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Amazon is Amazon because they didn't let size dull their edge. Unfortunately, that cuts both ways. There are a lot of ways to be exploitive, to your and your c

by ethbr0 5y ago

Amazon is Amazon because they didn't let size dull their edge. Unfortunately, that cuts both ways. There are a lot of ways to be exploitive, to your and your customers' benefits, when you're a $113 B revenue/quarter company, that simply aren't available when you're a startup. Hell, Walmart pioneered the "How'd you like to sell in our stores?" + "You need to reduce prices, or it'd be a shame if we, your biggest customer, had to drop you" two step. And Amazon pioneered hyperscale logistics efficiencies. Both of which only work if you're giant. If we want a return to competition of yore, I think it's only going to happen if we (a) prevent "extra-large" companies from having in-house logistics & (b) prevent predatory contracts and pricing when a size disparity exists (e.g. Walmart/supplier). And given both of these are pretty fundamental to the way many companies work, I'm not even sure they'd be feasible.

TheSoftwareGuy 5y ago
> Amazon pioneered hyperscale logistics efficiencies Actually, I believe that was Walmart as well: >TIMMER: I used to ask my class, I’m talking 1985, “Where is the world’s largest supercomputer?” And the correct answer was, “It’s at the Pentagon.” Okay. “Where is the world’s second largest supercomputer?” Bentonville, Ark. Home of Walmart. They used that computer to track every single item on every single Walmart shelf. That information technology is what revolutionized food marketing. And it was pretty much invented by Walmart. Source: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/farms-race/#:%7E:text=where%20is%20the%20world%E2%80%99s%20second%20largest%20supercomputer%3F https://freakonomics.com/podcast/farms-race/#:%7E:text=where...
- chubot 5y ago
  Ironically Barnes And Noble was also a significant computer user in the 80’s and 90’s. They put a lot of local bookstores out of business with superior inventory, prices, and generally being data driven. Then they were one of Amazon’s first casualties!
  - echelon 5y ago
    The pattern is that efficiency increases and hyperscale fell the previous incumbent. If the pace of innovation doesn't slow, Amazon may fall to the same forces. Imagine a virtualized army of engineers that the AI or brain upload future may bring. Maybe that won't happen in our lifetimes, but it will happen at some point if we don't manage to nuke ourselves. There are probably a handful of other trends that will cause instability and salients to develop in the fitness gradient.
    - DougN7 5y ago
      That sounds scary - a company even more powerful and competitive that could beat Amazon. Imagine what their abuses would be!
  - tjr 5y ago
    I frequently shopped at Barnes & Noble ~20 years ago. But they slowly carried less and less that I was interested in, seemingly shifting from a "store for people who like books" to a "store for people to buy gifts for people who like books". At first I placed online orders with them, but once moving to online shopping at all, it was clear that Amazon had even better selection, prices, shipping, etc. But I still enjoy a good physical bookstore. I might still shop there in person today if their stock was more interesting, even if the prices were a little higher.
    - Rd6n6 5y ago
      Chapters/indigo in Canada is like that. Half the stores are gift shops for socks and blankets etc. They removed all the tables and chairs they had 20 years ago for you to read at. At least they still exist though, all 4 used bookstores (plus one chapters) near where I live have closed down
      - fzil 5y ago
        > Half the stores are gift shops for socks and blankets etc. Yeah this annoyed me to no end, however after a few shops I realized the only reason these are even open right now is because of the high margin gift section. Check the prices on their plushies when you are there. $35 for a small rabbit! and people buy them.
- dekhn 5y ago
  Um the pentagon didn't have the world's largest supercomputer, and neither did walmart. walmart wouldn't buy a supercomputer to do logistics, as supercomputers are super expensive for modest speed improvements and you didn't need them to do supply chain optimization, and anyway, product tracking is a DB problem, not a supercomputer problem. What's sad is that there probably is some interesting IT story behind Walmart scaling, but not using supercomputers and using PCs or somethign instead.
