[nsx147]

Amazon Flex will eventually encompass more than just delivering goods. Delivering people (uber/lyft). Retrieving packages from households and shipping them, maybe even last mile delivery?

I feel like this article completely misses the point about the Amazon philosophy. It doesn't matter if Prime Now / Amazon Fresh are profitable. They aren't supposed to be profitable. They are building out the infrastructure of Amazon Flex for themselves AT COST and then they will open it up to other services and uses that will undercut any competitors (rideshare is the first one that comes to mind)

The focus here should be on Amazon Flex and how/where it is going, because that service will be the one that turns the actual profit. Just like AWS.

[dnomad]

Yes the author is kinda silly. People have been writing these sorts of silly articles about Amazon for nearly 20 years. Yes, Amazon is wasting investor capital. No, investors don't care as long as the innovation and growth train continues.

Still, as an Amazon investor, I do wonder why Amazon has to do everything themselves. It makes me nervous that they are essentially building or their own ride sharing network rather than leveraging existing networks.

There's a revolution coming to urban logistics that people like this author cannot understand. What Uber has demonstrated is that cities are much more efficient than anybody previously imagined. The day is fast approaching when on demand transport of everything will be cost effective and when that happens cities will be remade. All that retail space can become storage. Restaurants lose their tables and become industrial kitchens. Office space becomes highly fragmented with possibly just core teams of 10-20 people requiring co-location. Schools fragment; students will go to specialized teachers and facilities wherever they happen to be rather than betting everything on monolithic school systems. (Education "regresses" into large scale tutoring.) Hospitals ironically grow more centralised as technology becomes every more sophisticated. Tying all of this together will be extremely sophisticated and dynamic transport networks that can indeed move anything anywhere in the city in under an hour for very low cost.

This is already happening in China btw. This sort of urban hyper-on-demand culture has already taken hold. The author will look back on this article on ten years and regret that they failed to see the revolution.

[laluser]

> Still, as an Amazon investor, I do wonder why Amazon has to do everything themselves. It makes me nervous that they are essentially building or their own ride sharing network rather than leveraging existing networks.

When Prime Now started, there were no other companies that were doing what Amazon wanted to do. Let alone, keep up with the expansion that Prime Now has realized over the past few years. In addition to all that, Amazon loves to optimize every little detail. Flex is the logistics infrastructure that didn't exist to support Prime Now and other delivery programs such as Fresh, .com packages, etc.

[shanghaiaway]

None of what you listed is happening in China. It also will not be happening anywhere at any time. Restaurants won't become industrial kitchens because that is not what restaurants are for.

[rjmunro]

Some restaurants are becoming just kitchens: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo-d...

These might take some of the business of physical restaurants - probably not a large amount, though.