9 ms·

Day Two to One Day

166 points by kaboro 7y ago

iikoolpp 7y ago
TIL one-day (or, even same-day) amazon shipping isn't a thing outside of the UK?
- a_bouncing_bean 7y ago
  Only in major city's metro areas in the USA.
- justinclift 7y ago
  It's not one-day for all of the UK either. ;) Saying that as I lived in a ~reasonably remote part Cornwall at the time Amazon launched 1-day shipping in the UK. Bought stuff from them literally every day for a few months. At first stuff really would turn up in 1 day, and it was awesome. However, after a while I guess they figured out it was costing them a fortune in delivery costs. So the 1-day thing silently became "2 day". As in, when not logged in it, items would be shown as "Receive it by (say) Wed xx" on a Tuesday. After logging in and purchasing, the expected date would then become Thursday. Yes, even with Prime 1-day. ;) --- For me it's a moot point anyway, as after some bad customer service experiences - dishonesty on Amazons part - I don't really buy anything through Amazon any more.
- Steko 7y ago
  One day in (most of) Japan.
yuy910616 7y ago
As Ben said...revenue has not showed up. I really wonder if going from 2 days to 1 day is as valuable to consumers, and as impactful on revenue, to going from say 1 week to 2 days. We might not see revenue increase for years, and revenue is going to become more expensive. However, if AMZ continue to invest in difficult logistical challenges, the small marginal gains in shipping time might suddenly add up to a leap: i'm imagining going from next day to a few hours. edit: syntax, grammar
- coreyrab 7y ago
  Going from 2 days to 1 day has always felt more like a luxury to me – and one I am willing to pay for when needed. For 95% of the purchases I make 2 day shipping is more than quick enough.
  - groby_b 7y ago
    fwiw: Many of us dinosaurs remember when you ordered things on Amazon, and it took a week and cost shipping. Prime, and 2-day shipping, felt like a luxury you don't need. (And many of us thought long and hard if we should spend, and then it turned out to be really convenient...) And those of us from the Triassic period even remember the days before Amazon, where you went to a bookstore, and you hoped they had a book that you needed, and if not, oh well, we can get it in 4-6 weeks. And then Amazon popped up, and you could just order online, and it felt like a luxury to have things in a week, and then we paid for it. We didn't need those books within a week, mind. It was the Triassic, we moved slowly, and 4-6 weeks for a rare book seemed just fine. (Because, amongst other things, it gave you an excuse to spend the next 4-6 weeks browsing what other books the store had ;) I'm fairly certain the same will happen to 1-day. It'll feel like a luxury. It'll turn out to be convenient. It'll take a year or so, and then we'll all happily pay for it.
    - JackFr 7y ago
      > And those of us from the Triassic period even remember the days before Amazon, where you went to a bookstore, and you hoped they had a book that you needed, and if not, oh well, we can get it in 4-6 weeks. And that's if you knew it existed. If you were looking for an esoteric subject it was not trivial to discover what books on the topic were in print.
    - gjm11 7y ago
      "Whaddya mean 'we', paleface?" I'm a happy non-Prime Amazon customer. I buy plenty of things from them, and I basically never need anything faster than their free shipping (which I'm pretty sure they deliberately slow down, holding back dispatching in order to incentivize customers to get Prime). I could easily afford a Prime subscription, but I don't see how it's more worth the money than a hundred other things I could drop ~£100/year on. Are there really so few other people who feel that way?
aresant 7y ago
Anazon is better than ever for brand name, known buys. Eg I recently ordered a UHD bluray movie, took about 15 seconds end to end and arrived in a day. They are terrible for everything else. Eg I bought a reading light. Which was a 10 minute sorting excersise trying to figure out which of a dozen nearly identical products was the least likely to burn down my house. Then trying to uncover which had real reviews and not switched etc. I hit the roulette wheel and ultimately got a unit that arrived DOA. My trust in the last two years has deteriorated massively in their platform, as a consumer I am absolutely suseptable to a “quality first” disruptor. And amazon is obviously jam packed with smart people, so what am I missing about their apparent lack of focus or execution on this commonly lamented problem?
- vollmond 7y ago
  And even for brand name items, you still have counterfeit worries (IE, many people refuse to buy flash storage at all from Amazon now), due to counterfeits from intermingling of "sold by amazon" and "shipped by amazon" items.
  - cosmie 7y ago
    I'm not sure if the situation has changed, but it used to be that co-mingling was exclusively an aspect/option of FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). They did not co-mingle their own inventory, so you could still be somewhat confident in purchasing products with Amazon as the seller of record, i.e. "Sold by Amazon". I can't find anything to confirm or deny if this is still the case, but I haven't had any issues personally when sticking with products where Amazon is the seller of record. Although I have noticed the pricing and shipping time tend to be less competitive (I presumed because they don't access co-mingled inventory that's at a closer fulfillment center).
