Will amazon get close to monopoly?

[positivedoppler]

Their warehouse just moved to my neighborhood and I now have to fight through an impressive armada of Amazon trucks to get to work. That got me thinking, if they muscle out FedEx and UPS, wouldn't that force all businesses to list their product on Amazon. The more businesses have to use Amazon and their delivery service, the more UPS and FedEx gets muscled out forcing even more business to use Amazon to stay competitive. If we get to a point in which Amazon delivery is the only game in town, they can start charging whatever price they want. I once read Amazon is the only business Google fear, I'm beginning to see why.

 

[Sonikku]

I can't remember a time when a big monopoly was broken up since the 80's. The corporations practically regulate the government at this point, not the other way around. And the bigger they get, the greater still their influence. In the current political climate, I think the only way a monopoly is being broken up would not be for being a monopoly but for something stupid, like if either the GoP or Dems perceive them as being too big a financial contributor or asset to the opposing side to allow exist.

 

[sdifox]

How is amazon muscling out fedex and ups? They are shipping items sold on their platform no? Sure they have cut into Fedex and UPS business but a big portion of that has to do with pandemic.

 

[KB]

No they won't ever have a monopoly, but I can see a Duopoly with Walmart. If Amazon pushes out UPS and FEDEX, walmart will start its own delivery service, or someone else will.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Did not realize Amazon actually had their own delivery trucks. Never seen one here. Wonder if they are only being used in some locations? Here it's usually still going through Canada Post or Purolator, but for the last mile it's often a local contractor or smaller shipping company like Canpar.

But yeah that could be concerning if they try to push out the bigger shippers, since nothing stops them from refusing to deliver anything that's not through Amazon.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Fedex has mentioned publicly many times that they overall want to get out of consumer-related deliveries altogether.

Overall I think Target and Walmart are very much still competitors - though the kicker is Prime... How many millions of Americans have a Prime membership? 50% of the entire country?

Walmart will continue to hold the space for retail in-person.

And unless Amazon drastically changes something, Whole Foods isn't going to dominate the grocery stores. Overall Whole Foods is just an expensive way to overpay for food instead of another chain.

 

[turtile]

How is amazon muscling out fedex and ups? They are shipping items sold on their platform no? Sure they have cut into Fedex and UPS business but a big portion of that has to do with pandemic.

At least in the area surrounding where I live and neighboring cities, Amazon uses their own trucks. They also have contractors similar to Uber/Lyft but that is much more rare.

The fact is, Amazon is innovating much faster when it comes to efficiency. They pretty much cut out the time it takes to move packages to another facility. I receive next day Prime for free even during the holiday season.

 

[Aikouka]

Amazon has already displayed abusive behavior in multiple markets, which is why they're constantly in front of Congress testifying along with companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook. In the case of Amazon, they're typically accused of using sales data to determine products to make under their own Amazon Basics brand, or using their massive capital to destroy competitors. The best example is Diapers.com, which Amazon eventually started competing with. However, Amazon started selling their diapers at a loss, which Diapers.com couldn't compete with. Due to this, Diapers.com went out of business, and Amazon just bought their assets.

Interestingly... what has Amazon done to us? How often do you look at something and think, "UGH! I have to pay for shipping!?" I do eBay selling randomly, and there seems to be a preference for free shipping from people... even though my own auctions are priced so that it ends up hitting around the same cost as the free shipping auctions when you combine cost + shipping. On the flip side, free shipping is terrible for me as it artificially raises the value of the item. For example, a $105 free shipping auction vs. a $90 auction with $15 shipping will cost me more to insure (buyers almost never pay for insurance).

Did not realize Amazon actually had their own delivery trucks. Never seen one here. Wonder if they are only being used in some locations? Here it's usually still going through Canada Post or Purolator, but for the last mile it's often a local contractor or smaller shipping company like Canpar.

But yeah that could be concerning if they try to push out the bigger shippers, since nothing stops them from refusing to deliver anything that's not through Amazon.

It depends on where you're at. I've seen their semis around here, but we don't have Amazon delivery trucks. For us, Amazon uses a mix of UPS and USPS for the final delivery. (From what I've seen, Amazon's semis only feed into USPS though.)

