[kikoreis]

This read was mildly interesting, but I'm left thinking that the study of any sprawling monopoly will come up with similar mildly interesting and irrelevant rationalizations of success. Once you get as as big as Amazon was in the early 2010s, provided your culture doesn't melt down (by itself no small feat), you are well positioned to expand and flatten adjacent parts of the economy.

So the question is whether you read this to be inspired by it and attempt to create your own monopoly, or to be afraid of it and start thinking about regulation. Or both :-)

[JumpCrisscross]

> you are well positioned to expand and flatten adjacent parts of the economy

Yet others with Amazon’s scale have tried and failed at this sort of horizontal integration.

[kennywinker]

I think it’s just cherry picking. Amazon has failed in plenty of businesses they’ve tried to enter. Tablets, phones, app stores, their streaming boxes aren’t exactly market dominant.