The idea of "people won't buy things they can't judge by holding it in their hands" was still strong back then. That's why Amazon was successful selling books where quality was trusted implicitly without that physical judgment being necessary.

TechCrunch did a good job looking back at Amazon's IPO and it's a good read to clarify what Amazon was when it went public (a bookseller, not general retail), how insane its growth was (revenue up about 3,000% YoY from 1996 to 1997, more revenue in the quarter before its IPO than the entire previous year), and how fast the IPO came together (12 days to S-1). Even for all that growth, revenue was still around $15M. It was a minnow but it played all of its cards about as right as it could for an IPO.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/28/a-look-back-at-amazons-199...

Doesn't ride sharing seem like the way of the future in your opinion?

Who's doing ride sharing? Certainly not Uber

> Uber Technologies Inc. is a transportation network company (TNC) offering services that include peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride service hailing, food delivery, and a bicycle-sharing system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber

Not necessarily.

So is gig economy. Jobs will continue to decline.