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Originally Posted by johnnyb
Ha!
However I would argue that the inception of the Kindle and its first iterations were still part of that focus, neverminding the fact that by the time they came around with their first Kindle, they were already selling things other than books.
Now they are just this unfocused giant that keeps pumping out all sorts of gadgets according to the whims of the market.
Don't get me wrong, I like my Kindle, but from my experience with it, I would not invest in any other Amazon technologies, given how they are all almost certain to fall behind the competition in terms of user satisfaction through useful innovation once the next trend arrives.
I will keep buying ebooks from Amazon but I am constantly making sure to be able to have them available apart from their devices.
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Amazon was selling CDs and DVDs by 1996 and electronics and dry goods by 1997. By 2000 books were a minority product, hardly worth Bezo's attention. He has bigger fish to try.
Amazon is a consortium, an empire of over 20 different companies. Each is run independently and has to compete in its segment on its own merits. And each has their own pace of innovation.
In cloud services they are neck and neck with Microsoft for first place, so they have to run like heck just to stay where they are; in home automation (which is what yesterday was about) they have a fair lead over Google but not enough to run away; in streaming gadgets, they are neck and neck with Roku, and in streaming video they are third and trying to stay ahead of Hulu.
Even in retail, they are only ahead in online. In total retail they are but a small slice.
It is only in book retail that they are lapping the field so if you only look at books they seem to be dominant and "fat, dumb, and lazy". And there they are so big they have to throttle back or risk DOJ attention.
Basically Amazon competes based on tbe strength of the competition. Microsoft, Google, and WalMart they take seriously. B&N and other bookstores, not so much.