[SilverElfin]

After Amazon has been a great friend to the Trump administration, by partnering with Flock, by funding the Melania documentary to basically bribe Trump, etc - why should Americans or others trust them or give them business? Amazon isn’t that interesting anymore. You can buy most things directly from a trusted manufacturer or other websites. I don’t see them doing anything innovative at all. What’s the last useful thing they did - AWS? And that stopped being novel more than 10 years ago.

The problem is, megacorp with infinite capital get to make these massive mistakes and stumble through failure after failure, when everyday entrepreneurs get crushed for the tiniest problem.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> You can buy most things directly from a trusted manufacturer or other websites.

My experience over the last year has been the opposite. More and more of the specialized bits and pieces I need or want are only sold online via Amazon.

Extremely depressing.

[phil21]

I don't share the Amazon hate everyone has, I've had very good experiences with Amazon retail. But I do sometimes try to spread out my purchases to other vendors due to monopoly concerns.

It's amazing how many times you buy direct from a vendor and then it comes via Fulfilled by Amazon.

The other issue is when anything goes wrong I've had a hell of a time with some vendors. It's a crapshoot - some vendors ship quickly and competently, and handle customer service like returns quite well. Others you might end up with your product not even shipping for a week much less arriving, even though the store says "in stock ships tomorrow". Due to this, when I really must have something on time or if it's a risky purchase I have a good chance of needing to return I tend towards just getting it with Amazon.

A lot of smaller shops simply don't want to deal with logistics and customer service - it's hard to compete on Amazon for shipping costs. And warehouse/returns/etc. is just a nightmare for a small shop. I absolutely understand why a small speciality manufacturer with a few dozen low volume SKUs would prefer to just use FBA and be done with it.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> it's hard to compete on Amazon for shipping costs.

Not so much that it is hard, as that Amazon more or less forces vendors on its platforms to eat shipping costs.

[tt24]

Good, I want the platform to squeeze vendors as much as possible. This is how consumers win

[PaulDavisThe1st]

We all wear multiple hats in our lives. Consumers. Citizens. Employees. Many more.

Amazon has been really good for us when we wear our consumer hats. Not so much when we wear the others.

[malfist]

You can count the number of times Jassy has lead amazon to an innovative new product during his tenure as CEO on zero hands.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

If you consider Amazon to be a retail company, then the comparison is with other retailers. When was the last time a retailer introduced an innovative new product? That's not what retailers do - they figure out where and how to sell <stuff>, other people make the <stuff> and it gets sold. The innovation happens to the <stuff>, not the retail.

Obviously, there are long term trends like the acceptance of credit cards that took place between the late 1970s and late 1980s in the US. But retail isn't exactly known for being a hotbed of innovation.

If you are thinking about other aspects of Amazon (obviously, AWS), then ... I can't comment on that.

[renewiltord]

Personally, I just buy stuff from a store and return it if I don’t like it. I don’t need to trust the store because the US has good enough consumer laws. It’s a store not my wife. I don’t need to have these ethical dilemmas over getting Coke Zero delivered.

[Insanity]

“Why should Americans trust them”, I’d go further and say you shouldn’t trust any company.