[leef]

This might be nice for one off orders of brand name items but it doesn't look to really challenge Amazon or any e-retailer that manages its own inventory. There are at least two main issues I see:

1) Selection - It’s easy to sell the popular stuff. It’s hard to sell the tail of demand. Aggregating together big box retailers can never compete on selection. People want to order things together, from the same place. Selection is crucial.

2) Supply Chain - It’s hard enough to have an effective supply chain when all the inventory is under your control. It will be nearly impossible to deal with N retailers supply chain systems - inventory availability, location, cross-company orders, etc and be efficient enough to make a buck.

Unless Google is willing to physically get in the game and manage some warehouses I don’t see this being much of a threat although it might provide some nice competition for next and same day orders.

[ippisl]

If amazon's big plan is to gain a monopoly like status , which many investors think it is, this competition and price erosion is a big threat both to future amazon and it's current investors.

And hurting the stock is a good way as any to hurt a company.