    - secabeen 7y ago
      Amazon does co-mingle their own stock with marketplace stock, although exactly how often and for what items they do so is unknown. The board game industry has been hit hard by counterfeits (it's really not that hard to print a game), and there are many reports of people ordering games sold-and-shipped-by-amazon, and getting a counterfeit: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1983918/warning-seems-be-lot-counterfeit-versions-amazon-e https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1983918/warning-seems-be-lo... https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1923659/amazon-counterfeits https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1923659/amazon-counterfeits
mrfredward 7y ago
I like the article, but I think a missing piece of this is that when a company becomes a big enough conglomerate, parts can be in day 2 while other parts are at day 1. Amazon isn't raising money from investors anymore, it's taking profits on parts of the business and using it to expand in other places, and Bezos himself is famous for saying a profit margin is an opportunity for disruption. That being said, in many ways the point of business is to end up a day 2 company. VCs invest so they can cash out in the IPO, IPO investors buy so they can sell to other investors, those investors sell to others, and so on. It sounds like the last guy is left holding the bag, but in fact, the people at the end can make a fortune, even as the company is fading away, if the company is distributing profits through dividends and buybacks. If a company dies before it gets to that end phase though, the whole thing will have just been a wealth transfer from later investors to the early ones.
allthecybers 7y ago
One-day shipping is definitely a logistical leap for mankind but I often wonder the environmental impact that is accrued in the pursuit of total convenience. Also, their Prime branded delivery trucks are driven by gig workers, essentially making Prime the Uber of the delivery world. I just wonder how sustainable it all is. What level of convenience will be demanded next and what cost will that pose to the environment and to the part-time or gig workers who keep it moving.
- emiliobumachar 7y ago
  I guess it might be a net good environmentally. Packaging is bad, but driving to the nearest store to get a single item could be worse. Convenient delivery will decrease the latter.
  - truebosko 7y ago
    Read a piece recently on how Uber is primarily used by people who are a) fairly well off and b) have access to transit or other options to get to work This argument you make reminds me of that. Most people taking advantage of Amazon One-Day delivery are in urban centres, and most of them are likely doing OK, and most of them can likely walk or take public transit to get what they need
  - SamBam 7y ago
    Except that's the last mile, and I think a small proportion of the total carbon footprint. I think the question of whether same-day delivery is good or bad boils down to whether the goods are able to be trucked across the country in an efficient manner. If the company has switched to many more smaller trucks, which may be less than completely full, then it's a negative.
  - bradstewart 7y ago
    Has anyone seen data on this? I recently starting making an effort to purchase things like paper towels, Advil, toothpaste, etc from Target (in person) instead of buying from Amazon to reduce the amount of packaging I have to recycle and throw away. I still feel like it's a net benefit, but that's purely a _feeling_.
throwawaywindev 7y ago
I wonder if the increased “harvesting” has to do with Bezos getting older.
madamelic 7y ago
My wonder is how large a company can get before the founder can no longer force strong culture. The decision to favor their own products over others seems like a short-sighted goal to help an exec get a bonus rather than help their customers I am wondering how they can handle short-sighted, highly-motivated individuals self-dealing rather than looking out for the company and its stated culture.
- tootie 7y ago
  Keynes said it best. In the long run, we're all dead. Jobs died and his culture is already ebbing.
- sixstringtheory 7y ago
  Probably something around Dunbar's number ("proposed to lie between 100 and 250, with a commonly used value of 150") [0]. I imagine it's not simply the size of the company but how quickly it grew to that size, too. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
frogpelt 7y ago
