select locations food pickup service. > They sold shoes before they acquired Zappos I think this is the only item you've noted that is actually not that different than what Amazon was already doing.
      - mywittyname 8y ago
        I don't disagree that those are separate businesses. I disagree with how this article presents this information. Every item listed is not a separate business -- most of them are actually different products/departments. Their chart becomes much less impressive if you distill it down to only independent businesses within Amazon.
        kbenson 8y ago
        > I don't disagree that those are separate businesses. I disagree with how this article presents this information. Every item listed is not a separate business Ah, I see, we interpreted the meaning of "many businesses" differently. I interpreted businesses to mean markets, as used colloquially in "we're getting into the business of X". You seem to have interpret it as "companies". The article isn't trying to just point out entities Amazon owns, it's trying to indicate all the markets Amazon has entered, as indicated by the line "Below is a snapshot of many of the dozens of companies or divisions that Amazon owns and operates, showing its reach is far and wide."
- stuart78 8y ago
  Was coming to say the same thing. This list is absurd. Looking at 'Payments' they mark a branded Chase offering as a distinct business? It is a product offering, and would not be an independently viable business (not saying reselling credit cards in this way might not be). Same in 'Smart Home / Devices'. That group could be more reasonably considered one or two: "Home Automation" +/- Fire Tablet. Each of the rows there is a product.
asavadatti 8y ago
This is such a bad chart. It gives us no sense of scale. Looking at this you'd think AWS and AbeBooks do the same amount of business.
RickS 8y ago
This isn't a chart at all. The format I hoped for was the style used in this breakdown of the food industry, which really illuminates the scale and breadth of the major players: https://s3.amazonaws.com/oxfam-us/www/static/media/files/Behind-the-brands-illusion-of-choice-graphic-2048x1351.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/oxfam-us/www/static/media/files/Beh...
- kbenson 8y ago
  Different things for different purposes. That food industry chart shows you how a few players control many of the major brands, so it makes sense to be dense and show the brand logos. This is trying to show how many pies Amazon has its fingers in, and for the vast majority, nobody is going to recognize any logo, and using text would make a chart like the food industry one hopelessly busy and hard to read. As it is, that food chart is really only good at conveying one thing since it doesn't clearly differentiate groups of ownership form each other, which is consolidation of an industry into a few large companies. That doesn't even make sense in this case, as instead it's trying to show the reach on one company.
- alwaysreading 8y ago
  If you want to get a better understanding of how Jeff Bezos "built the scaffolding around his mind" that is Amazon I highly recommend The Everything Store - https://amzn.to/2qK2er9 https://amzn.to/2qK2er9
- justingood 8y ago
  Fascinating. Similarly, there is one available for the craft beer industry: https://www.themadfermentationist.com/p/store.html#!/Brewery-Connections-Poster/p/112079314/category=0 https://www.themadfermentationist.com/p/store.html#!/Brewery...
User23 8y ago
Anyone that wants to create infographics should really familiarize themselves with the work of Edward Tufte. https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/ https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/
whoisjuan 8y ago
What a lazy article...
dksf 8y ago
Are these categories broken out by revenue/profit anywhere? Do quarterly earnings breakouts map to these buckets?
roymurdock 8y ago
Good idea, someone should write this up as an actual chart and size by financial impact vs competitors (eg walmart microsoft google barnes n nobles etc) to make it truly useful
slantyyz 8y ago
Tangentially related: Netflix's Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj had an interesting episode about Amazon.[1] It's a little oversimplified, but it does a good job of explaining how large Amazon is to the layperson. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5maXvZ5fyQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5maXvZ5fyQY
eiaoa 8y ago
They missed Amazon Basics.
ohples 8y ago
They forgot Amazons package delivery company. Not Amazon Flex, the other one were the delivery people have to buy a franchise.
catacombs 8y ago
This is not a chart. It's a list of Amazon services. The NPR Visuals Team has really tanked in the last year.
dmlab 8y ago
Doesnt give you any sense of the individual size of each of Amazon's business arm, let alone the whole. .....absolutely not a chart

60 points by kungfudoi 8y ago

lalaithion 8y ago

I'm confused; this "chart" seems to just be a list. Am I missing something?

notyourwork 8y ago
It meets the definition of a chart, perhaps it isn't your expectation for a chart to represent the title.
- travisjungroth 8y ago
  Calling formatted lists with headers and clipart a chart is quite a stretch.
  - navan 8y ago
    Agree. I thought the length of each box may have some meaning. But it just seems to be stretched to fit the text.

mywittyname 8y ago

Most of these aren't separate businesses, they are just products offered in a space. Like, surprise, you can buy produce, clothing, shoes, and books on Amazon and pay with one of two rewards cards.

