Amazon.com Nears 10-Year Anniversary

mopslik writes "Amazon.com is nearing its 10-year anniversary. "Soon after Amazon.com Inc. debuted 10 years ago, Jeff Bezos and his handful of employees spent late summer nights packing books in a tiny warehouse, scrambling to ship a growing gush of orders. Today, the man who has grown accustomed to being hailed the king of Internet commerce runs a global powerhouse that did nearly $7 billion in sales last year, dealing in everything from banjo cases to wild boar baby back ribs." Although Bezos has drawn some ire from his collection of patents, there's no arguing that his company is one of the most successful online sites today."

Comments

Commoditization

[DanielMarkham]

FTA --

"I think Amazon's biggest challenge is itself. They've really raised the bar for the entire industry," said Kurt Peters, editor of Internet Retailer, a monthly magazine covers the business.

Amazon is generally considered to be one of the pioneers in the field. If I remember my business theory correctly, there is a certain amount of time between when a new market opens up and when it becomes a commodity. Right now, the technical hurdles are still high enough to keep Mom and Pop out of the Amazon business (to a certain degree). But Amazon has obviously set the bar and defined the standard, even coming up with this distributed marketing deal where you can reommend books and get paid for it.
At some point, however, you've covered all the bases. Amazon is already selling everything imaginable on that site, and they're exploring a lot of the horizontal and vertical market tie-ins. To me, this means that the industry is ripe to move towards commoditization: farming out all the stuff that Amazon does and connecting the creator of the material directly to the consumer. My two cents only.

Learn Management, Kid!

Nice Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriusly, what does Amazon's patents have anything to do with their 10 year anniversary? Can't you have left that out of the story? What was the relevance here?

You may not like Amazon's patents, but it's pretty irrelevant to the subject at hand. To me, this was a cheapshot for the sake of pumping up RMS' and his hordes agenda.

I like how slashdot can't leave even this one story alone without trying to start a flamewar. The editors are the biggest trolls here.

Re:Nice Flamebait

[mopslik]

what does Amazon's patents have anything to do with their 10 year anniversary?

Nothing at all. It has to do with the "Although Bezos has drawn some ire from his collection of patents, there's no arguing that his company is one of the most successful online sites today" part. If anything, it goes to show that even with a group of relatively vocal opponents, Amazon has had no trouble becoming the giant that it is right now. Also, patent discussions are commonplace on Slashdot, which has an apporiate audience for such matters. You may not like talking about copyright and patents, but others do.

Can't you have left that out of the story?

Yes. Boy, that was an easy one.

Re:Nice Flamebait

[mopslik]

If you must know, I'm +2 whereas you're still default at 1.

How impressive. I wish I could achieve that same badge of honour. Oh wait, I have it -- I just uncheck that "karma bonus" button at the bottom. Something about not having to boost my karma, I guess. But for your sake, here's a demonstration. Can I be part of your club now?

If you believe this moderation mumbo-jumbo actually works ... then my posts are consistently more insightful than yours.

Clearly. Because anyone who is, say, unfairly moderated by stating political/dissenting views must automatically be less "insightful" by people who get modded up by group-think. But you now know I'm a +2 anyway, so where does that leave you?

(you have to, otherwise your AC argument is moot)

My argument was that you didn't want to leave yourself vulnerable to down-modding by posting under your real ID. By posting AC, you can criticize all you like without being penalized. It does not conflict with any pre-existing views of the usefulness of the moderation system, but provides a means for regular users to troll away under the stelthful protection of anonymity.

a simple tactic to "win" an argument is to resort to ad hominem and then resort to labelling a "troll." I'm not the least bit surprised you did both.

You mean like trying to win an argument by claiming "when you cry troll, you lose by default"? Gotcha.

In any case, if you took the "bubble" comment personally, so be it. I state my mind, under my real ID, as it comes. If you want to view it as a personal attack, suit yourself. As an AC, you have no comment history, no association to stories or users. I can't identify you with any meaningful personality. Certainly nothing to lose sleep over.

If you have a need for such a device as a "one-click" order processing system ... then simply create it.

I would, but Amazon holds a patent which allows them to sue anyone who creates a similar system. Didn't we discuss this already? I'm sure we did. I believe it was the point of this entire discussion.

the mechanism between your ears (supposing you have said mechanism)

What was that you said about ad hominem again? Does this mean you've won the argument or something?

I do not live in fear of the government granting patents no matter how silly or trivial they seem.

Of course. Because you suffer from "it will never happen to me" syndrome. It's common these days. But when something does inconvenience you in some way, you'll probably be at the head of the line shouting "unfair!"

That's the problem with the patent game

[grahamsz]

If your competitors play it then your hand is forced and no large corporation can afford to NOT patent random crap.

