Jet.com/walmart is something I use already, and often prefer it to Amazon's own shopping. The website is cleaner which appeals to me. Shipping isn't quite as fast, but it's easily something I can live with. Half of what I get via Amazon doesn't ship via Prime, anyways.

I already use Netflix for my video streaming. Spongebob is on Amazon Prime, so I watch that. I use YouTube, XBOX, and Google Play for other stuff (other videos, some movie rentals, games, music).

I use OneDrive for storing files on a company's servers. Works great.

I normally just get books from a bookstore or library. Tried a Kindle, didn't care much for it. Truth be told, I'm not that big of a reader.

Azure is a perfectly suitable replacement for AWS - VMs, storage, functions, etc. So is GCP, but I'm not familiar enough with it.

I don't really do food delivery, though I game the coupon system a bit with Blue Apron from time-to-time, since they keep sending me $30 off a delivery when I cancel. I mainly just go to the grocery store.

Amazon is absolutely not irreplaceable for me, nor do I think it's irreplaceable for others.

> I already use Netflix for my video streaming.

To be fair, though, if AWS were to disappear your Netflix wouldn't work anymore. And given that it took them seven years [1] to move to AWS, I guess it would take them quite a while to move to Azure or Google or their own hardware.

For the logistics / shopping part I agree, though: I live in Switzerland, where Amazon doesn't ship much except for books and I have to say I don't feel I'm missing much. In fact, many local online stores which could develop because they weren't drowned by Amazon work better IMHO and at similar prices than the Amazon website.

[1]: https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/completing-the-net...

I seriously doubt Netflix wouldn't find some way to rapidly move to some alternative if AWS were to disappear. But by all means correct me if I'm wrong!

Agreed. If they go as far as randomly disabling AWS nodes to test their own resilience I'd be shocked if they didn't have some sort of contingency for if AWS went completely belly-up. Who knows, they could even have Azure nodes on standby in case AWS in its entirety went down?

Everyone should have a cloud provider total-outtage strategy. You should atleast control the ability to move DNS if everything in said cloud provider is out.

Well, your question is not uncommon for people having little experiences developing and operating large distributed systems.

But I can guarantee you, if Netflix can, they already did, so to make them in a position better negotiate price with AWS.

You seriously think there is a provider somewhere sitting on 20 empty datacenters with all the hardware procured and hooked up just waiting on an off chance Netflix might switch?

I don't think the AWS datacenters would disappear in thin air either.

Well neither would warehouses and other infrastructure they built but that was not the premise that is being discussed.

You realize most of Netflix is not in AWS right?

You realize that netflix is using up over 20% of aws capacity and as cool as having your own cdn is there is not much purpose in it without the part that runs on AWS.

The part that runs in AWS could just as easily run on bare metal. Stack Overflow does it, Backblaze does it, Github does it; I'm so disappointed in this tired trite that your a special snowflake running in AWS.

Yes it would run even better but it would take a few years to do the buildout.

Nothing is going disappear overnight.. AWS iaas services are commodity and not something so unique that are not replaceable with products from other cloud vendors

At Netflix scale they are not replaceable by other vendors because other vendors do not have enough capacity to accommodate Netflix migration.

Can you provide information as to how much capacity Netflix would need to migrate? Otherwise, this comment has no basis in reality.

there are estimates that netflix is consuming about 20% of AWS. AWS does not publish a list of DCs but from regions and AZs you can put a lower bound estimate at 40 so it would be anywhere from 8 DCs to whatever the upper bound is (I guesstimated 20)

Whatever mysterious force wipes all trace of Amazon from the earth might help Netflix find someone to run some servers.

> Azure is a perfectly suitable replacement for AWS - VMs, storage, functions, etc. So is GCP, but I'm not familiar enough with it.

Sort of. If you are only ever using the basics such as EC2 and S3, then it is relatively easy to migrate. Use more services and it becomes a nightmare.

Heck, even with just EC2 it is already non trivial, think about a huge server deployment with a myriad of security groups and subnets that were fine tuned for years.