kbenson 8y ago
> Most of these aren't separate businesses, they are just products offered in a space. I'm not sure I follow. > Like, surprise, you can buy produce Through a completely different brick-and-morter grocery business, While Foods, which was bought when already a supermarket chain.[1] > clothing, shoes Through Zappos, which is its own online identity with its own shopping portal, which caters specifically to clothes. Also bought when it was already an online specialty retailer.[2] > books Of course you can buy books. That's what Amazon started doing. Goodreads, is a social network for books and book recommendations, Amazon publishing does publishing, Audible makes audio versions not just sells them, and AbeBooks is listed as selling Art and collectibles. > on Amazon and pay with one of two rewards cards. And they provide financial services and transaction processing. Amazon Pay works anywhere that supports it, just like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. I really, really don't understand where you're coming from. Yes, you should be surprised that one company can do all that, since I don't think any other company ever has before. 1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-buy-whole-foods-for-13-7-billion-1497618446 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-buy-whole-foods-for-1... 2: https://techcrunch.com/2009/07/22/amazon-buys-zappos/ https://techcrunch.com/2009/07/22/amazon-buys-zappos/
- mywittyname 8y ago
  You can buy all of those products directly through Amazon. I've bought clothes, shoes, groceries, produce, and books on amazon.com, not through Zappos or Whole Foods, but literally on Amazon.com. They sold shoes before they acquired Zappos, and AmazonFresh predates the Whole Foods acquisition.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    > You can buy all of those products directly through Amazon. I've bought clothes, shoes, groceries, produce, and books on amazon.com You completely ignoring the substance of my comment to reiterate your point without addressing what I noted. What does what goods you were able to buy on Amazon have to do with digital publishing or the production of audio content, or providing financial services/transaction processing? > not through Zappos or Whole Foods, but literally on Amazon.com. > AmazonFresh predates the Whole Foods acquisition. AmazonFresh as a beta rollout predates the Whole Foods acquisition by less than three months. I struggle to see how you equate a physical retail network with hundreds of locations with what was a food delivery service or just in beta at select locations food pickup service. > They sold shoes before they acquired Zappos I think this is the only item you've noted that is actually not that different than what Amazon was already doing.
    - mywittyname 8y ago
      I don't disagree that those are separate businesses. I disagree with how this article presents this information. Every item listed is not a separate business -- most of them are actually different products/departments. Their chart becomes much less impressive if you distill it down to only independent businesses within Amazon.
      - kbenson 8y ago
        > I don't disagree that those are separate businesses. I disagree with how this article presents this information. Every item listed is not a separate business Ah, I see, we interpreted the meaning of "many businesses" differently. I interpreted businesses to mean markets, as used colloquially in "we're getting into the business of X". You seem to have interpret it as "companies". The article isn't trying to just point out entities Amazon owns, it's trying to indicate all the markets Amazon has entered, as indicated by the line "Below is a snapshot of many of the dozens of companies or divisions that Amazon owns and operates, showing its reach is far and wide."
stuart78 8y ago
Was coming to say the same thing. This list is absurd. Looking at 'Payments' they mark a branded Chase offering as a distinct business? It is a product offering, and would not be an independently viable business (not saying reselling credit cards in this way might not be). Same in 'Smart Home / Devices'. That group could be more reasonably considered one or two: "Home Automation" +/- Fire Tablet. Each of the rows there is a product.

asavadatti 8y ago

This is such a bad chart. It gives us no sense of scale. Looking at this you'd think AWS and AbeBooks do the same amount of business.

RickS 8y ago

This isn't a chart at all. The format I hoped for was the style used in this breakdown of the food industry, which really illuminates the scale and breadth of the major players: https://s3.amazonaws.com/oxfam-us/www/static/media/files/Behind-the-brands-illusion-of-choice-graphic-2048x1351.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/oxfam-us/www/static/media/files/Beh...

kbenson 8y ago
Different things for different purposes. That food industry chart shows you how a few players control many of the major brands, so it makes sense to be dense and show the brand logos. This is trying to show how many pies Amazon has its fingers in, and for the vast majority, nobody is going to recognize any logo, and using text would make a chart like the food industry one hopelessly busy and hard to read. As it is, that food chart is really only good at conveying one thing since it doesn't clearly differentiate groups of ownership form each other, which is consolidation of an industry into a few large companies. That doesn't even make sense in this case, as instead it's trying to show the reach on one company.
alwaysreading 8y ago
If you want to get a better understanding of how Jeff Bezos "built the scaffolding around his mind" that is Amazon I highly recommend The Everything Store - https://amzn.to/2qK2er9 https://amzn.to/2qK2er9
justingood 8y ago
Fascinating. Similarly, there is one available for the craft beer industry: https://www.themadfermentationist.com/p/store.html#!/Brewery-Connections-Poster/p/112079314/category=0 https://www.themadfermentationist.com/p/store.html#!/Brewery...

User23 8y ago

Anyone that wants to create infographics should really familiarize themselves with the work of Edward Tufte. https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/ https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

whoisjuan 8y ago

What a lazy article...

dksf 8y ago

Are these categories broken out by revenue/profit anywhere? Do quarterly earnings breakouts map to these buckets?

roymurdock 8y ago

Good idea, someone should write this up as an actual chart and size by financial impact vs competitors (eg walmart microsoft google barnes n nobles etc) to make it truly useful

slantyyz 8y ago

Tangentially related: Netflix's Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj had an interesting episode about Amazon.[1] It's a little oversimplified, but it does a good job of explaining how large Amazon is to the layperson. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5maXvZ5fyQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5maXvZ5fyQY

eiaoa 8y ago

They missed Amazon Basics.

ohples 8y ago

They forgot Amazons package delivery company. Not Amazon Flex, the other one were the delivery people have to buy a franchise.

catacombs 8y ago

This is not a chart. It's a list of Amazon services. The NPR Visuals Team has really tanked in the last year.

dmlab 8y ago

Doesnt give you any sense of the individual size of each of Amazon's business arm, let alone the whole. .....absolutely not a chart