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The last mile is still being handled by retailers.

The buy button primarily fixes the UX friction of having to leave the experience, go through a horrible mobile web checkout flow, enter your information again, etc...

Imagine those replaced with a streamlined flow (ala amazon single click buy buttons)

I agree completely. When I shop online, I like going with amazon since I know from experience their return process is so painless if something goes bad.

I can't imagine shopping for physical goods from Google. From what I hear, their customer service is pretty bad. I think overall that this is a risky proposition for these companies, in that if they mess something up they will have a lot of bad publicity.

In Google's defense their support for people who are paying money for a service tends to be better - both AdWords and Google Apps have had pretty solid support teams when I've needed them.

Good point, and that is not a cheap thing to setup. Amazon has a huge experience and infrastructure lead here.