Indeed, AWS is still king. I doubt GCP or Azure would have anywhere near the capacity to handle all of the AWS customers. You're talking orders of magnitude, maybe 1000x? more compute power required - it's a different scale.

Judging by the Hacker News comments, it's google that has more capabilities than AWS.

If you follow comments about both, there are recurring ones of people who order 5000-15000 cores on Google for short computing intensive tasks whereas AWS didn't let them have thousandS. That forced them to switch.

I find that hard to believe.... 15000 cores is only 1000 16 core serversand my company has no problem with allocating those (300 per AZ) on a monthly basis, using them for a couple days and returning them.

> Truth be told, I'm not that big of a reader.

> Amazon is absolutely not irreplaceable for me, nor do I think it's irreplaceable for others.

I'm an avid reader, and I'd be seriously inconvenienced without Amazon. Selling books has become only a small part of what they do, but it's still the part I care most about.

Books are pretty much a commodity item there's plenty of places to buy books online and in person that aren't Amazon. There's nothing special about Amazon's books.

Sometimes I worry; I can't figure out how jet.com makes money shipping me 100 pounds of cat litter for no additional charge. I would think that the cost of shipping would be higher than what I paid for the litter.

gasoline is very very underpriced this days, it cant last,

>Azure is a perfectly suitable replacement for AWS - VMs, storage, functions, etc. So is GCP,

I started using just S3 in 2007, but fully moved my hosting on AWS by 2010. And never looked back. Their offering is the most mature, compared to competitors. And continuously improves, Few (random) examples:

1) They allow HTTPs breaking at the load balancer level, along with certificates you can just generate on the fly and use. Its so freakin' easy, you wouldn't believe, in comparison to, the process, if it was not there.

2) They keep on reducing prices on their own. As a customer you can't but feel glad when that happens.

3) Their DNS service (Route 53) is the easiest to configure I have seen. Having ran my own DNS, before it was released.

On top of that, there is a learning curve for any cloud. Which is as cumbersome as learning a new OS. Just like you will have to learn at least 10/20 commands before you can be productive on a new OS, same it is for cloud. E.g. How to build an image; how to spawn an instance; how to backup to S3; how to mount a volume; and so on...

Also the range and variety of instance types which you could get (memory intensive, compute intensive, from ultra small to the nxlarge ones)

There are also other reasons: Example, I tried to explore Google cloud, when it came out, but the sandbox model was not for me. So couldn't use it. I totally believe that its got better. But just my experience with it.

>but I'm not familiar enough with it.

You said it. If someone doesn't use mails, may equate gmail with Yahoo! mail or with Hotmail. Devil lies in the details.

edit: minor rephrase

> I normally just get books from a bookstore or library

Wow. Where do you live? I can't imagine being able to find 1/2 of the books I buy in any of the bookstores in San Francisco, for example.

otoh most "books" I buy these days are actually Kindle downloads, or on O'Reilly Safari.

There's plenty of other online retailers for physical books. Literally every book you can buy at Amazon you should be able to find somewhere else. And for digital books, there's other vendors there too (such as iBooks).

I avoid Amazon. I buy my books elsewhere and nothing Amazon has that I need can't be sourced somewhere else.

Name a single book you can buy on Amazon and not somewhere else.

You must have not looked elsewhere, I bought a whole series of decades out of print books and didn't touch Amazon.

>Jet.com/walmart is something I use already, and often prefer it to Amazon's own shopping. The website is cleaner which appeals to me. Shipping isn't quite as fast, but it's easily something I can live with. Half of what I get via Amazon doesn't ship via Prime, anyways.

This is an US centric view. There are very few services that ship worldwide, with such a large selection as Amazon, at more than reasonable prices, with two day delivery. Amazon is almost irreplaceable because they are the only ones that do it at such a scale. Aside from alibaba, but that means you are ordering in bulk.

Amazon is perfectly replaceable by the hundred of respective national competitors.

People might have switched to Amazon for price and/or convenience, they didn't forget the local past brand that served them for decade. In some places and some markets, Amazon is not even the leader.

