It's difficult to beat because prices are a race to the bottom, and small players have no effective way to build up and manage reputations. If I need a widget,

It's difficult to beat because prices are a race to the bottom, and small players have no effective way to build up and manage reputations. If I need a widget, and Vendor A charges a buck, while Vendor B charges two bucks, all else being equal, I'll buy from Vendor A. Bad customer service helps both vendors compete with each other, but prevents small companies, collectively, from competing with Amazon. On eBay, small players do manage reputations, but only for a few weeks. If a product fails (or is discovered to be a fake) after 60 days, the seller is all good. Next sucker! There are things I'll buy there, but far more I won't. Google itself has the problem that culturally, it relies on algorithms which know better than you do, and is not a service company. It does great tech, but holds human being outside of Google in open contempt. That's find for running a search engine, adwords, or gmail, but it crashes-and-burns for ecommerce.