Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by danielmarkbruce 1000 days ago
Apple Iphone, airpods, ipad, macbook. Google search. Coke. Boeing. Caterpillar. Goldman Sachs. AirBnB. Exxon. AutoDesk. BlackRock. CME. Costco. JP Morgan Chase. Mastercard, Visa, Nike, TSMC and a thousand others.

They started out as a retailer, and opened up a bunch of their infrastructure to competitors. The idea that they'd make it easy for competitors using their infrastructure to beat them makes zero sense.
3 comments
thghtihadanacct 1000 days ago
Those are good ones but i was thinking of local stuff like grocery (which they tried and are currently failing) and gas (not that i use it). Also, real services like plumbing, electric, vehicle maint. ... Angies list got that corner ;)
link
danielmarkbruce 1000 days ago
The list is extremely long as you say. Amazon isn't good at much except cheap third party stuff made by contract manufacturers in china, books, and AWS.
link
BizarroLand 999 days ago
Most people responded by providing a logical response to my argument while discarding the semantics.

Semantically, what company that (Relies on Amazon to operate) couldn't they destroy on a whim?

link
danielmarkbruce 999 days ago
That's pretty circular. To the extent any company, A, relies on company B to operate, A can be destroyed by B, according the definition of "rely".

So the logical response wasn't to assume you were being circular. The logical response was to assume you were inferring Amazon is big enough and capable enough to squash any business.

link
BizarroLand 998 days ago
And yet it is obvious in retrospect that I didn't mean entirely independent multi-billion dollar empires, but that is the response everyone went with.
link
danielmarkbruce 997 days ago
It clearly wasn't obvious to most given the responses.
link
BizarroLand 994 days ago
Maybe not to you
link
eru 1000 days ago
How did Goldman Sachs '[start] out as a retailer, and opened up a bunch of their infrastructure to competitors'? Or am I misunderstanding you?
link
whoknew1122 999 days ago
The 'they' here is Amazon. This is how it should be read: "Amazon started out as a retailer, and opened up a bunch of their infrastructure to competitors. The idea that they'd make it easy for competitors using their infrastructure to beat them makes zero sense.
link
danielmarkbruce 999 days ago
Bad use of pronouns on my part. As another comment pointed out, I should have written "Amazon".
link
eru 999 days ago
OK, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks.
link