Why You Cannot Escape Amazon

[Post-Crisis D]

Interesting article which mostly lists websites and companies Amazon owns:

"Why It's Hard to Escape Amazon's Long Reach"

[catowned]

Relentless.
Wonder how the initial book-selling business would have done with that name instead of Amazon?


eta. selling spelling

[Maggie Ann]

I had to stop reading. I was getting dizzy. 

[dgcasey]

In a test, the ACLU found that it incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress with people who had been arrested for a crime.

Yeah, I think that number is a little low myself. I'm sure the number of criminals in D.C. is much higher.

All kidding aside, I think the article is a bit disingenuous in certain aspects. They try to equate Amazon employees with other Silicon Valley employees and it just doesn't work.

Saying the median income for an Amazon employee is $28K per year with while a Facebook median income would be $240k is kind of silly. They try to call Amazon employees "tech employees", but that is obviously quite wrong. A fork lift driver in a warehouse is NOT a tech employee. A person that scans an item and stuffs it in a box is NOT a tech employee.

A programmer at Facebook, working on the actual systems of Facebook IS a tech employee. Should the person that scans items and boxes them up get paid as much as a person that has a computer science degree and is crucial to keeping the tech system up and running? No, I don't think so. If they want to get paid that much, let them go back to school and get the education that would befit that level of pay.

[EllieL]

Okay, my eyes are rolling around in my head now. 

[Bill Hiatt]

In a test, the ACLU found that it incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress with people who had been arrested for a crime.

Yeah, I think that number is a little low myself. I'm sure the number of criminals in D.C. is much higher.

All kidding aside, I think the article is a bit disingenuous in certain aspects. They try to equate Amazon employees with other Silicon Valley employees and it just doesn't work.

Saying the median income for an Amazon employee is $28K per year with while a Facebook median income would be $240k is kind of silly. They try to call Amazon employees "tech employees", but that is obviously quite wrong. A fork lift driver in a warehouse is NOT a tech employee. A person that scans an item and stuffs it in a box is NOT a tech employee.

A programmer at Facebook, working on the actual systems of Facebook IS a tech employee. Should the person that scans items and boxes them up get paid as much as a person that has a computer science degree and is crucial to keeping the tech system up and running? No, I don't think so. If they want to get paid that much, let them go back to school and get the education that would befit that level of pay.

Well put!

Amazon has a lot to answer for, but let's not compare apples and oranges. A lot of Amazon employees are in fact working in relatively low-level positions. Also, Amazon seems to outsource a lot of its jobs (like first-tier KDP responders) overseas. Pay rates are low by our standards, but very good in some countries.

[Bill Hiatt]

Having now read the article, I think it's time for the justice department to begin antitrust proceedings.

The idea of having the convenience of having so many services available online is great. The fact that one company owns all of them and uses the combination to thwart competition in several ways? Not so much.

People used to love malls for the convenience. It was inevitable that the online mall would gradually replace the physical one. But a healthier model would be one business owns the mall, but multiple other businesses own the goods and services sold there. Amazon has so many discrete pieces that it would be easy to break them up.

[guest1038]

I don't want to see government break up Amazon. I'd rather see government involvement in the economy cut back to the point where Amazon's broken up through decreased market share by the myriad of smaller players able to emerge with the removal of barriers to entry and protections for the mega players like Amazon.