I've used Jet and it's OK. The thing with Amazon is the 5% cash-back credit card you should be using with it, the ridiculous free shipping (seriously, I have no clue how they actually make money sending me a large box with $40 worth of stuff in it same-day), and the seriously easy returns or refunds if you need it.

One of the things about Amazon - they really don't make money. Actually, they are profitable, but only microscopically. All of that great stuff that we get shipped for free with 5% back costs a lot of money. The business model is to crush the competition then profit.

Worth reading about whether or not Amazon makes money:

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-n...

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2013/8/8/amazons-profits

> Truth be told, I'm not that big of a reader.

> which appeals to me

I think I can tell exactly what kind of person you are...

I think you are forgetting a big one. Microsoft.

If they were to suddenly go legs up today that would have unimagionable consequences. The size of their offerings and the amount of companies using their stack is breathtaking. Sure, except for their online services the stack would still be there, but the prospects of no more security updates would cause real problems and a slow but steady meltdown.

There would be scrambling like we have never seen before in the IT world. So much scrambling.

I'm almost linux-only, but I have to agree on that. Microsoft offerings look to me much more difficult to replace than Amazon's.

Do LinkedIn and Skype also disappear? Nokia? Mojang?

...I don't live in the MS stack, so I'm unclear on why MS leaving would be so irreplaceable. Shake up to businesses that rely on Windows? Sure, but honestly I don't have troubles imagining another vendor (Apple or a *nix vendor or one of the OSes that are known and beloved to only a few) stepping in - after all, there's nothing special Windows offers. Frankly, I think this would be good - businesses have long lagged behind in be able to change because they are hampered by locked-in software limitations. My current office uses Google Docs and Gmail, and I was amazed by how little that causes problems. If MS were to vanish, I foresee a period of panic and pain...but more panic than pain, and of limited duration. In particular, assuming Windows didn't vanish, everyone would have time to deal with it. Lack up feature updates, lack of keeping up with standards, lack of security updates...MS has shown in the past that these can be survived, and while recent MS behavior has been better, I don't see "unimaginable consequences". Heck, there are still people running IE6! (very few, relatively, but 0.25% market share is still a lot of people!)

Then again, I've often noticed that being in or out of the MS stack is a bubble, and the other side sees things very differently, so I could definitely be wrong here.

The only reason Amazon vanishing would be significant is because there's not really a competitor in the whole of their space. online booksellers aren't doing online non-book goods delivery aren't doing cloud services aren't doing grocery delivery, etc. Each of those services would be easily replaced, but not by a single company.

>I'm unclear on why MS leaving would be so irreplaceable.

Government! Government and enterprise! Neither would function without MS!!

Windows/Active Directory, Windows Server, MS SQL server, SharePoint, and Office all make the world go round in the public and private sectors. You'd have to entirely replace pretty much all corporate infrastructure.

Sure! But not all at once (we're imagining the company goes away, not that existing software disappears, per above comments), and you didn't dispute that the products are replaceable, you just stated that they are in a LOT of use.

Coke and Pepsi together represent a huge share of the soft drinks people drink. If those two flavors, or even the two companies, disappeared, it would have a notable impact in that a lot of people would find new drinks (plus the significant impact to the supply chains, distributors, etc).

But there are absolutely competitors to fill in the gaps. There ARE other soft drinks. And if none of the existing brands are up to the challenge, in the absence of a huge established market presence, we can easily imagine new companies stepping up.

Just because MS products have a huge presence in the market doesn't mean MS products are irreplaceable.

If you're imagining the company going bankrupt but their technology still existing then Amazon wouldn't be an issue either. Someone would literally just take over their logistics supply chain and move right along. It's happened in the past, it can happen again.

I would dispute that active directory is irreplaceable. There is literally nothing on the market today that has the functionality and ease of use, and getting anything on the market today to that point would be about as easy as re-writing AD from scratch.

As I mentioned up-thread, the only thing "special" about Amazon is that there isn't a single competitor in ALL their spaces. Each space definitely has competitors that would step up.

