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I would disagree here. You’d have to give up their subsidiaries as well: Whole Foods, Twitch, IMDb, ring, Audible, and even AWS. As well as several online large

I would disagree here. You’d have to give up their subsidiaries as well: Whole Foods, Twitch, IMDb, ring, Audible, and even AWS. As well as several online large scale shops (many even based through Shopify) use Amazon’s delivery network for faster shipping. Google and MSFT provide cloud services also but AWS for sure has a large grasp on the market. Whole Foods is fairly unique; you can give it up but I doubt most people will. Audible and Kindle definitely are at the top of the pack for what they do, and Twitch is unrivaled. In Hollywood IMDb is the fairly standard. Ring can be replaced with Nest but you’re just going from one large company to another. Giving up just amazon’s retail platform is part of it but it’s just a piece of a larger conglomerate. Out of the bunch you described I’d actually argue Apple is the simplest to give up since it’s a select few high end technology pieces, rather than several large footholds in several niches.

brundolf 6y ago
I did forget about AWS, which IMO is the one Amazon product that's arguably essential under certain circumstances. But those are usually in the context of an employer, and I generally draw a line between work-use and personal-use. For example, I use no Google products personally but I do have to use them at work. As far as subsidiaries, that's more nuanced, though I do avoid Whole Foods and don't find myself using the others very often. If you're in Texas, Central Market is a perfect alternative to Whole Foods. I have Arlo cameras instead of Ring, which is owned by Netgear (not that home cameras are exactly essential). You're right that IMDB and Twitch don't have great alternatives, though you can get a lot out of both of those without spending any money. I didn't realize they let other companies use their shipping network, which is a more complicated case. Still, even just foregoing the name-brand services sends a signal. And anyway, most of their really egregious practices are around their warehouses (and in turn, the core Amazon retail site).

brundolf 6y ago

I did forget about AWS, which IMO is the one Amazon product that's arguably essential under certain circumstances. But those are usually in the context of an employer, and I generally draw a line between work-use and personal-use. For example, I use no Google products personally but I do have to use them at work. As far as subsidiaries, that's more nuanced, though I do avoid Whole Foods and don't find myself using the others very often. If you're in Texas, Central Market is a perfect alternative to Whole Foods. I have Arlo cameras instead of Ring, which is owned by Netgear (not that home cameras are exactly essential). You're right that IMDB and Twitch don't have great alternatives, though you can get a lot out of both of those without spending any money. I didn't realize they let other companies use their shipping network, which is a more complicated case. Still, even just foregoing the name-brand services sends a signal. And anyway, most of their really egregious practices are around their warehouses (and in turn, the core Amazon retail site).