The presence of Amazon in the lives of Americana and foreign consumers is unparalleled. 200 million people pay for Amazon prime accounts to shop and stream content. 500 million Alexa devices sit in people’s bedrooms, living rooms and cars gobbling up data about what we watch, what we listen to and of course what we buy. And AWS is the largest cloud computing company in the world. Buying from Amazon is easy, convenient and has historically been cheap.
But there is a dark side to the Amazon story. The company has a history of competing with the very sellers whose brands it markets and has grown to dominate every industry it enters.
The Amazon story raises profound questions about the appropriate role of antitrust enforcement, questions that may be answered in the sweeping antitrust case filed by the FTC.
Wall Street reporter Dana Mattioli’s deep dive into the Amazon story is written out in her new book, “The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power.”