What competition? The whole point is that they are crushing the competition, rendering themselves inescapable. That's not at all good for the consumer. The logical endpoint of this kind of horizontal domination and vertical integration is the classic dystopian trope of "The Corporation" controlling every aspect of life.
(Which is literally a thing that has already happened, by the way - the East India Company being the classic example. It was simply called "The Company", had its own flag and military, and completely ruled India.)
The East India Company controlled about half of global trade. Amazon has less than 10% of the retail market in the U.S. Amazon is at least 2 orders of magnitude away from the East India company’s share of global trade.
One intended effect of Amazon’s PR strategy is to create a sense of momentum about their business. Obviously that is working if people are comparing it to the East India company.
> The East India Company controlled about half of global trade. Amazon has less than 10% of the retail market in the U.S. Amazon is at least 2 orders of magnitude away from the East India company’s share of global trade
Amazon indeed has a much smaller share than the East India Company had, but I think you may have exaggerated a bit with "at least 2 orders of magnitude". It should have been "at least an order of magnitude".
• 2019 global trade was $19.0 trillion [1]
• 2019 US retail was $4.85 trillion [2].
• Amazon 2019 US retail was $0.22 trillion [3].
• Amazon 2019 global retail was $0.35 trillion [4].
I'm using 2019 because the US retail Amazon data at Statista.com [3] requires an account to view the graph but the visible text on the page includes the 2019 numbers.
That puts half of global trade at 43.2x Amazon US retail (1.6 orders of magnitude) and 27x Amazon total global retail (1.4 orders of magnitude).
I was simply pointing out that far from being a fanciful 80s sci-fi trope, "The Corporation" is a real thing that does actually happen. A single company controlled half of global trade. Do we want that again? Must we wait until it has already occurred before we try to roll it back? Is 10% of the entire retail market normal?
The online marketplace certainly engenders more efficient competition between sellers.
The landscape has changed but small businesses are still selling stuff. There are over 1.9 million small and medium sized business which use the amazon marketplace.
Mom and pop stores are now mom and pop sellers with amazon taking a cut. They make less money but don't have to pay rent for a commercial property.
Amazon is big but its certainly not an unprecedented level of horizontal domination. There's still walmart, ebay, alibaba, shopify...unless you're only looking at book sales.
Vertical integration wise it's trying to go there with its foray into business shipping + whole foods/amazon basics etc but seeing as its not close to dominant in terms of producing goods in any sector that I know of it's not inherently problematic.
Obviously things are different and worse in some respects (and better in others), but comparing it to the East India Company is very over the top at this point.
Shopfiy has risen as a competitor, giving independent businesses an alternative means of transacting with customers. Amazon has plenty of competition. eBay is another.
(Which is literally a thing that has already happened, by the way - the East India Company being the classic example. It was simply called "The Company", had its own flag and military, and completely ruled India.)