My experiences with AD are anything other than "ease of use", but again, I tend to live outside the MS stack, and it's been 15 or so years since I did anything remotely related (I did a lot of interaction with some LDAP servers, but only interact with AD as an end-user...where I have weird issues like "must authenticate with a userId@domain that is not my actual email address at that domain" or "Have to look up everyone by last name, even though we have 50 Agrawals but only one Preetha" or "can't get a frigging email address without navigating into contact details, and that won't even work if it's a forward email from someone outside" (though that might be Outlook). Voicing these complaints gets me "oh, you just don't have a good administrator", but...just about every place I've been has had these issues, so either AD isn't that easy to use or everything else is REALLY bad.

I'm also uncertain what functionality AD has that isn't specific to integrating with the MS Stack, but that's a literal lack of knowledge, not a criticism.

Amazon doesn't have any competitors? They are literally Walmart or Target + leasing access to their IT infrastructure. Name one thing that isn't AWS that doesn't overlap with Target/Walmart. And AWS literally maps to Walmart IT and Target IT, they just aren't interested in competing in that space (and rightly so).

As for AD: An email address isn't an identity. I'm not sure why you would expect the two to match. I don't login to my mac with [email protected], I don't expect to login to my Windows laptop with [email protected] either.

The searching I can only surmise you were doing it wrong? I've never had an issue searching by first or last name in any tool whether it be the AD tools themselves or Outlook.

AD is a directory server, it can service a Windows environment or a Mac environment or a Linux environment. They've got a complete implementation of LDAP if you choose not to use AD auth on the client side. That being said: EVERYONE integrates with AD. Very few people integrate with anything else. I like having unified auth in my environment, perhaps you enjoy managing local hosts but that sounds disgusting to me.

If MS disappeared you would have billions of computers running an unsupported OS, running software that won't run elsewhere.

That all has to be replaced. That's billions upon billions in lost productivity.

> That all has to be replaced.

Yup...over time, just like it is ALREADY replaced over time. But let's assume I accept everything you stated without quibble.

I feel like we've lost the point of this thread. Yes, ANY large company vanishing would have a large impact. The more widespread the current influence of that company, the larger the impact.

But we weren't discussing "does MS qualify as a company with widespread influence". We weren't saying "I bet I can name a large company that could vanish without notable impact". Someone made the assertion that Amazon is somewhat unique in the results of theoretical vanishing. Even if Amazon ISN'T unique in this regard, the consequences of Amazon vanishing and MS vanishing are very, very different.

Um migrating from coke to Dr pepper doesn't cost anything.

Windows/Active Directory -- FreeIPA, Samba

Windows Server -- RHEL

MS SQL server -- PostgreSQL

SharePoint -- let it die, useless

Office -- LibreOffice, Google Apps

Um I never claimed there was no alternatives, I said that they were completely and totally ubiquitous in government and enterprise.

If MS stopped supporting their products it would be literally billions of collective dollars to migrate to alternatives.

I've been doing this a long time and in my personal observations I've noticed my corporate and (especially) government customers have been moving more into the Microsoft ecosystem than 10 years ago. MS is more important than they've ever been, if you can believe it.

It's not like everyone's deployments will just stop working if MS goes bellyup.

True, but given that they're moving towards 'Windows as a Service' it's not hard to imagine that happening someday.

Except for the Server OS. That's already built to be pretty standalone (aside from updates and collaborating with other Windows Servers). The idea here is that future security vulnerabilities aren't being patched which means it'd be open season for hackers once new vulns are discovered.

You should count yourself as lucky for not having to work in either public sector, higher ed or just plain old companies. ActiveDirectory + Windows servers disappearing overnight would pretty much send us back to the 1980s with how prevalent it is.

But the implication of the above comment was not that the programs would disappear, just the company. (I mean, any online authorizations would die, but I didn't think that was part of daily routines, just installations. Though I really know nothing of MS business-type servers (SQLServer etc))

...and I'm desperately trying to hold in comments about the small difference in performance between 1980s and MS software - I honestly blame Outlook for how the world killed email as an effective medium.

