For me, their innovation was that they were the first online retailer that inspired rock solid confidence in their delivery. If I order something on Amazon, it’s at my door in two days. Every time. I don’t need to check my shipping status, and with their pricing model obscuring shipping costs, I don’t need to think about the practicalities of shipping at all.

As the article demonstrates, this luxury comes with a high social cost.

From about 100 packages, I've had a handful come past the "guaranteed date", one that was entirely wrong (someone else's items), and worst of all, one that was missing an item that took a huge argument with a CSR to get a refund over.

I wouldn't call them rock solid. Even if they were, it's not something that has to, or justifies, mistreating employees.

Things like Prime free delivery at that scale, fulfillment services, AWS were all innovative (even though I'm sure none of them were the first-ever.)

They did "invent" and patent [1] the 1-click buying button. The patent has expired, however, they also had a trademark on the phrase "1-Click".

{1] https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC...

Buying stuff from pretty much any other online retailer is still a frustrating and bad experience. E.g. Williams Sonoma will accept an order then just never ship it and when you call asking what's up the rep shrugs. I'm struggling to name one other retailer that nails service like Amazon. Perhaps Apple, but I buy something from them perhaps every two years.