Jeff Bezos does not have integrity. We know this because of the way he treated Mackenzie Bezos. Now, we just have to see how far his lack of integrity will go in his business operation.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  Tell us more about the in-depth and personal knowledge you have about the former Bezos marriage. Were you present for their marriage counseling? Their intimate disagreements? Tell us about how they interacted on a personal level and what their dynamic was together. Marriages are complicated. What we see in public is very limited and far from the truth. Being the richest dude in the world means everything goes through a PR filter. Suggesting you know anything at all about their marriage is idiotic. I say this as someone with no love for Bezos or Amazon. The assumption that you know something because you've read tabloids is a big reason the world is fucked right now
  - frogpelt 7y ago
    That's fair. I don't know what happened. But I assume he cheated on his wife. I consider that not having integrity. If I'm wrong and he didn't cheat on his wife, then I stand corrected. I disagree with your last statement. The problems with the world are because fewer people have integrity than because more people are believing tabloids.
    - whamlastxmas 7y ago
      He seemingly did have intimate relations with people other than his wife but there's a very wide spectrum of marriages out there.
calimac 7y ago
Amazon declined when it opened up prime FBA to sellers from outside the USA to sell directly into the USA market. Listen for a second, The Chinese amazon accounts are ran by Chinese sellers who operate in a different culture and market that has different values and rules. READ THIS: https://mywifequitherjob.com/why-chinese-sellers-are-dominating-amazon/ https://mywifequitherjob.com/why-chinese-sellers-are-dominat... If you’ve shopped on Amazon lately, you’ve probably noticed that the platform has become a cesspool of non-name brand goods. And most of these products are sold by private label sellers, retail/online arbitragers and companies in China selling direct on Amazon. Of these 3 types of sellers, the Chinese have been the fastest growing segment and they are utterly dominating the platform. In fact, they’ve pretty much taken over. Here are a few statistics to describe the Asian invasion this past year… Over 250,000 Chinese Sellers Joined Amazon Last Year 25% of Amazon’s 2 Million Sellers Are Based In China They Have Years Of Exporting Experience They Have A Pricing Advantage Over Other Sellers We are now seeing the results of the inundation of Chinese sellers onto Amazon.
ChuckMcM 7y ago
There is so much about Amazon that is clearly in the 'Day 2' territory. I am not as swayed by one day shipping as the author is. Yes, its a big challenge and yes it makes things even more likely that Amazon will hurt brick and mortar stores (as an experiment look at the commercial retail space in your town and see how many 'things' retailers there are. Not as many as there were, and in some places entire city blocks have given way to 'services' retailers (salons and restaurants) Amazon continues to struggle with counterfeits in their inventory. They continue to struggle with market vendors who give shoddy service. They continue to struggle with customer perception when something is "sold by amazon" and then ships from Malaysia by boat. They continue to have failures in even their 2 day "prime" when the two days only starts when the item ships, and it can take a week for an item to go from "ordered" to "shipped". And as they crack down on both buyer and seller fraud, it gets harder for legitimate customers to make a return claim. All in all I am pretty bearish on them.
- petra 7y ago
  >> All in all I am pretty bearish on them. Who will "kill" them ? What will the e-commerce market look like in 10 years - and could that be without Amazon as a major competitor ?
  - the_watcher 7y ago
    I'm not bearish on Amazon, but it seems realistic that someone could build an aggregator of Shopify (or other owner-operated storefronts) sites. For example, a Shopify aggregator/product search engine that had any kind of meaningful traction could try to build a checkout integration with merchants using Shopify payments and take a cut of revenue, or just sell ads the same way Amazon does. Maybe this already exists to some extent, and I'm sure there's a lot I'm not considering, but I think it's exceedingly realistic to build a competitor to Amazon that focuses on addressing some core complaints of both sides of the marketplace: product quality, counterfeiting, and producer control. Should caveat that I'm ignoring AWS entirely and am aware of the irony that there's a substantial chance an Amazon competitor would be built on top of Amazon's infra.
the_watcher 7y ago
> Amazon allegedly spent “years” deciding whether or not to do this, which is definitely not “high-velocity decision making”. To be fair, the reality could be closer to "we decided not to do this at high velocity numerous times over the years"
skybrian 7y ago
The one-day shipping seems like an overreach to me, like Apple obsessing on making its laptops thinner when they are plenty thin enough. But I guess I'm not the target customer?
ineedasername 7y ago
The final line really stuck out to me: "antitrust actions are a trailing indicator of a company that has peaked, not a causal force of decline"
sanbor 7y ago
What is the impact to the environment? I imagine speeding up the delivery leaves little room for delivery optimization. 1 day/same day shipping can be very useful a sometimes, but having it by default seems wastful.