For the most part these patents only exist to create some sort of nuclear stalemate - where your competitors are too afraid to sue you since it's certain that they violate some of your patents.

Re:That's the problem with the patent game

[FreeUser]

For the most part these patents only exist to create some sort of nuclear stalemate - where your competitors are too afraid to sue you since it's certain that they violate some of your patents.

You're joking, right? Surely you aren't really that naive.

Amazon has already sued Barnes and Noble for "violating" (read: independently developing) one-click purchasing capabilities on their competing website. In other words, Barns and Noble were competing, in age old fashion, by trying to make their on-line store at least as convinient and easy to use as their competitors' (Amazon, in this case).

Amazon is doing anything but collecting a portfolio of defensive patents...they are actively stockpiling offensive weapons to use against any competitor, anywhere, for any reason they like. Usually that reason is because said competitor is simply too successful for Bezos' taste.

Add to that his sleazy misrepresentation of PriorArt as an anti-patent cooperative (when in fact he was using it as his own private research group for strengthening his own patents), and you have one asocial prick. He may be a rich and successful asocial prick, and he may have built a company that, despite its despicable patent record, does have redeaming qualities (I buy on Amazon occasionally, and as a book shop it is quite good. However, as an "inventor" it leaves a lot to be desired), but his actions define him, nevertheless, as an asocial prick.

Secret of Success?

[webword]

I'd sum it up in one word: usability. Sure, there are other reasons, but the Amazon User Experience (UX) is outstanding. Few other sites compare in terms of ease-of-use.

(I'd say the same thing about Google too.)

Re:Secret of Success?

[Anonymous Monkey]

Yes, but it can be a pain if you want to suprise your wife with a gift, and it pops up on recently viewd items next time she checks amazon. From now on all anniversary gifts will come from brick-and-mortar stores and be purchased with cash

Amazon.com's success.

[OrangeStar]

It's no secret why Amazon.com has succeded when many other online stores have fallen. They have fairly good prices, good service, and deals(like the current $25+ free shipping). It is just as easy as going to a real store, with no downsides.

They have a steady dependable business model of selling almost everything.

Amazon.com just works.

Note: I'm just a happy customer.

Who can take that over

[grahamsz]

Connecting the buyer and seller is all about trust.

Lots of people (myself included) would rather buy from amazon marketplace rather than eBay. Amazon probably take a bigger cut, but they provide decent customer service and bail you out when things go wrong.

Amazon have brand recognition and consumer confidence and it'll be a struggle for anyone else (particularly a non-profit organization) to garner that kind of support.

It's no secret...

[Roadkills-R-Us]

Absolutely.

My wife really loathes having to use a computer. She will seldom use one if she doesn't have to. She'd rather do things by hand 99% of the time.

But she quite happily logs on and goes to Amazon to buy books. So they must be doing a lot of things right.

Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail

[Ruzty]

They are driving smaller online retailers out of business, they encourage purchasing of cheap foreign imports and they have a negative cash flow into the economy in the form of low wages and outsourced jobs.

I boycott shopping at Amazon.com in the same manner that I do for brick and mortar shopping at Walmart. Give the small guys your business and help maintain a strong U.S. economy.

Re:Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail

[maw]

So you're saying that overpaying for things is good for the economy?

Re:Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail

[joelsanda]

I boycott shopping at Amazon.com in the same manner that I do for brick and mortar shopping at Walmart. Give the small guys your business and help maintain a strong U.S. economy.

At what point does one stop shopping at the "small guys" because they've become a "big guy"? Where does small end and big begin?

The problem with this sentiment is twofold:

1. You penalize successful business. Become too succesful and I won't shop at your store anymore! (You probably don't do that with airlines - get too safe and I won't fly with you anymore!).
2. There's no way to know when someone goes from small to big. So the whole question is subjective. And any attempt at boycotting Walmart is obviously not working - the company is getting larger, not smaller.

A contrarian view

[musicmaster]

When I compair the Amazon site with B&N for books Amazon has a bit more choice and gives more insight in second and and third party prices. But in most cases the B&N page is more informative about the book itself.

As an affiliate I find it rather sloppy that Amazon doesn't have a better integration for its national sites. You have to apply for each site seperately and you get your money seperately. And where Google adwords is advanced with bank transfers Amazon still pays with old fashioned checks. Affiliates are asked to get their product data from an XML database that quite often gives different results on availablity as the Amazon search engine.

All in all my impression is that execution is rather sloppy. It will not be easy but there definitely is room for competitors to improve on what Amazon offers.

Re:Does Amazon have a birthday wishlist?

[drdink]

Yes. You can see it here.