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Comment by whyenot | Hacker News Reader

I think Google's position is much more worrisome. As others have already mentioned, with Amazon, you can always go to Walmart or other retailers. In many cases, these days I find myself using the manufacturer's website and purchasing directly from them to avoid counterfeits.

Google (err Alphabet) is so completely dominant in search (93.125 world marketshare) and video (97.42%), and not far behind in mobile operating systems (70.89%) [and I found both of these numbers by using Google]. Of course marketshare on its own is not a particularly strong argument for breaking a company up, but Google could be a lot more evil than Amazon, if it wanted to.

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The thing is, if Google chose to be evil, how much room do they have? They're losing in Cloud, they're losing money/barely breaking even with YouTube, and they don't really have room to monetize stuff like Gmail, YouTube, the play store, etc else users would flee in droves.

Google really doesn't have enough room to be evil even if they tried - they've already exhausted most avenues that they could and failed. Imo, Google is actually under threat - if someone were to credibly show in detail how useless Google Ads actually are or how flawed/falsified their performance metrics are (perhaps via internal leaks a la Facebook, etc), Google could easily end up losing a lot of ad customers.

Other retailers continue to shutdown and it's a direct result of Amazon.

Sears, JCPenney, Bed Bath and Beyond are just a few dominoes to have already fallen.

Are those failures a direct result of Amazon existing? I would venture to bet it’s one of the reasons but I would also point out that Walmart has done a lot of damage as have poor management decisions in a number of the companies you listed. Correlation is not causation.

Sears is an amusing example given their mail-order history. Ultimately they shut down as a direct result of making no attempt to innovate or even mimic the innovators since those glory days.

Walmart, Target, Home Depot, etc. embraced the 21st century and are doing just fine. Others like Chewy only came about as a result of the new trends.

BB&B bought its way into bankruptcy by taking on debt to fund a multi-billion dollar stock buyback; external competition (including Amazon but primarily Walmart) was a secondary factor.

Sears, JCPenney, and Bed Bath & Beyond are, to the best of my understanding, victims of vulture capitalism. Sure, Amazon didn't help, but they would've been in decent shape if Wall Street hadn't swooped in, drained them dry, and discarded the desiccated husks.

> Other retailers continue to shutdown and it's a direct result of Amazon.

It is not Amazon, it is online shopping in general. They never were going to survive a world where their competition can sell the same goods without having all the capital and labor expenses of a storefront.

A few of the big ones will survive due to convenience, but the niche stores where you do not need the product today or tomorrow have no competitive advantage against a website, outside of a few high end stores where richer people can afford to pay extra for the shopping experience.

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