 

[Fritzo]

Amazon already is a monopoly- their one corporation that manages the stores on most other stores.

That's the problem of mixing technology with capitalism- people can set up automated machines that do nothing but pump money out of the economy and into a single source. 3 people in the United States have more wealth than the bottom 165 million people COMBINED.

Amazon is like playing Monopoly and they own all the properties except the purple and light blue ones 🙁

 

[Wreckem]

They are also currently scoping up planes by the dozen on the cheap as airlines have to shed planes because of Covid.

 

[MrSquished]

When I moved here a few years ago, deliveries which were delivered by Amazon directly came from white cargo vans with other company lettering on them like a small LLC in a town not too far. Now they are all the blue amazon Prime painted vans, and the last few months I've seen a couple Amazon Prime vehicles that are the same size as your average UPS truck in the neighborhood. I've also seen Amazon Prime 18 wheelers on the major north/south highways here too, which I'm not on very much.

 

[pete6032]

Did not realize Amazon actually had their own delivery trucks. Never seen one here. Wonder if they are only being used in some locations? Here it's usually still going through Canada Post or Purolator, but for the last mile it's often a local contractor or smaller shipping company like Canpar.

But yeah that could be concerning if they try to push out the bigger shippers, since nothing stops them from refusing to deliver anything that's not through Amazon.

Their own delivery trucks are used in more dense urban areas where it is probably more cost effective than paying UPS or FedEx to deliver it. Most of the things I get from Amazon are delivered by an actual Amazon delivery truck. The rest are UPS.

 

[positivedoppler]

How is amazon muscling out fedex and ups? They are shipping items sold on their platform no? Sure they have cut into Fedex and UPS business but a big portion of that has to do with pandemic.

I can't remember the last time UPS or Fedex delivered to me anything when I order from Amazon(including from private sellers). So for every delivery made by amazon, it's less money for the traditional delivery company. Amazon is slowly squeezing sellers too to take over logistics.
Seems like Amazon has a lot of power over anyone who wants to sale products over the internet.

Anger as Amazon pressures US Prime sellers to use its own logistics service - The Loadstar

Amazon is flexing its muscles to push merchants onto its platform to use its logistics services. This week online merchants selling via Amazon, and which are on the Seller Fulfilled Programme (SFP), received an e-mail telling them to up their delivery performance or “suffer the consequences”...

theloadstar.com

 

[positivedoppler]

They are also currently scoping up planes by the dozen on the cheap as airlines have to shed planes because of Covid.

That's actually kind of scary. At the current rate Amazon will own the country. Planes, delivery, all goods sold on the internet, Amazon Cloud service, Amazon TV programs(competing with netflix), Amazon books...etc.. there is not a whole lot big business they currently don't domininate.

 

[sdifox]

I can't remember the last time UPS or Fedex delivered to me anything when I order from Amazon(including from private sellers). So for every delivery made by amazon, it's less money for the traditional delivery company. Amazon is slowly squeezing sellers too to take over logistics.
Seems like Amazon has a lot of power over anyone who wants to sale products over the internet.

Anger as Amazon pressures US Prime sellers to use its own logistics service - The Loadstar

Amazon is flexing its muscles to push merchants onto its platform to use its logistics services. This week online merchants selling via Amazon, and which are on the Seller Fulfilled Programme (SFP), received an e-mail telling them to up their delivery performance or “suffer the consequences”...

theloadstar.com

But that is just you buying from Amazon.

 

[Red Squirrel]

That's actually kind of scary. At the current rate Amazon will own the country. Planes, delivery, all goods sold on the internet, Amazon Cloud service, Amazon TV programs(competing with netflix), Amazon books...etc.. there is not a whole lot big business they currently don't domininate.

I think the planes are for delivery, but who knows, I could see them start an actual airline.

Amazon Prime Air™

There's no pilot, just Alexa.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Amazon already is a monopoly- their one corporation that manages the stores on most other stores.

That's the problem of mixing technology with capitalism- people can set up automated machines that do nothing but pump money out of the economy and into a single source. 3 people in the United States have more wealth than the bottom 165 million people COMBINED.