Though I do count myself lucky to have my current job. I've worked public sector in the past, and recently started up a 2nd (part time) job at a university that involves using Outlook. It is quite painful.

count yourself lucky, you could be using lotus notes

Highly prevalent != irreplaceable (though it might be a prerequisite). The fact that so many businesses/sectors use MS technology is what makes them one of the "Big 4." However, there is nothing irreplaceable about those technologies. Another vendor/technology could replace them if those businesses were forced to change due to MS disappearing.

There are many companies built on a .NET stack. They will all have a terrible time if Microsoft vanishes. Most will probably vanish with Microsoft.

With any sense, those companies would band together and invest in expanding .NET core into doing what they need.

These companies have no interest in getting into that business. That's why they pay microsoft large sums of money to do it for them.

Yeah, but we're talking about a doomsday scenario when Microsoft disappears overnight. They'd rather invest in a new .NET than have to rewrite their entire stack.

Depends on if Xamarin emerges from the ashes or if they disappear along with the rest of Microsoft.

Uh, what? Amazon is competing with retailers, so if Amazon goes away you'd buy from other retailers. In a big city get your books and music from local independent booksellers and record stores (in the country or for esoteric things you get them from alibris and discogs). Electronics you can get from Best Buy, Target, Wal Mart, Newegg. Or you can go to a secondary market for all the things, a little company called "eBay".

Why do I know this? Because I don't use Amazon anymore at all for anything after they blatantly screwed me over as a seller.

Sometimes I feel like engineers on HN have centralization on the brain. We are so impressed with scale and complexity of Amazon! We forget this size and complexity arose because it's trying to compete with (and presumably supplant) an enormous, biologically evolved distribution and retail ecosystem.

If Amazon dies, we all simply go back to that ecosystem, like I did, both online and real life. (And you know what? It's better. Newegg is better for electronics because they only do electronics, and they fight patent trolls; Alibris is better because they have a better selection, better prices, and support local business; Discogs is better for the same reason; all are better because they are focused.)

" In a big city get your books and music from local independent booksellers and record stores"

Except in many cities, many of those went out of business in large part because of Amazon. Amazon is still often more competitive compared with those that remain, from a price/shipping perspective.

That's a vague claim, but such as it is, it rings hollow. Actually, it sounds like a rationalization for using Amazon (which is easy) instead of looking around for a local alternative, and going there (which is hard). I've recently travelled fairly extensively through the US and every city of any size I visited still has a handful of independents, and they are doing okay, if not great.

The next time you want an album, instead of opening up iTunes or Amazon, I suggest opening up google maps and typing in "record store", and then going there.

> I suggest opening up google maps and typing in

Why use an online service like that when there are perfectly good printed maps out there? Mate that up with a printed yellow pages and you're all set.

That is unfair and hurtful, Chris. I'm encouraging people to support local business, not because I'm a luddite but because I don't want to see local business starved to death by global megacorps. It hasn't happened yet, and I'm pointing out a harder option, and in good faith. I'd appreciate it if you'd be open and clear about any objections you might have to this, rather than resort to sarcasm and innuendo. Thanks.

Looking back you are right: I'm sorry. I was initially amused at the use of one technology over the other as being okay but I see your point. Thanks for responding and setting me straight that the reasons for doing so are important.

Amazon being irreplaceable is not something I can agree at all with, living in Europe. I bought a book or few here and there and that's about it. AWS can be replaced, and is all the time. That's about it. Now, Ebay and paypal on the other hand...

Also, Google is more Gmail and youtube to me than google.com. How are you going to replace that easily? Especially youtube with so much content now.

twitch would replace youtube. bing for search.

How would you replace youtube without its content though? That's where it's at.

People would port stuff over.

My bet would be on vimeo, not twitch.

Vimeo is amazing when their player doesn't suck.

Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave

Absolutely true. Only some weird merger of Microsoft/Walmart/FedEx can perhaps replace Amazon. In my head, Amazon will be the first trillion $ company.

Why the said companies need to merge at all? Why not obtain specific services from all three separately?

Agreed. There is no need to merge. I was just making a counter point from an entity/conglomerate perspective.

