They are probably generally paying less but Amazon isn't the surefire low-cost provider on the internet the way they used to be. I don't expect the trend of them raising prices to reverse as they gain market power.
> How much would you have to charge for same day delivery for that many products? Could you get close to Amazon? You would have to rip off you customers so badly just to stay alive.
It's not "ripping off" it's just charging customers the actual cost of the service they are getting.
Except their competitors have followed suit with cheaper shipping and online shopping. They are the best, but not a monopoly.
Going out on limb here, but I'd say the diaper companies.
Some middleman website might have lost out on being able to sell for more money to Walmart, but that was their choice to not to pursue a deal with Walmart.
I am guessing what they were probably concerned about was guaranteeing themselves cashing out at least at Amazon’s offer because if Walmart found out Amazon was backing out of the deal, then Walmart would have had the power to push the price down.
Either way, diapers.com was going to lose to Amazon/Walmart/Target/Costco.
This hasn't been true for many years IME, and will almost certainly get worse over time. Companies like Amazon don't fight tooth and nail to monopolize industries because they want to be nice to people, they do it because it results in power they can use to increase profits over the long term. Less competition means that they can ratchet up prices for customers and squeeze sellers/suppliers more. There are only a handful of general stories online these days, largely due to Amazon's actions.
It's too easy to enter the diaper (or whatever) retail market that such a tactic makes no sense.
This also assumes Amazon doesn’t buy any competitor early on, such as happened with Warby Parker.
Really? First time I'm hearing Azure is unprofitable. In fact "Intelligent Cloud" which I assume is mainly Azure is their most profitable business...
If I understand it correctly (probably not) they actually have higher margins than AWS?
Amazon.com as a store makes next to nothing as profit.
Who cares what he did to some diaper companies. Are consumers paying more or less because of amazon? Much less.
They basically run amazon.com for no profit and consumers get fantastic deals and cheaper products and more reliable service than ever before.
How much would you have to charge for same day delivery for that many products? Could you get close to Amazon? You would have to rip off you customers so badly just to stay alive.