Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

vanityfair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–126 of 126 posts

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#121

Post by rmdundon »

ams6110 wrote: post #17
kbos87 wrote: post #10

I don’t think that the world can quite fathom how dangerous Amazon actually is to virtually every industry. When it comes to purveyors of physical goods, Amazon has the power to reshape the fabric of our streets and neighborhoods in ways few people can fathom. Say goodbye to grocery stores and ground floor retail if they get their way. They are just smart enough to do it slowly enough where they don’t have any jarrin…

For me, Amazon is a long way off from threatening my local supermarket and other local retailers. Would I buy clothes from Amazon? No, I like to try them on first. Returning stuff by mail is a pain. Would I buy expensive home furnishings from Amazon? No, I like to see, touch, try these things before I spend a lot of money. Would I buy perishable groceries from Amazon? No, because deliveries happen when I'm at work an…

I think it (may!) also depend on where you are located:

- If you are located in a suburban / semi-rural with more stores around, you may be less likely to use Amazon - If you are in a very rural / urban area, you may be more likely to use Amazon

Of course it'd probably be hard/impossible to find, but I'd like to be able to see a map of customers/purchases on Amazon in relation to urban and other areas.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#122

Post by Y7ZCQtNo39 »

danenania wrote: post #103
kogepathic wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're saying Amazon is no different -- they'll try and take on nearly every industry, but will really only have one core competence in 20 years? I think that 20 years ago people couldn't see a competitor coming along that could disrupt Microsoft, because they were so big and into everything. But that's because no one foresaw the coming of the smartphone. Microsoft is still king on PCs, but the PC market has bee…

I think AWS in particular will be facing some major threats over the next 5-10 years, from Google but also from emerging players. Everything that makes them a top choice today is getting commodified, and they are rapidly falling behind on developer experience as they layer more and more complexity onto their workflows.

I feel like AWS is already seeing threats. In the timeframe of 5-10 years, absolutely will that space look quite different.

Personally, I find AWS' interface to be super clunky. In fact, I find all of Amazon's interfaces (AWS, Amazon.com, the Amazon iOS app, to name a few) to really be poor examples of UX.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#123

Post by throwawayjava »

narrowrail wrote: post #108
throwawayjava wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What small businesses? Local business competing with Amazon were killed off more than a decade ago by Walmart. If the status quo when Amazon started was a high minimum wage with strong unions and employee (or at least local) ownership, this might be a more compelling argument. As it is, the capitalists in Bentonville are losing out to the capitalists in Seattle because the former rely on massively state-subsidized la…

>Amazon beating Walmart Let's not get carried away here. In the most recent quarter, Walmart had revenues of $123B vs Amazon's $38B. Walmart still has time to figure out the ecommerce game.

Point is, Walmart is Amazon's primary victim. And it's a victim I have trouble empathizing with.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#124

Post by muzani »

philipov wrote: post #110
muzani wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the giants today actually thrived without the competitors and were stunted only because of it. Who were the legit competitors to Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tesla? They grew into monsters without that competition, which is why they try to keep each other in check. Google made a social media platform and Microsoft made search engines.

Amazon: Barnes and Noble Google: Yahoo! Facebook: MySpace Tesla: The Automotive Industry

Those were nowhere near the same level in quality and weren't competed with. The market needed the better solution.

Re: Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?

#125

Post by sah2ed »

saosebastiao wrote: post #116
sah2ed wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My layman understanding is that investors think Amazon still has enormous room to grow because Amazon's current market share of the entire US retail industry (online + offline retail) is about 7%. The one thing that will make online shopping appealing to far more consumers is same-day and eventually 1-hr deliveries, irrespective of your location in the continental US and the only way to do this reliably is when fulfi…

I can guarantee you that the Day 1 phrase at Amazon has exactly 0% to do with driverless cars. And it is foolish to ascribe any singular viewpoint to investors in general. While some investors may hold the views you do, you’re likely suffering from a false consensus bias if you think your views are shared by anything more than a single digit percentage of investors in general or even specifically Amazon’s investors.…

Sigh.

You throw around words like foolish, bias, rubbish instead of providing a well reasoned counter argument. So all you have done is dish out a middle brow dismissal, well done.

Post reply on HN