  - syshum 5y ago
    It would be funny if everyone thinks they used this sophisticated technology or supercomputer when in reality it was just someone with an excel workbook at ton of vba code /s
    - bradknowles 5y ago
      An Excel spreadsheet with VBA would have been a huge improvement. I figure the Pentagon probably did that about twenty years later.
  - 14u2c 5y ago
    In this context it sounds like supercomputer would more analogous to mainframe.
    - bradknowles 5y ago
      In 1985, they did have mainframes at the Pentagon. But they dated from the 1960s. My first job out of college in 1989 was to go to work in the basement of The Pentagon for the Defense Communications Agency, as an Analyst/Terminal Operator for those old pre-Multics Honeywell WWMCCS mainframes. One of my first jobs there was to help modernized the classified Airfields database from COBOL 66 to COBOL 77. At the beginning, we used glass tty terminals that were wrapped in faraday cages, and all local printing was done via a screen print function to local thermal paper printers. We could use the line printers, but those were not directly accessible to us, and we had to go up to the Operator window to ask for our output. They later upgraded the terminals to EMF-hardened IBM PC XT computers with removable 5GB hard drives, known as WIS-CUC terminals. That was like 1991. Note that this was PC XT technology from like 1984, not PC AT. The unclassified PC AT type computers we used outside of the classified environments probably had more RAM, larger hard drives, and more I/O capacity than those ancient Honeywell mainframes. So, no, there weren’t any supercomputers at the Pentagon in 1985. Now, if you want to talk about NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, then that’s a different story.
wil421 5y ago
Don’t forget that Amazon still needs almost $200 billion more in revenue to beat Walmart. They have $550 billion in revenue and don’t have something like AWS. Amazon has only recently pioneered last mile logistics. It still isnt that great. I’m in a large metro area and 25-50% of my packages do not meet the prime delivery dates. I’d argue Walmart is still the king of logistics, for now.
- brutus1213 5y ago
  Out of all the retailers I have experience with, the pandemic winner was Walmart (Canada) hands-down. They kept iterating their app and pickup experience (order via app and they put the groceries in your trunk) .. I am an extremely satisfied customer and have increased my spend there! Losers for me were Home Depot and Canadian Tire. They iterated slowly and when they did, made things worse it seemed.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    I'm not a frequent Walmart delivery customer, but my impression was they didn't take buy-online/ship-to-home or buy-online/ship-to-store seriously until the Jet acquisition. Which Walmart bought in 2016?
    - brutus1213 5y ago
      So Walmart Canada's pick up seemed to develop in front of my eyes. At the start of the pandemic, there were almost no spots and they screwed up a lot. E.g you'd get half the items you ordered, wrong items, would not get pick up order ready in time, fee on orders, etc. Whoever ran the show, executed brilliantly. It kept getting better. A relative scoffed at my high praise, and I convinced him to try it .. he too was blown away. I bring this up because so many Canadian retailers acted stupidly and frankly, many old school businesses keep doing this all the time (looking at you Costco .. Costco seemed to have pretended the pandemic did not happen .. they did not develop a touchless pick up model at all, and their online prices seemed to always be higher than the store price .. cancelled my membership there).
cbozeman 5y ago
> If we want a return to competition of yore I think we're beyond that now. I really do. We thought we were going to get Weyland-Yutani, but I think we're going to end up with Bezos-Walton instead.
jimmaswell 5y ago
I don't want a return to having to go to a million little overpriced stores sending me stuff with 2+ weeks shipping in the name of competition. Seems like Wal Mart is gearing up to compete with Amazon anyway. The only government responses we need here are better labor laws and maybe a few tax code changes.