Amazon is like playing Monopoly and they own all the properties except the purple and light blue ones 🙁

I don't think it's quite that simple.

Once upon a time everyone was complaining that Walmart was killing all the mom and pop shops - which it admittedly did once upon a time in a lot of smaller towns.

Now folks are being practically defenseful to big-box retail stores as Amazon crushes plenty of worthless ones out of existence from a lack of innovation.

I think one of the keys of every market is that eventually companies become big-bloated bureaucracies - where doing something as simple as implementing a software is a 6 year project instead of a 6 month project. Where they consistently only use the market they have instead of asking "What market next?"

Walmart is that bloated whale. It hasn't innovated for shit. It has tried multiple times, but keeps failing over and over (e.g. acquired Jet.com to compete with Amazon. Failed miserably and now going to jet.com redirects to walmart.com).

Apple ((IMHO) is at that point of bloated whale. The iPhone has been their flagship product for the last... I dunno... 14 years? Companies that know how to be ruthless are innovate and constantly evolving.


Amazon is still at that ruthless part - as they continue to say "Nah, 2 day shipping isn't a good enough metric. Let's see if we can increase it to some areas to be 1 day."... Then they branch off into many other successful divisions, AWS being a HUGE success. They are also now getting into pharmaceutical with prescription delivery as well.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think the planes are for delivery, but who knows, I could see them start an actual airline.

Amazon Prime Air™

There's no pilot, just Alexa.

LOL, kind of.

In some country, McDonald's (the fast-food chain) bought the railway system. There was a picture of trains with the McDonalds trade-mark branding and trade dress. Could happen, scarily enough.

 

[Starbuck1975]

They already are and their fulfillment center workers and delivery drivers should unionize

 

[Red Squirrel]

They already are and their fulfillment center workers and delivery drivers should unionize

Unfortunately they make it very hard to do that since Amazon basically spies on it's workers 24/7 via their phones and other methods (Basically same methods Facebook, Google etc uses). Anyone that is found to be attempting it just gets fired. But yeah they really need to somehow all get together and do it. Just takes some balls and very smart organizing. The tricky part is trying to get everyone except for managers to agree to all meet at a certain physical location without any of their devices like phones etc and without telling them why until they get there and that there are no electronics around.

 

[positivedoppler]

No they won't ever have a monopoly, but I can see a Duopoly with Walmart. If Amazon pushes out UPS and FEDEX, walmart will start its own delivery service, or someone else will.

Okay..now you conf

Unfortunately they make it very hard to do that since Amazon basically spies on it's workers 24/7 via their phones and other methods (Basically same methods Facebook, Google etc uses). Anyone that is found to be attempting it just gets fired. But yeah they really need to somehow all get together and do it. Just takes some balls and very smart organizing. The tricky part is trying to get everyone except for managers to agree to all meet at a certain physical location without any of their devices like phones etc and without telling them why until they get there and that there are no electronics around.

They already are and their fulfillment center workers and delivery drivers should unionize

union will get workers better wage and working condition which I love, but it does not stop stop amazon from squeezing the internet until almost every seller needs to be on Amazon and use their delivery.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Did not realize Amazon actually had their own delivery trucks. Never seen one here. Wonder if they are only being used in some locations? Here it's usually still going through Canada Post or Purolator, but for the last mile it's often a local contractor or smaller shipping company like Canpar.

But yeah that could be concerning if they try to push out the bigger shippers, since nothing stops them from refusing to deliver anything that's not through Amazon.

What planet are you living on? Not only do they have their own trucks, but they just bought 9 airline jets. Not small ones, but big ones. They got them from one of the big carriers.

 

[sdifox]

What planet are you living on? Not only do they have their own trucks, but they just bought 9 airline jets. Not small ones, but big ones. They got them from one of the big carriers.

He lives in a small town in Northern Ontario. I doubt amazon has location there.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I thought he was responding in general, not specifically his local area.

 

[sdifox]

I thought he was responding in general, not specifically his local area.

It was pretty clear he was talking about Timmins, ON.