Day Two to One Day

166 points by kaboro 7y ago

iikoolpp 7y ago

TIL one-day (or, even same-day) amazon shipping isn't a thing outside of the UK?

a_bouncing_bean 7y ago
Only in major city's metro areas in the USA.
justinclift 7y ago
It's not one-day for all of the UK either. ;) Saying that as I lived in a ~reasonably remote part Cornwall at the time Amazon launched 1-day shipping in the UK. Bought stuff from them literally every day for a few months. At first stuff really would turn up in 1 day, and it was awesome. However, after a while I guess they figured out it was costing them a fortune in delivery costs. So the 1-day thing silently became "2 day". As in, when not logged in it, items would be shown as "Receive it by (say) Wed xx" on a Tuesday. After logging in and purchasing, the expected date would then become Thursday. Yes, even with Prime 1-day. ;) --- For me it's a moot point anyway, as after some bad customer service experiences - dishonesty on Amazons part - I don't really buy anything through Amazon any more.
Steko 7y ago
One day in (most of) Japan.

yuy910616 7y ago

As Ben said...revenue has not showed up. I really wonder if going from 2 days to 1 day is as valuable to consumers, and as impactful on revenue, to going from say 1 week to 2 days. We might not see revenue increase for years, and revenue is going to become more expensive. However, if AMZ continue to invest in difficult logistical challenges, the small marginal gains in shipping time might suddenly add up to a leap: i'm imagining going from next day to a few hours. edit: syntax, grammar

coreyrab 7y ago
Going from 2 days to 1 day has always felt more like a luxury to me – and one I am willing to pay for when needed. For 95% of the purchases I make 2 day shipping is more than quick enough.
- groby_b 7y ago
  fwiw: Many of us dinosaurs remember when you ordered things on Amazon, and it took a week and cost shipping. Prime, and 2-day shipping, felt like a luxury you don't need. (And many of us thought long and hard if we should spend, and then it turned out to be really convenient...) And those of us from the Triassic period even remember the days before Amazon, where you went to a bookstore, and you hoped they had a book that you needed, and if not, oh well, we can get it in 4-6 weeks. And then Amazon popped up, and you could just order online, and it felt like a luxury to have things in a week, and then we paid for it. We didn't need those books within a week, mind. It was the Triassic, we moved slowly, and 4-6 weeks for a rare book seemed just fine. (Because, amongst other things, it gave you an excuse to spend the next 4-6 weeks browsing what other books the store had ;) I'm fairly certain the same will happen to 1-day. It'll feel like a luxury. It'll turn out to be convenient. It'll take a year or so, and then we'll all happily pay for it.
  - JackFr 7y ago
    > And those of us from the Triassic period even remember the days before Amazon, where you went to a bookstore, and you hoped they had a book that you needed, and if not, oh well, we can get it in 4-6 weeks. And that's if you knew it existed. If you were looking for an esoteric subject it was not trivial to discover what books on the topic were in print.
  - gjm11 7y ago
    "Whaddya mean 'we', paleface?" I'm a happy non-Prime Amazon customer. I buy plenty of things from them, and I basically never need anything faster than their free shipping (which I'm pretty sure they deliberately slow down, holding back dispatching in order to incentivize customers to get Prime). I could easily afford a Prime subscription, but I don't see how it's more worth the money than a hundred other things I could drop ~£100/year on. Are there really so few other people who feel that way?

aresant 7y ago

Anazon is better than ever for brand name, known buys. Eg I recently ordered a UHD bluray movie, took about 15 seconds end to end and arrived in a day. They are terrible for everything else. Eg I bought a reading light. Which was a 10 minute sorting excersise trying to figure out which of a dozen nearly identical products was the least likely to burn down my house. Then trying to uncover which had real reviews and not switched etc. I hit the roulette wheel and ultimately got a unit that arrived DOA. My trust in the last two years has deteriorated massively in their platform, as a consumer I am absolutely suseptable to a “quality first” disruptor. And amazon is obviously jam packed with smart people, so what am I missing about their apparent lack of focus or execution on this commonly lamented problem?