by ethbr0 5y ago

TheSoftwareGuy 5y ago

> Amazon pioneered hyperscale logistics efficiencies Actually, I believe that was Walmart as well: >TIMMER: I used to ask my class, I’m talking 1985, “Where is the world’s largest supercomputer?” And the correct answer was, “It’s at the Pentagon.” Okay. “Where is the world’s second largest supercomputer?” Bentonville, Ark. Home of Walmart. They used that computer to track every single item on every single Walmart shelf. That information technology is what revolutionized food marketing. And it was pretty much invented by Walmart. Source: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/farms-race/#:%7E:text=where%20is%20the%20world%E2%80%99s%20second%20largest%20supercomputer%3F https://freakonomics.com/podcast/farms-race/#:%7E:text=where...

chubot 5y ago
Ironically Barnes And Noble was also a significant computer user in the 80’s and 90’s. They put a lot of local bookstores out of business with superior inventory, prices, and generally being data driven. Then they were one of Amazon’s first casualties!
- echelon 5y ago
  The pattern is that efficiency increases and hyperscale fell the previous incumbent. If the pace of innovation doesn't slow, Amazon may fall to the same forces. Imagine a virtualized army of engineers that the AI or brain upload future may bring. Maybe that won't happen in our lifetimes, but it will happen at some point if we don't manage to nuke ourselves. There are probably a handful of other trends that will cause instability and salients to develop in the fitness gradient.
  - DougN7 5y ago
    That sounds scary - a company even more powerful and competitive that could beat Amazon. Imagine what their abuses would be!
- tjr 5y ago
  I frequently shopped at Barnes & Noble ~20 years ago. But they slowly carried less and less that I was interested in, seemingly shifting from a "store for people who like books" to a "store for people to buy gifts for people who like books". At first I placed online orders with them, but once moving to online shopping at all, it was clear that Amazon had even better selection, prices, shipping, etc. But I still enjoy a good physical bookstore. I might still shop there in person today if their stock was more interesting, even if the prices were a little higher.
  - Rd6n6 5y ago
    Chapters/indigo in Canada is like that. Half the stores are gift shops for socks and blankets etc. They removed all the tables and chairs they had 20 years ago for you to read at. At least they still exist though, all 4 used bookstores (plus one chapters) near where I live have closed down
    - fzil 5y ago
      > Half the stores are gift shops for socks and blankets etc. Yeah this annoyed me to no end, however after a few shops I realized the only reason these are even open right now is because of the high margin gift section. Check the prices on their plushies when you are there. $35 for a small rabbit! and people buy them.
dekhn 5y ago
Um the pentagon didn't have the world's largest supercomputer, and neither did walmart. walmart wouldn't buy a supercomputer to do logistics, as supercomputers are super expensive for modest speed improvements and you didn't need them to do supply chain optimization, and anyway, product tracking is a DB problem, not a supercomputer problem. What's sad is that there probably is some interesting IT story behind Walmart scaling, but not using supercomputers and using PCs or somethign instead.
- syshum 5y ago
  It would be funny if everyone thinks they used this sophisticated technology or supercomputer when in reality it was just someone with an excel workbook at ton of vba code /s
  - bradknowles 5y ago
    An Excel spreadsheet with VBA would have been a huge improvement. I figure the Pentagon probably did that about twenty years later.
- 14u2c 5y ago
  In this context it sounds like supercomputer would more analogous to mainframe.
  - bradknowles 5y ago
    In 1985, they did have mainframes at the Pentagon. But they dated from the 1960s. My first job out of college in 1989 was to go to work in the basement of The Pentagon for the Defense Communications Agency, as an Analyst/Terminal Operator for those old pre-Multics Honeywell WWMCCS mainframes. One of my first jobs there was to help modernized the classified Airfields database from COBOL 66 to COBOL 77. At the beginning, we used glass tty terminals that were wrapped in faraday cages, and all local printing was done via a screen print function to local thermal paper printers. We could use the line printers, but those were not directly accessible to us, and we had to go up to the Operator window to ask for our output. They later upgraded the terminals to EMF-hardened IBM PC XT computers with removable 5GB hard drives, known as WIS-CUC terminals. That was like 1991. Note that this was PC XT technology from like 1984, not PC AT. The unclassified PC AT type computers we used outside of the classified environments probably had more RAM, larger hard drives, and more I/O capacity than those ancient Honeywell mainframes. So, no, there weren’t any supercomputers at the Pentagon in 1985. Now, if you want to talk about NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, then that’s a different story.

wil421 5y ago

Don’t forget that Amazon still needs almost $200 billion more in revenue to beat Walmart. They have $550 billion in revenue and don’t have something like AWS. Amazon has only recently pioneered last mile logistics. It still isnt that great. I’m in a large metro area and 25-50% of my packages do not meet the prime delivery dates. I’d argue Walmart is still the king of logistics, for now.

brutus1213 5y ago
Out of all the retailers I have experience with, the pandemic winner was Walmart (Canada) hands-down. They kept iterating their app and pickup experience (order via app and they put the groceries in your trunk) .. I am an extremely satisfied customer and have increased my spend there! Losers for me were Home Depot and Canadian Tire. They iterated slowly and when they did, made things worse it seemed.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I'm not a frequent Walmart delivery customer, but my impression was they didn't take buy-online/ship-to-home or buy-online/ship-to-store seriously until the Jet acquisition. Which Walmart bought in 2016?
  - brutus1213 5y ago
    So Walmart Canada's pick up seemed to develop in front of my eyes. At the start of the pandemic, there were almost no spots and they screwed up a lot. E.g you'd get half the items you ordered, wrong items, would not get pick up order ready in time, fee on orders, etc. Whoever ran the show, executed brilliantly. It kept getting better. A relative scoffed at my high praise, and I convinced him to try it .. he too was blown away. I bring this up because so many Canadian retailers acted stupidly and frankly, many old school businesses keep doing this all the time (looking at you Costco .. Costco seemed to have pretended the pandemic did not happen .. they did not develop a touchless pick up model at all, and their online prices seemed to always be higher than the store price .. cancelled my membership there).

cbozeman 5y ago

> If we want a return to competition of yore I think we're beyond that now. I really do. We thought we were going to get Weyland-Yutani, but I think we're going to end up with Bezos-Walton instead.

jimmaswell 5y ago

I don't want a return to having to go to a million little overpriced stores sending me stuff with 2+ weeks shipping in the name of competition. Seems like Wal Mart is gearing up to compete with Amazon anyway. The only government responses we need here are better labor laws and maybe a few tax code changes.