Yeah when I think about it, Amazon is only going to get bigger. Even Twitch, I think, is only scratching the surface of what it will become.

Excellent comment! I disagree about one thing though: I think, at least here in Holland, Google would be missed quite a bit more than Amazon. I don't know anyone who uses Amazon, so them disappearing wouldn't have too much of an effect on my world.

Google, on the other hand, is a crucial part of the lives of many people around me. Almost everyone I know uses Gmail, and Google Docs (spreadsheets, etc.) are not only used all over the place by various people collaborating, but often crucial parts of the infrastructure of many of their business. Everyone I know who has tried other search engines keeps coming back to google, about half of my friends are on Android phones and use google calendar and their assistant.

Basically, Google seems to have multiple tentacles into each and everyone I know. Amazon, in contrast, is a 'web shop' that most of the people I know don't even use because there are local, more popular alternatives (Bol.com, for one).

I suspect if Amazon went under, the businesses relying on their cloud services would panic, but just move to another service. Google, on the other hand, would be sorely missed by tons of people in tons of small and big ways.

I used to live in Europe and would agree with you 100%, but now living in the Bay area Amazon is a key part of life almost. I have tried to stop using them a few times but it is just ridiculously convenient and cheap. Order something and have the almost always cheapest option on the door today or tomorrow.

Another reason for this is that going to stores is a serious hassle here. When I was living in London and even NYC I just walked to the stores instead, but in gridlocked suburbia that is almost not an option.

> Amazon is the most untouchable, irreplaceable company in tech.

I disagree, Amazon is the only big player which have yet to master the international market. I live in Europe and there are plenty of small players here which offers similar or better deals with faster shipping so most don't even bother with Amazon. Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are as dominant as everywhere else though.

Amazon can't even master localizing to their nearest neighbour in Canada. Amazon music and video are still not here, over 10 years after the rolled out in the US. Their online shopping offerings are not as in depth here. Their Canadian presence is an after thought, and is arguably one of the easiest localization efforts to undergo.

Compare this to Apple who, when they decided to bring iTunes outside of the US launched it almost simultaneously across a huge number of locales.

IMHO Amazon is already losing ground in areas it has only recently tried to stick its nose into. And its online marketplace has started to suck, started to fill with dubious merchants with prices all over the map.

I agree that Amazon in Canada is not as good as in the US but we do have prime video now (primevideo.com) and, at least in Vancouver we now have 1 day shipping which is amazing.

Wal-Mart, probably. They bought Jet.com, which is effectively Amazon retail. I've tried it and it works just fine.

Amazon's definitely the 900 lb gorilla of convenience, but the BATNA of simply not using them is not really a material concern for the normative middle-class consumer who can drive to Target.

Walmart would replace Amazon. Not over night, but I'd say less than 5 years to fill the online void.

> 100%. It's also arguably the most irreplaceable.

As an Australian who doesn't have access to Amazon, it's easy to imagine Amazon being replaced.

If Amazon disappeared tomorrow, my work as an ops person will become a joy. I truly cannot imagine any other vendor being this shitty and in business. Home life is already a joy (and a lot less expensive / cluttered) because that relationship has already been severed. I can't think of a tech company I'd miss less. Not to mention how good it'd be for competition and quality in the retail and especially in the cloud computing business.

> I truly cannot imagine any other vendor being this shitty and in business.

I see you haven't used Softlayer

Wait, so you are saying that having the most innovative competitor (in the retail space) would be good for competition? Maybe for THE competition, but surely not the consumer.

I'm definitely NOT talking about the most innovative competitor in the retail space because I'm talking about Amazon. What I'm saying is that if Amazon disappeared, the retail space would be more competitive. I highly doubt that is at all controversial.

I guess the UK is such a compact market that most ecommerce plays are easier compared with larger markets so Amazon's "USP" is simplicity rather than uniqueness. I could get a decent number of products from Argos the same day, my food (/homewares) delivered in a 2 hour window the next day from any number of suppliers (and if rumours are true that the aforementioned Argos might merge with a supermarket, challenger right there).