vollmond 7y ago
And even for brand name items, you still have counterfeit worries (IE, many people refuse to buy flash storage at all from Amazon now), due to counterfeits from intermingling of "sold by amazon" and "shipped by amazon" items.
- cosmie 7y ago
  I'm not sure if the situation has changed, but it used to be that co-mingling was exclusively an aspect/option of FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). They did not co-mingle their own inventory, so you could still be somewhat confident in purchasing products with Amazon as the seller of record, i.e. "Sold by Amazon". I can't find anything to confirm or deny if this is still the case, but I haven't had any issues personally when sticking with products where Amazon is the seller of record. Although I have noticed the pricing and shipping time tend to be less competitive (I presumed because they don't access co-mingled inventory that's at a closer fulfillment center).
  - secabeen 7y ago
    Amazon does co-mingle their own stock with marketplace stock, although exactly how often and for what items they do so is unknown. The board game industry has been hit hard by counterfeits (it's really not that hard to print a game), and there are many reports of people ordering games sold-and-shipped-by-amazon, and getting a counterfeit: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1983918/warning-seems-be-lot-counterfeit-versions-amazon-e https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1983918/warning-seems-be-lo... https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1923659/amazon-counterfeits https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1923659/amazon-counterfeits

mrfredward 7y ago

I like the article, but I think a missing piece of this is that when a company becomes a big enough conglomerate, parts can be in day 2 while other parts are at day 1. Amazon isn't raising money from investors anymore, it's taking profits on parts of the business and using it to expand in other places, and Bezos himself is famous for saying a profit margin is an opportunity for disruption. That being said, in many ways the point of business is to end up a day 2 company. VCs invest so they can cash out in the IPO, IPO investors buy so they can sell to other investors, those investors sell to others, and so on. It sounds like the last guy is left holding the bag, but in fact, the people at the end can make a fortune, even as the company is fading away, if the company is distributing profits through dividends and buybacks. If a company dies before it gets to that end phase though, the whole thing will have just been a wealth transfer from later investors to the early ones.

allthecybers 7y ago

One-day shipping is definitely a logistical leap for mankind but I often wonder the environmental impact that is accrued in the pursuit of total convenience. Also, their Prime branded delivery trucks are driven by gig workers, essentially making Prime the Uber of the delivery world. I just wonder how sustainable it all is. What level of convenience will be demanded next and what cost will that pose to the environment and to the part-time or gig workers who keep it moving.

emiliobumachar 7y ago
I guess it might be a net good environmentally. Packaging is bad, but driving to the nearest store to get a single item could be worse. Convenient delivery will decrease the latter.
- truebosko 7y ago
  Read a piece recently on how Uber is primarily used by people who are a) fairly well off and b) have access to transit or other options to get to work This argument you make reminds me of that. Most people taking advantage of Amazon One-Day delivery are in urban centres, and most of them are likely doing OK, and most of them can likely walk or take public transit to get what they need
- SamBam 7y ago
  Except that's the last mile, and I think a small proportion of the total carbon footprint. I think the question of whether same-day delivery is good or bad boils down to whether the goods are able to be trucked across the country in an efficient manner. If the company has switched to many more smaller trucks, which may be less than completely full, then it's a negative.
- bradstewart 7y ago
  Has anyone seen data on this? I recently starting making an effort to purchase things like paper towels, Advil, toothpaste, etc from Target (in person) instead of buying from Amazon to reduce the amount of packaging I have to recycle and throw away. I still feel like it's a net benefit, but that's purely a _feeling_.

throwawaywindev 7y ago

I wonder if the increased “harvesting” has to do with Bezos getting older.

madamelic 7y ago

My wonder is how large a company can get before the founder can no longer force strong culture. The decision to favor their own products over others seems like a short-sighted goal to help an exec get a bonus rather than help their customers I am wondering how they can handle short-sighted, highly-motivated individuals self-dealing rather than looking out for the company and its stated culture.

tootie 7y ago
Keynes said it best. In the long run, we're all dead. Jobs died and his culture is already ebbing.
sixstringtheory 7y ago
Probably something around Dunbar's number ("proposed to lie between 100 and 250, with a commonly used value of 150") [0]. I imagine it's not simply the size of the company but how quickly it grew to that size, too. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

