[alharith]

I am not sure why people think Amazon is such a dominate force on the commerce front, especially with respects to Walarmt. It isn't even close between the two. I am more worried about the cloud technology space being down to basically two choices now.

[flyGuyOnTheSly]

Not sure where you live, but in Ontario Amazon delivery trucks outnumber all other delivery trucks combined.

Seemingly 50% of every package sitting on anyone's doorstep has the familiar Amazon branded packing tape surrounding it as well.

They're definitely dominant.

[WrkInProgress]

Amazon.ca and Amazon.com accounted for about 10% of all e-commerce sales in Canada for 2019.

I wish i had some stats for the raw # of total packages/shipments, because that's where I think Amazon's marketshare would match the picture of "50% of every package"

[alexashka]

Can you provide a link for your stat?

Link I found for 2018 e-commerce net sales in Canada [0] has amazon and amazon.ca combined for 4.7b, costco at 1b, walmart 0.9, apple 0.79, the bay 0.47 etc.

So amazon eclipses the other other 7 competitors all on its own.

[0] https://www.statista.com/forecasts/871090/canada-top-online-...

[CountSessine]

In Canada, yes - but only because of our awful CBSA, the absurdly low de minimus exception in NAFTA, and the fact that the Canadian retail sector is fat and uncompetitive (and yet Shopify is Canadian??!)

Amazon is the only online retailer that’s figured out shipping and the CBSA here. Everyone else is awful. Walmart online ordering is awful. Home Depot is awful. What’s left of toys r us is awful. Canadian Tire online is so witheringly, eye-watering awful that it turned me off of even going to the store.

Besides amazon, what else is there here?

[WrkInProgress]

That's a bit of hyperbole.

Walmart, Costco, The Bay all did more than a billion in revenue for 2019. Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Best Buy, Home Depot had more than 500 million and less than a billion.

They wouldn't be doing these numbers if the state of e-commerce was as "eye-watering awful" as you make it out to be.

These numbers are for the Canadian market which ended with about 40 billion in total "e-commerce" sales for 2019.

[CountSessine]

Online? Those are all great retailers in-store. But online? That’s their online revenue? I doubt it.

Home Depot advertises 2 day shipping but then waits a week before actually starting the clock on their shipping. At least here in Canada. Walmart is the same.

Let me tell you about ordering from Canadian tire online. I did this once. I chose in-store pickup. When I got to the service desk (which actually had an “online pickup” sign on it), and asked for my order, the staff looked at me like I was from Mars. And this was a showcase-store on Grandview here in Vancouver - not some backwater CDN tire off in Moose Jaw. Then they discovered that actually, they don’t have that item. The website said my order was ready to pick up, but they didn’t have it set aside and they didn’t even stock it and had no idea how this “online pickup” worked. So I asked for a refund. And they couldn’t do it! It’s a separate company and they didn’t even have my order in their system to be able to refund me! I asked them what I was supposed to do at that point, and the store manager (of the largest CDN tire store in vancouver) actually advised me to dispute the charge on my credit card and get the charge reversed!

That’s eye-wateringly bad.

[WrkInProgress]

Yes, that was their online sales revenue in 2019, unless you think giants like Wal Mart (with nearly 400 supercenter stores in Canada) and Costco are doing only 1 billion in brick and mortar sales.

These numbers are readily available in their financial statements (Wal Mart doesn't separate out Wal Mart Canada's numbers - I happen to be in the industry.

Your Canadian Tire anecdote sounds unbelievable unless it was many years ago.

Canadian Tire is one of the few Canadian stores in 2020 where can check store stock/inventory online down to the aisle of the store. They had already started implementing pickup lockers in their store before covid.

I've placed a few online orders with them and have never had any issues (including in store pickup). FYI, they did close to $600 million in e-commerce sales in 2019.

Walmart, Loblaws, etc process same day grocery pickup online (and they did this before the pandemic).

The Canadian e-commerce experience is not some backwater that you proclaim it to be.

[CountSessine]

These numbers are readily available in their financial statements (Wal Mart doesn't separate out Wal Mart Canada's numbers - I happen to be in the industry.

That’s kind of my whole point - Canada is different. I read all sorts of accounts from Americans about how e-commerce and online retail in the US has matured and you can reliably order goods from lots of big retailers online and expect to get your goods on a predictable date. And that just hasn’t happened in Canada yet. Online retail here is still comprehensively awful. Amazon is the only online option that delivers predictably and on time.

Just within the last two years I’ve ordered from both Walmart and Home Depot and both of them have sat on my order for 2 weeks before actually shipping it. I’ve had Home Depots delivery courier actually throw a box of light bulbs across my yard onto my concrete steps. And yes, that CDN tire incident was about 2 years ago. IKEA wants $20 shipping to send me a box of screws. The only bright spot in any of this is grocery delivery as you point out. But even then, Save-on’s payment processor has glitched my orders on two occasions.

The Canadian e-commerce experience is not some backwater that you proclaim it to be.

It’s still about 10 years behind the US. I still see too many retailers who are basically charging what their US equivalents are + the shipping cost difference to traverse the CBSA moat. The big retailers here can’t get it together and the small retailers are still just arbitraging Canada’s weird retail import tariffs. Super high shipping costs, bungled and lost orders, and unpredictable and late delivery is still the norm outside Amazon, or at least it was in 2019. Hard to say now with c19.

[katbyte]

I tried to use Canadian tire for I store pickup and it was the most awful thing - “ready next day” and after 5 days I had to go into a store to cancel my order, then order it on amazon for 5% more and it arrived the next day < 24 hours later. I will never attempt it again.

[atwebb]

Only anecdotal but Amazon has to deliver most goods, Walmart and other physical retailers can provide pickup services for online purchases (which I prefer for some goods).

[bestnameever]

That doesn't say much about the volume.

Most of my packages from Amazon will have just one item in it but when I go to a store, like walmart, I will more often than not have a cart of multiple items I am buying.

I am not saying I represent everyone, but rather, it is hard to compare the two without knowing more data.

IIRC, Amazon's total revenue is less than 300 billion while Walmarts is over 500 billion.

[pgrote]

> dominate force on the commerce front

During the height of the pandemic Amazon's performance suffered for us. Prior to the pandemic 100% of our online purchases came from Amazon mostly due to inertia. Find something, order it, it shows up.

Amazon faltered. Lots of things out of stock, delayed delivery, missing items in shipments. We then turned to ebay and shopify and experienced none of those things. The spending is probably now 50% ebay, 30% amazon and 20% shopify now.

The decentralization approach to ecommerce is really coming through now ... at least for us.

I was surprised what a great experience it was buying from ebay and shopify. I hope they don't work to centralize things in the future.

[octodog]

You're right that Walmart is massive but Amazon is the biggest ecommerce player in the US and it's not even close. 38% Amazon to next closest Walmart at 5.8% [1]. Pre-COVID Amazon was about 44%.

[1]: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/walmart-surpasses-ebay-in-...

[power78]

Which third cloud provider aren't you considering, and why? Is it azure?

[petra]

Amazon has 38% e-commerce market share, Walmart has 5.8%.

[alharith]

Note the key distinction I made: I said commerce in general, not strictly limited to e-commerce.

[FirefoxIsSlow]

Especially if you actually care about price. Amazon isn't great.

[alharith]

Or quality, or getting what you actually paid for, or not supporting a wanna-be trillionare technocrat that would rather satisfy his fantasy to colonize mars than treat his warehouse workers humanely or help his neighbors here on earth in general.