Their main benefit is in selection, price (that isn't quite as dominant in some things as it was - although it's potentially going to destroy their competitors before they themselves match Amazon) and having a slick checkout process with all of my info in there.

Obviously this is why they're focusing on own-brand, specialised products and selling infra, but then do we see a day where Amazon has its fingers in so many pies in such a big way that they have to be broken up?

> Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave.

Well then there's the Chinese version.

https://www.wired.com/2014/09/alibaba-already-bigger-faceboo...

You're really underestimating the power of markets if you think any company is irreplaceable. Copying/replicating is a lot easier than doing something for the first time.

My personnal experience mirrors your for the first three points but I wouldn't miss amazon because I only ordered twice from them. Which goes to show that any of these points could be irreplaceable - or not - for anybody.

I agree with you final stance though, that Amazon is highly likely to be still around in 100 years unless they are back to square one with everyone else if an energy crisis (oil, transport, etc.) crushes us all.

Meh, I know I am anecdata, but I don't use them that much, maybe once every 6 months for a book or something. I know some people use them every day, but I just don't and don't really ever see myself doing so. I mean, it just isn't hard at all to pick up the stuff I need/want from the store on the way home*

*Caveat: I live in the suburbs of a larger-ish city, not in the rural areas of the world.

> Amazon is the most untouchable, irreplaceable company in tech.

100%, yes. Totally agree! And it is probably a very non-ideal situation to be in from the customer POV. For example, Amazon ate up the .book TLD away from consumers and very few eyebrows were raised. Their strength and position in business is an impressive thing to talk about until someone at the top decides to flip the switch. ;)

It's not only about the services these companies provide but the data that they currently hold. I would hate to loose all my Google docs overnight or all my Facebook photos. Sure, you can regularly back things up, but there's no guarantee that importing those backups on the replacement service will be painless.

>"Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave"

So you would make do with substitutes to deal with Apple, Google and Facebook disappearing but if Amazon disappeared you can't imagine yourself or others walking into a store to buy goods?

Well, part of the reason I use Amazon is how little free time I have.

Amazon has lots of stuff that I either can't find elsewhere or don't have the time to go and purchase in-person.

>Amazon: It's almost impossible to imagine any company filling the gap they would leave...

My local grocery and book stores?..

Some another cloud provider for hosting?..

It'll be very hard to replace the _combination_ of services Amazon provides. The separate services by themselves are hardly unique.

Walmart

Walmart is going to build the largest hosting company in the world?

MS already have Azure which would fill the gap I'm sure. There's also Google cloud compute.

Dont forget their early adoption of database technology led to their rise.

That's interesting – I actually hadn't heard that before but it makes for a notable story. Got a link?

If you're a tech company, and your stack is so tightly coupled to Amazon that it represents an existential threat to your server fleet, you were never going to make it anyway.

Because Netflix could migrate over night, right?

Yes, they should have a contingency plan to bring things onto another hosting provider within 1 or 2 days. Anything else is negligence from a business continuity perspective for a company that size.

Companies plan for utilities to go out, which don't even have competition. It's insane to operate just hoping Amazon doesn't get hacked, freeze your account, experience a catastrophic failure, or just decide to quadruple the price overnight.

If uptime has any relevance to your company at all, have (and test!) a process to move everything to another provider in a mostly automated fashion.

They do not have the international scale of Amazon. Walmart is non-existent in a lot of countries.

So? It's not like there's no online retail in those countries. Amazon is fighting the good fight against local retailers which will thrive until a 'replacement' comes along. I'm pretty sure Europe will not miss Amazon that much (not as much as the USA).

I just searched for how much does Amazon sell outside of North America (which granted, includes Canada and Mexico) and it was about 40%[1].

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Amazons-revenue-com...

while it cannot completely fill the space, people never take ebay seriously. the amount of stuff I can buy there shipped free or just in total cheaper than Amazon makes it worth my time to cross shop.

what keeps me off other 'retailer' sites is merely how badly some are implemented, from clutter to just outright being buried under items that are listed but you cannot get in your area.

Alternatives outside the US / Euro centric HN perspective: Alibaba et al.

Amazon: Alibaba/taobao