That’s a lot like saying it was the patient’s underlying cancer that ultimately killed her, not the pillow held over her face by an overly ambitious family memb

That’s a lot like saying it was the patient’s underlying cancer that ultimately killed her, not the pillow held over her face by an overly ambitious family member eyeing the lucrative estate she would leave behind. Amazon accelerated what you describe in every quantifiable way and it was undoubtedly baked into the overall strategy. Yes, the situation was already terminal thanks to the Internet and poor online shopping execution by the incumbents, including Walmart, but overlooking Amazon’s involvement (going so far as to call it not their fault) and pointing at Walmart as the disease itself is a tiny bit of revisionism. Am I the only one old enough to remember discussions in older forums like these about how brilliant Bezos was to identify and exploit such a now-obvious opportunity? It was obvious then to the point of being damned near Amazon’s entire thesis.