Palantir Posted November 14, 2014 Share Posted November 14, 2014 Google is a threat. Their current service is obviously tiny and in its infancy -- but they are willing to think outside the box and think long term. Their bankroll doesn't hurt either. In what way and in which segment? If you're referring to the cloud infrastructure market, what's their edge over AMZN? Someone like MSFT has the enterprise relationships to sell products into, but GOOG I assume is naturally more suited to the public cloud market, which makes them directly compete with AMZN...and I don't see their strengths here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbharadwaj Posted November 14, 2014 Share Posted November 14, 2014 I am not an investor in AMZN. I am an user of Amazon on the personal front (Prime) and on the professional (AWS). I am currently at re:Invent in Las Vegas, the annual conference for AWS users. There are over 25000 people here and a ton of Amazon partners. In the key note speeches on the last two days a number of announcements were made. Please do look at those. The major push seems to be to get enterprises to make AWS their production platform - all speeches were supported by companies like Netflix, Nike, Intuit - who have decided to move their entire infrastructure to AWS from traditional data centers. The other major push is in providing all features to get software going - from code repositories, to build pipelines and to automated deployment at scale. https://aws.amazon.com/new/reinvent/ Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krazeenyc Posted November 14, 2014 Share Posted November 14, 2014 Google is a threat. Their current service is obviously tiny and in its infancy -- but they are willing to think outside the box and think long term. Their bankroll doesn't hurt either. In what way and in which segment? If you're referring to the cloud infrastructure market, what's their edge over AMZN? Someone like MSFT has the enterprise relationships to sell products into, but GOOG I assume is naturally more suited to the public cloud market, which makes them directly compete with AMZN...and I don't see their strengths here. I was referring to google express -- retail. I think if your thesis is that in a decade Amazon will dominate shopping everywhere -- and all the current retailers can't compete -- you need to think about competitors outside the current establishment. Like Amazon, - Google has forward thinking management who are willing to think outside the box. - They are recruiting the best and the brightest. - They're willing to lose a lot of money on an idea with great scalability/potential. - They have much much deeper pockets than Amazon (and have the potential to make insane ideas work). It doesn't matter where Google is today in shopping -- it matters where they can get to in 10 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted November 14, 2014 Share Posted November 14, 2014 ^I am probably more skeptical of Google's competitive ability than you are. This company takes on "me-too" random projects and dismisses them a few years later. Retail I believe is a scale business with low margins, which is not attractive for a competitor. I am skeptical they have the willingness to compete with a shark like AMZN. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krazeenyc Posted November 14, 2014 Share Posted November 14, 2014 ^I am probably more skeptical of Google's competitive ability than you are. This company takes on "me-too" random projects and dismisses them a few years later. Retail I believe is a scale business with low margins, which is not attractive for a competitor. I am skeptical they have the willingness to compete with a shark like AMZN. Google doesn't sell anything in Google Express. They simply facilitate same day deliveries for local retailers -- Costco, Fairway Markets, Staples, Toysrus etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted November 14, 2014 Share Posted November 14, 2014 Anecdotal and personal experience. I love Amazon for most things. In terms of food though, their offering is pretty atrocious. I wanted to buy a specific brand of cereal. Not something super-rare, but something not stocked in my local store anymore. Amazon only has it from 3rd party vendors at 2x store price + huge shipping. Walmart.com has it at normal store price. Who do you think got my business? Walmart.com. Twice in the last year. I mostly don't comparison shop and buy on AMZN. So this is great for AMZN. For big purchases though, I still comparison shop with Walmart.com, Newegg/Microcenter, Lowes depending on purchase. For me Amazon has some lock in of convenience and familiarity. Apart from books it's not a big lock in though. I have no stock holdings in AMZN or WMT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkbabang Posted November 14, 2014 Share Posted November 14, 2014 Anecdotal and personal experience. I love Amazon for most things. In terms of food though, their offering is pretty atrocious. I wanted to buy a specific brand of cereal. Not something super-rare, but something not stocked in my local store anymore. Amazon only has it from 3rd party vendors at 2x store price + huge shipping. Walmart.com has it at normal store price. Who do you think got my business? Walmart.com. Twice in the last year. I mostly don't comparison shop and buy on AMZN. So this is great for AMZN. For big purchases though, I still comparison shop with Walmart.com, Newegg/Microcenter, Lowes depending on purchase. For me Amazon has some lock in of convenience and familiarity. Apart from books it's not a big lock in though. I have no stock holdings in AMZN or WMT. I agree with you on common food items that you could get at a grocery store or WalMart,but Amazon is great for some specialty items where the only place to get them locally is at specialty markets which usually charge quite a bit more than Amazon. And with other things, like electronics, Amazon usually has the best price once shipping is factored in. I shop Newegg/Microcenter/mwave/tigerdirect/bestbuy/target/etc.. and then end up finding the exact same device/model/part number on amazon for around the same or less and its at my door in 2 days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAllen Posted November 19, 2014 Share Posted November 19, 2014 Amazon Robots Prepare for Christmashttp://online.wsj.com/articles/amazon-deploys-robots-to-speed-delivery-1416433198 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAllen Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 What does the board think about these prices? http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20141119006913/en/Amazon-Introduces-Days-Black-Friday-Deals-Deals Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tengen Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 What does the board think about these prices? The TV prices are shocking to me. I confess to being out of touch with the cost of TVs these days be the prices seem very low. $79 for a 32-inch LED? $899 for a 55-inch 4k? I think I paid $899 for my 20" Sony LED back in the day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkbabang Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 What does the board think about these prices? The TV prices are shocking to me. I confess to being out of touch with the cost of TVs these days be the prices seem very low. $79 for a 32-inch LED? $899 for a 55-inch 4k? I think I paid $899 for my 