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Re:Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed by cwyers on Sunday July 13, 2014 @03:03PM (#8028290)
AWS is far more vulnerable to online competition right now than Amazon the retailer is. There's several companies that have the available infrastructure to compete with Amazon in the cloud... Google and Microsoft are already out there, and Amazon is finding themselves cutting prices to compete.

Nobody really has Amazon's physical goods delivery infrastructure. You can look at Wal-Mart and Target, but they have infrastructure designed to solve a very different problem, getting large amounts of the same goods to certain physical stores. They rely on semi-truck drivers to deliver palettes of goods to stores. What they don't have, for example, is Amazon's very close relationships to UPS and USPS. Could they develop it? Maybe. At great expense. Would they be able to peel off more existing Amazon customers than they'd be cannibalizing their own current sales? Who knows.

Re:Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed by dm2 on Sunday July 13, 2014 @03:14PM (#8028312)
I was not suggesting that Walmart compete in home delivery, I was thinking that they should ship things to their store (which as you mentioned they already have that system in place) where it would be boxed up and ready for pickup by customers (because everyone has a walmart fairly close to them, and that's a huge advantage). The cost to them would be minimal and the customers they would gain that have been using online shopping with shipping to their homes could be significant. Even for a small surcharge it would be worth it to me.
Re:Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed by eclipxe on Sunday July 13, 2014 @03:24PM (#8028334)
>The cost to them would be minimal and the customers they would gain that have been using online shopping with shipping to their homes could be significant.

This does not compute. They already have ship-to-store, and have had for quite a while. It hasn't made a significant impact on their online power. Customers don't want to drive to a Walmart to pickup their online order. That's an extra step for no reason.

Re:Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed by cpwright on Monday July 14, 2014 @07:47AM (#8030443)
Site-to-store does indeed solve a problem. If there is something I want at Wal-Mart, then I have to find it. Not only that, after finding it I need to stand on a long check-out line. With site-to-store, I get it on the web site, then just go to the back of the store and pick it up. The problem is that at Wal-Mart it can be a crap shoot as to whether the site-to-store place is properly staffed.

I actually use the Home Depot site-to-store equivalent much more than the Wal-Mart one [probably several times a month, vs. once or twice a year]. Home Depot gets it right. There are still occasional problems, and it would be better if they could fulfill the orders faster, but it still avoids having to search for stuff, which I consider to be of significant value.

Re:Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed by dm2 on Sunday July 13, 2014 @03:46PM (#8028377)
See this comment about the site-to-store please: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8028352

For driving it really depends on the city and the persons situation. Many people drive by a walmart on their commute, the ability to order something in the morning then pick it up on the way home would be convenient. For businesses someone could order something the night before and pick it up in the morning and use it at work that day, that would be very valuable.

Re:Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed by philwelch on Sunday July 13, 2014 @09:42PM (#8029210)
Everyone has a Wal-Mart fairly close to them? I think more people have the ability to reliably receive UPS deliveries than have a Wal-Mart close to them. Who wants to drive into the suburbs to buy stuff?

Plus, Amazon lockers.

Re:Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed by cwyers on Sunday July 13, 2014 @03:23PM (#8028331)