[Macuyiko]

It's a pity you got downvoted (due to an immediate first reply -- happens more and more), but my first reaction was exactly the same as yours. Amazon got richer during COVID19. Bezos got way richer. To be honest, I am not actually convinced that monopolies are by definition bad, but Amazon strikes me evermore as a bad instantiation of it.

Horror story: imagine the Amazon Pharmacy being flooded with Chinese sellers. This is also why I don’t like to shop on Amazon anymore. You can find the same sellers on AliExpress – cheaper and from the same source, if that’s what you want (and sometimes, it is what you want). (Even if you'd want to offer as a counterpoint their other ventures in e.g. cloud, one could offer a rebuttal again in the way how they're treating their engineers.) I was a huge Amazon customer in the past, but I implicitly feel less and less inclined to buy there. The only benefit for me is the very forthcoming customer support (if you chat with a rep and honestly complain about a bad product, they’ll go all the way -- in fact it's only lately I've seen other local web shops finally approach this central point).

It’s always the same with them: “look, here’s this new innovative thing where we streamlined the product and ignored the possible ways to game it.” Great on the former, why didn’t you care about the latter.

Also: what I find funny is that everyone defending Amazon today as a shining example of capitalism, often the same types being against that “horrible” communism, might find it interesting to ponder the question how Amazon is organized and how much revenue they’re generating. It’s a planned economy. Not by a state, but by a company. With one head at the top.