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Sure is. But remember, that playbook's almost exactly how Amazon became the largest company in the world.
by dcolkitt 8y ago
Sure is. But remember, that playbook's almost exactly how Amazon became the largest company in the world.
- quickben 8y agoAWS lock-in is different from a taxi app. Only a few players so far managed to respond to AWS in scale and offerings. Lots of taxi companies have their own apps at this point.
- joncrane 8y agoThe comment you're replying to means the original Amazon business model of selling things online. Pretty sure AWS was profitable almost from day 1.
- xtian 8y agoYou’re saying cloud services is lower margin than retail? I don’t think that has ever been true.
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoExcept that Amazon didn't have remotely close to the level of losses that Uber has. The year Amazon went public, they lost $30 million. Uber is losing a billion a quarter.
- idlewords 8y agoNot only that, but there's no Uber analogue to Amazon Web Services, which makes the analogy specious.
- acdha 8y agoAmazon was making real profits in each line of business shortly after entering - 1-2 years for books, music, etc. IIRC. They chose to reinvest that in further expansion but always had the option of halting expansion and being fully profitable if they wanted. Uber has nothing remotely like that and, unlike Amazon, their costs scale linearly and their workers (who are most of the business) have no reason to be loyal.