[gordon_freeman]

This is so true! And now as they have bought Whole Foods, they can do the same thing with grocery products by having options such as WF branded ones over the competitors (stocking 365 branded Sugar and dropping Safway Signature branded Sugar) through their Amazon Fresh or Prime NOW service.

[justonepost]

People like variety in food. You don’t usually see network effects (ie, recipe only works if you use ingredients from same supplier)

Home automation though is a great network effects play which is why amazon is doing this.

[bduerst]

If home automation is their goal, then why doesn't Amazon open an API for making automated purchases? They can sell more through their marketplace this way.

[mcherm]

Because automating homes is not their goal; profiting when others automate their homes is their goal. They appear t believe that they will make significantly more profit by selling home automation tools and the things that attach to them than by carrying some other company's home automation tools in their catalog in addition to their own.

[justonepost]

Having interviewed with Alexa I can assure you home automation is there #1 goal.

[justonepost]

Fraud concerns most likely. They have an api they support for hooking up to Alexa.

[stickfigure]

Why do you assume they aren't working on it?

Big companies move slowly. I doubt Amazon could roll something like this out without 5+ years of development - possibly longer depending on how many times the department gets reorg'd.

[adrianN]

Because they want people to buy Alexa?

[oceanstone]

Whole Foods was already abusing their position by setting strict quality standards for foods they carried, and reducing the requirements for their own 365 brand.

[nextstepguy]

i've already seen that. Try buying some products that are not 365 (the WF private label.) The march has already started and is accelerating. Consumers beware1