Amazon continues to amaze. The NYT notes that they have hired over 425,000 employees this year. That is truly astonishing. You have to go back to WW2 to find hiring at that rate. Amazon now has approximately 1.3 million employees. When you add in another half a million contractors they are fast approaching Walmart as the largest U.S. employer. (Note: the Federal Government employs a little over 2 million, but if you throw in employees of Federal Government contractors, everyone else is a dust speck.)
Walmart aside, the retail industry has little hope but to play along and at least have an option to sell through Amazon. In other words, give tribute to The Crown. It's interesting to ask what sort of retailers have the ability to hold out. Let's see:
Anything you have to touch or try in person: Clothes, Furniture, etc. Oh you can go to a real-life store and try things out, then go order them from Amazon, but that's not the smooth experience Amazon needs to stay ahead. Also, you'll feel like a douche if you use a retailer as an Amazon showroom, and you should. The retailer goes to a lot of expense to keep employees in the store. If you use them and then order on Amazon to save a few dollars you should feel guilty. This needs to be a cultural norm.
Special assistance for complicated decision making. Very important as we age and tech gets away from us. The archetype here is the oldster who needs help with registering a new phone, or unnecessarily complicated sales processes like leasing a car.
The product provides a cultural experience or status upgrade. Apple for instance. Even if Apple doesn't sell through Amazon (although I think they do, sort of) people will still buy Apple products -- either at the Apple website or in an Apple retail store. They need Apple for self-fulfillment more than they need convenience. (Interesting note: airpods -- those white, dangly, Apple wireless earbuds, were they a standalone business would be the single hottest start-up in silicon valley. I'm going to have to write an essay on Apple and why I don't like it.)
There are probably others, but in the overwhelming majority of purchases, it's Convenience Uber Alles and Amazon wins.
The other arae in which Amazon is the 900 lb. gorilla is cloud services. This is mostly hidden from the public at large, but Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the biggest vendor of back-end services for the cloud. All that stuff you do that is now in "the cloud" -- meaning you access it through a browser or your phone exists on servers owned and run by Amazon.
You begin to see what an immensely powerful position they are in. They control the front end and the back end of the bulk of commerce in the U.S. and much of the First World.
I don't know how all this plays out. Generally when companies get this big they butt heads with Government. Cynics will say that the Government reacts to being threatened or simply wants tribute. The naive say that at that size, they are too important to society not to face control and oversight. Whatever the case, Amazon is on the fast track there. "There" could be anything from an antitrust breakup to an East India Company style accommodation.
It's also worth noting that Amazon is not (yet) all powerful. Though AWS is the big gun, it faces stiff competition from Microsoft's Azure product, Microsoft being able to leverage their greater power in corporate infrastructure. Their streaming services, while solid, aren't crushing the likes of Spotify or Netflix, although if they decide to truly leverage their Prime subscribers they could dominate. Also, has Spotify ever turned a profit? Their hardware ventures -- Fire phones and tablets -- are almost a joke, which is odd as you would think they could leverage Kindle to that end. The Whole Foods and Washington Post purchases seem barely coherent at this point.
It's going to be fascinating to see this play out. By the way, I am generally a fan of Amazon. I think for the most part they have done far more good than evil in the world and I would not want to go back to pre-Amazon times.