frogpelt 7y ago

Jeff Bezos does not have integrity. We know this because of the way he treated Mackenzie Bezos. Now, we just have to see how far his lack of integrity will go in his business operation.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
Tell us more about the in-depth and personal knowledge you have about the former Bezos marriage. Were you present for their marriage counseling? Their intimate disagreements? Tell us about how they interacted on a personal level and what their dynamic was together. Marriages are complicated. What we see in public is very limited and far from the truth. Being the richest dude in the world means everything goes through a PR filter. Suggesting you know anything at all about their marriage is idiotic. I say this as someone with no love for Bezos or Amazon. The assumption that you know something because you've read tabloids is a big reason the world is fucked right now
- frogpelt 7y ago
  That's fair. I don't know what happened. But I assume he cheated on his wife. I consider that not having integrity. If I'm wrong and he didn't cheat on his wife, then I stand corrected. I disagree with your last statement. The problems with the world are because fewer people have integrity than because more people are believing tabloids.
  - whamlastxmas 7y ago
    He seemingly did have intimate relations with people other than his wife but there's a very wide spectrum of marriages out there.

calimac 7y ago

Amazon declined when it opened up prime FBA to sellers from outside the USA to sell directly into the USA market. Listen for a second, The Chinese amazon accounts are ran by Chinese sellers who operate in a different culture and market that has different values and rules. READ THIS: https://mywifequitherjob.com/why-chinese-sellers-are-dominating-amazon/ https://mywifequitherjob.com/why-chinese-sellers-are-dominat... If you’ve shopped on Amazon lately, you’ve probably noticed that the platform has become a cesspool of non-name brand goods. And most of these products are sold by private label sellers, retail/online arbitragers and companies in China selling direct on Amazon. Of these 3 types of sellers, the Chinese have been the fastest growing segment and they are utterly dominating the platform. In fact, they’ve pretty much taken over. Here are a few statistics to describe the Asian invasion this past year… Over 250,000 Chinese Sellers Joined Amazon Last Year 25% of Amazon’s 2 Million Sellers Are Based In China They Have Years Of Exporting Experience They Have A Pricing Advantage Over Other Sellers We are now seeing the results of the inundation of Chinese sellers onto Amazon.

ChuckMcM 7y ago

There is so much about Amazon that is clearly in the 'Day 2' territory. I am not as swayed by one day shipping as the author is. Yes, its a big challenge and yes it makes things even more likely that Amazon will hurt brick and mortar stores (as an experiment look at the commercial retail space in your town and see how many 'things' retailers there are. Not as many as there were, and in some places entire city blocks have given way to 'services' retailers (salons and restaurants) Amazon continues to struggle with counterfeits in their inventory. They continue to struggle with market vendors who give shoddy service. They continue to struggle with customer perception when something is "sold by amazon" and then ships from Malaysia by boat. They continue to have failures in even their 2 day "prime" when the two days only starts when the item ships, and it can take a week for an item to go from "ordered" to "shipped". And as they crack down on both buyer and seller fraud, it gets harder for legitimate customers to make a return claim. All in all I am pretty bearish on them.

petra 7y ago
>> All in all I am pretty bearish on them. Who will "kill" them ? What will the e-commerce market look like in 10 years - and could that be without Amazon as a major competitor ?
- the_watcher 7y ago
  I'm not bearish on Amazon, but it seems realistic that someone could build an aggregator of Shopify (or other owner-operated storefronts) sites. For example, a Shopify aggregator/product search engine that had any kind of meaningful traction could try to build a checkout integration with merchants using Shopify payments and take a cut of revenue, or just sell ads the same way Amazon does. Maybe this already exists to some extent, and I'm sure there's a lot I'm not considering, but I think it's exceedingly realistic to build a competitor to Amazon that focuses on addressing some core complaints of both sides of the marketplace: product quality, counterfeiting, and producer control. Should caveat that I'm ignoring AWS entirely and am aware of the irony that there's a substantial chance an Amazon competitor would be built on top of Amazon's infra.

the_watcher 7y ago

> Amazon allegedly spent “years” deciding whether or not to do this, which is definitely not “high-velocity decision making”. To be fair, the reality could be closer to "we decided not to do this at high velocity numerous times over the years"

skybrian 7y ago

The one-day shipping seems like an overreach to me, like Apple obsessing on making its laptops thinner when they are plenty thin enough. But I guess I'm not the target customer?

ineedasername 7y ago

The final line really stuck out to me: "antitrust actions are a trailing indicator of a company that has peaked, not a causal force of decline"

sanbor 7y ago

What is the impact to the environment? I imagine speeding up the delivery leaves little room for delivery optimization. 1 day/same day shipping can be very useful a sometimes, but having it by default seems wastful.