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Well, Amazon/Ebay/Shopify/Etsy all are platforms that let other people sell things. I get your point (and might even agree with you), however if you look at it

Well, Amazon/Ebay/Shopify/Etsy all are platforms that let other people sell things. I get your point (and might even agree with you), however if you look at it from the perspective of "I want to sell something... where do I go?", they're competition. They do discovery, checkout, inventory, fulfillment, etc. It just happens to have a slightly different approach than the others.

dawnerd 7y ago
Not really the same thing though, Amazon/eBay/Etsy you can browse multiple "stores". Shopify is just a platform so it really isn't that fair. It'd be like including every single Magento powered site to say Magento is the X largest platform.
- tjchear 7y ago
  Yeah but that's from the perspective of buyers, so OP's point still stands.
- mtgx 7y ago
  You can look at it as a "decentralized platform". Adding search across stores = centralized.
greglindahl 7y ago
They do discovery? At Amazon and eBay most purchases come via Amazon's and eBay's search engines. Shopify doesn't have a search engine other than the ones inside individual stores. It's a very different business.
meerita 7y ago
Not really, type shopify.com and let me know if you can buy a pair of shoes. You can't. You go to eBay and you can. Shopify is just the platform and the entire ecosystem supports the amount of transactions.
wil421 7y ago
One of those is not like the others. I just went to Shopify.com and I can’t find anything for sale. Shopify is a SaaS platform not a marketplace.