4 ms·

I Tried to Block Amazon from My Life. It Was Impossible

10 points by laurex 8y ago

Spivak 8y ago
> Like millions of other Americans, we use a lot of Amazon products in our house. We have an Echo, an Echo Dot, two Kindles, two Amazon Prime Chase credit cards, Amazon Prime Video on our TV, and two Prime accounts. (Note to self: Why are my husband and I each paying Amazon $119/year?) > I barely know where else to go online to buy things. I feel like the article's conclusion basically stems from this -- good lord that's a lot of platform buy-in. Not surprised at all that it's difficult to leave. I have an Amazon account for an occasional purchase and an AWS account for playing around. I don't feel like I'm missing out by not jumping into the rest of their ecosystem but maybe I'm just blissfully ignorant. Also is is really fair to conflate their B2B and B2C business? They might as well be separate companies as far as this article is concerned. I feel like this challenge would be a lot more meaningful if getting Amazon's consumer products out of your life wasn't combined with dropping every business that uses cloud hosting. > Having to run to a physical store rather than opening my Amazon app every time the house runs out of paper towels is annoying I can't say this experience is super relatable. Don't get me wrong, it's super cool for groceries and home goods to just show up on a regular schedule but this is basically arguing that someone who has been living with a team of servants is finding life more difficult without them. Amazon's service provides real tangible value and suddenly changing the balance from time to money is going to be felt. You can meet in the middle and order your groceries online and pick them up on the way home once a week. > I would usually immediately order a weird doodad, probably within two minutes of realizing I needed it, using the Amazon app on my phone, but not this week. I ultimately order it from eBay. Woah, the author needs to chill on the instant gratification. If your hard requirement for shopping is impulse then of course Amazon is going to scratch that itch but eBay is just the same wagon pulled by a different horse. It seems like the author needs to learn how to shop. The problem of course is that purchasing is work. https://www.proclipusa.com https://www.proclipusa.com https://www.scosche.com/magic-mount-cell-phone-holder-tablet-mount https://www.scosche.com/magic-mount-cell-phone-holder-tablet... https://www.rammount.com/ https://www.rammount.com/ https://www.iottie.com/Product/List?Category=SmartphoneMount https://www.iottie.com/Product/List?Category=SmartphoneMount
hondadriver 8y ago
Nothing is impossible. Move to the Netherlands. Amazon has almost no precense here (yet) :)
- kingnothing 8y ago
  Did you read the article? A huge chunk of it was focused on AWS and how most of the internet is basically inaccessible if you block it.
lawrenceyan 8y ago
I think it's unfair to judge Amazon as a monopoly. They have plenty of competition in their two primary businesses. Retail wise they have razor thin margins with traditional grocers on one end and identical copycat tech platforms on the other. And with AWS, Google Cloud is dominating along with Azure. People are always so quick to call out monopolies when it patently isn't true.

10 points by laurex 8y ago

> Like millions of other Americans, we use a lot of Amazon products in our house. We have an Echo, an Echo Dot, two Kindles, two Amazon Prime Chase credit cards, Amazon Prime Video on our TV, and two Prime accounts. (Note to self: Why are my husband and I each paying Amazon $119/year?) > I barely know where else to go online to buy things. I feel like the article's conclusion basically stems from this -- good lord that's a lot of platform buy-in. Not surprised at all that it's difficult to leave. I have an Amazon account for an occasional purchase and an AWS account for playing around. I don't feel like I'm missing out by not jumping into the rest of their ecosystem but maybe I'm just blissfully ignorant. Also is is really fair to conflate their B2B and B2C business? They might as well be separate companies as far as this article is concerned. I feel like this challenge would be a lot more meaningful if getting Amazon's consumer products out of your life wasn't combined with dropping every business that uses cloud hosting. > Having to run to a physical store rather than opening my Amazon app every time the house runs out of paper towels is annoying I can't say this experience is super relatable. Don't get me wrong, it's super cool for groceries and home goods to just show up on a regular schedule but this is basically arguing that someone who has been living with a team of servants is finding life more difficult without them. Amazon's service provides real tangible value and suddenly changing the balance from time to money is going to be felt. You can meet in the middle and order your groceries online and pick them up on the way home once a week. > I would usually immediately order a weird doodad, probably within two minutes of realizing I needed it, using the Amazon app on my phone, but not this week. I ultimately order it from eBay. Woah, the author needs to chill on the instant gratification. If your hard requirement for shopping is impulse then of course Amazon is going to scratch that itch but eBay is just the same wagon pulled by a different horse. It seems like the author needs to learn how to shop. The problem of course is that purchasing is work. https://www.proclipusa.com https://www.proclipusa.com https://www.scosche.com/magic-mount-cell-phone-holder-tablet-mount https://www.scosche.com/magic-mount-cell-phone-holder-tablet... https://www.rammount.com/ https://www.rammount.com/ https://www.iottie.com/Product/List?Category=SmartphoneMount https://www.iottie.com/Product/List?Category=SmartphoneMount

hondadriver 8y ago

Nothing is impossible. Move to the Netherlands. Amazon has almost no precense here (yet) :)

kingnothing 8y ago
Did you read the article? A huge chunk of it was focused on AWS and how most of the internet is basically inaccessible if you block it.

lawrenceyan 8y ago

I think it's unfair to judge Amazon as a monopoly. They have plenty of competition in their two primary businesses. Retail wise they have razor thin margins with traditional grocers on one end and identical copycat tech platforms on the other. And with AWS, Google Cloud is dominating along with Azure. People are always so quick to call out monopolies when it patently isn't true.