The online marketplace certainly engenders more efficient competition between sellers. The landscape has changed but small businesses are still selling stuff.

The online marketplace certainly engenders more efficient competition between sellers. The landscape has changed but small businesses are still selling stuff. There are over 1.9 million small and medium sized business which use the amazon marketplace. Mom and pop stores are now mom and pop sellers with amazon taking a cut. They make less money but don't have to pay rent for a commercial property. Amazon is big but its certainly not an unprecedented level of horizontal domination. There's still walmart, ebay, alibaba, shopify...unless you're only looking at book sales. Vertical integration wise it's trying to go there with its foray into business shipping + whole foods/amazon basics etc but seeing as its not close to dominant in terms of producing goods in any sector that I know of it's not inherently problematic. Obviously things are different and worse in some respects (and better in others), but comparing it to the East India Company is very over the top at this point.