4 ms·
Hindsight is 20/20. Maybe people in 1999 were wrong about Amazon but they were right about Pets.com and many others, your comment is just an example of survivor
by simias 8y ago
Hindsight is 20/20. Maybe people in 1999 were wrong about Amazon but they were right about Pets.com and many others, your comment is just an example of survivorship bias. I mean, I'm sure you're not trying to argue that dotcom valuations weren't generally ridiculous.
Besides, Amazon, Kodak and Boeing were never exactly in the same market. The parent is comparing companies that ostensibly offer similar services.
If I can trust Wikipedia by 1999 Amazon "also sold video games, consumer electronics, home-improvement items, software, games and toys in addition to other items." That meant that it was already an online retail store, not a mere bookstore.
- mcguire 8y agoOn the other, other hand, Amazon sends currently very overvalued as a retail company. (I haven't looked at the comparative sizes of its various components.) How long before Amazon sounds of its retail business?
- dcole2929 8y agoAmazon hasn't been just a retail company in a very long time. It is probably THE Tech company at this point. They are a consumer electronics company having cornered the market on the cheap android tablet, and the smart speaker. They are a dominant enterprise cloud player. They own the biggest player in e-sports currently with twitch. They are in the music and video streaming business. They do government contracting at this point. The valuation is more than justified.
- treis 8y agoI think the point is that Amazon as retail on the web isn't the success story of Amazon. It's all of the other things you mentioned.
- jjeaff 8y agoAnd twitch is becoming much more than esports. With YouTube shooting itself in the foot with their copyright nonsense, there are lots of big YouTubers carefully transitioning their content and user base to twitch.
- toufiqbarhamov 8y agoIt will come to nothing once Twitch becomes a big enough target. Then they’ll start to resemble YouTube more and more until the in turn are “disrupted.”
- TylerE 8y agoI mean, haven't they pretty much already done so? Would not surprise me if a majority of both inventory and sales are actually marketplace sellers by now, that pay Amazon for fulfillment.
- mcguire 8y agoSo, Amazon is a major tech company attached to a warehousing and logistics operation.
- JohnFen 8y agoI think that's fair. Their retail operations don't qualify them as a "tech" company -- that just makes them a tech-savvy retail company. However, their cloud (and other IT) services do qualify them as a "tech" company.
- 1024core 8y ago> but they were right about Pets.com WebVan is another such example.
- iamben 8y agoAnd let's not forget boo.com ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com
- olivermarks 8y ago> but they were right about Pets.com > WebVan is another such example. Timing was wrong, too early. Chewey sold for 3 billion in late 2017 to petsmart, a less online savvy box store https://www.recode.net/2017/12/6/16681040/ryan-cohen-chewy-recode-100 https://www.recode.net/2017/12/6/16681040/ryan-cohen-chewy-r...