They serve more of a purpose than the dropshippers at least. Common market place, guarantees, etc.

Yeah, but they created a moat and became sticky. Netflix knew they were a middleman too so they started to produce their own content years before the streaming wars. I worked for one near the border that bought American industrial parts and sold it to Mexican factories. I helped build their quoting and ERP software, but the boss wanted to build a platform for him and his competition to try to become sticky and build a moat. Middlemen should always be finding ways to stay in the process.

But Amazon adds real value. They built out a huge logistics and PoS system. They have warehouses everywhere. They have millions of subscribers for Prime which gets people to buy large amounts of stuff on the site.

Any business owner is free to build their own website, set up payments, set up accounts with FedEx and UPS, and rent some warehouse space. That’s a tough row to hoe!

And if someone manages to squeeze Amazon out, good for them!