20" Sony LED back in the day. Yeah TV prices are dropping like crazy, especially the 4K prices, they were in the multiple thousands of dollars just recently. I think it might be time to replace my last tube TV. Its a 32" 4/3 aspect ratio Samsung that I bought about 12 years ago. It looks like I'll be able to replace it with a 40" HDTV for a lot less than I paid for it. Maybe I'll get a 4K TV in 10-15 years when 1080p sets seem as old as 480i sets do now and everyone else is starting to buy 16K or maybe 3D hologram TVs or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAllen Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 I thought the prices were insane. I bought a used 720P 40" a year ago from a friend, and now a 1080P 40" new, is selling for one-third that price, on Amazon. Maybe this is why they estimated revenue growth as 'low' as they did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 The first thing that this tells me is that I don't want to be a TV manufacturer :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rpadebet Posted November 21, 2014 Share Posted November 21, 2014 http://seekingalpha.com/news/2141525-amazon-reportedly-prepping-travel-service-nyc-office-building-rented If this is true, then I like this kind of growth. Its within their moat, not capital intensive and they will be taking on a bunch of "smallish" guys. I like the odds of this one better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAllen Posted November 21, 2014 Share Posted November 21, 2014 I was actually less excited about it, because it seems like it's a commodity space, and the players are quite large: TRIP, EXPE, GOOG. Priceline is a $60B company. But I definitely trust whatever their analysis is. It isn't one that I've really studied, though, and Amazon is usually good with not launching a product unless they think they can do it better. Capital-intensive? hopefully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted November 25, 2014 Share Posted November 25, 2014 For some reason I thought of this thread. ;D Bad as They Wanna Be http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/11/sam_hinkie_is_the_philadelphia_76ers_lose_on_purpose_approach_to_team_building.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted November 25, 2014 Share Posted November 25, 2014 Amazon and Best Buy: http://pando.com/2014/11/25/as-amazons-iron-grip-slips-best-buy-is-taking-advantage/ Fire Phone now down 70% in 4 months: http://venturebeat.com/2014/11/26/fire-sale-amazon-cuts-price-again-to-move-piles-of-unsold-smartphones/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAllen Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 "I've made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon.com ... None of those things are fun, but they don't matter. What really matters is that companies that don't continue to experiment — companies that don't embrace failure — they eventually get in a desperate position." - Bezos [/size] http://www.businessinsider.sg/jeff-bezos-on-big-bets-risks-fire-phone-2014-12/#.VH4Qi2TF9eI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkbabang Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 What does the board think about these prices? The TV prices are shocking to me. I confess to being out of touch with the cost of TVs these days be the prices seem very low. $79 for a 32-inch LED? $899 for a 55-inch 4k? I think I paid $899 for my 20" Sony LED back in the day. I was pretty pissed on Friday. I've been watching a certain TV on Amazon and it had been the same price for a while ($298), so I thought I'd wait until "Black Friday" to order it, thinking it might be a little cheaper. Wouldn't you know the price on Friday was $349 and it is still $349 now. It looks like I'm waiting until after Christmas to order it. People think they are getting deals by shopping on certain days, but that isn't the only item I noticed a huge price jump on Amazon on Friday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 Amazon paid about a billion for Twitch recently. Looks like they'll have new competition, as all Steam titles will now have built-in broadcasting capability: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/12/steam-streams-valve-introduces-gameplay-sharing-broadcast-feature/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wbr Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 Amazon paid about a billion for Twitch recently. Looks like they'll have new competition, as all Steam titles will now have built-in broadcasting capability: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/12/steam-streams-valve-introduces-gameplay-sharing-broadcast-feature/ I'm very sceptical about this. Monetization is not possible at the moment which will keep all producers away who are actually serious about their content and buy high quality equipment. Also why would someone switch from twitch to steam broadcast if you have established a viewer base on twitch? There is a monthly subscription feature on twitch which produces huge cashflows for the popular channels. They will not just give that up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 Amazon paid about a billion for Twitch recently. Looks like they'll have new competition, as all Steam titles will now have built-in broadcasting capability: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/12/steam-streams-valve-introduces-gameplay-sharing-broadcast-feature/ I'm very sceptical about this. Monetization is not possible at the moment which will keep all producers away who are actually serious about their content and buy high quality equipment. Also why would someone switch from twitch to steam broadcast if you have established a viewer base on twitch? There is a monthly subscription feature on twitch which produces huge cashflows for the popular channels. They will not just give that up. I don't think they'll steal content producers, at least not at first (their plan is probably to build up the platform's capabilities over time and to "professionalize" it). But they might be able to steal a lot of viewer because Steam already has the gamers coming to their watering hole, so while they're there they might watch some streams and spend some time that they might otherwise spend on Twitch. They can try to go after the best content producers later once they have more of a critical mass. No idea if they'll beat Twitch, but they certainly are in a position to seriously compete since pretty much all serious gamers are already inside their ecosystem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCG Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 Instead of spending time creating products like the Fire phone, why doesn't Amazon focus on improving the e-Ink Kindle? This is one piece of technology they're able to dominate, but all the existing Kindles feature an incredibly small screen and a pretty week user interface. Why can't they make a 8-9" Kindle? Seems like there is still a large market for e-Ink readers. I usually read on my iPad, but every time I consider picking up a Kindle (just to reduce eye strain when reading) I can't believe how unnecessarily tiny these things are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peter1234 Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 Instead of spending time creating products like the Fire phone, why doesn't Amazon focus on improving the e-Ink Kindle? This is one piece of technology they're able to dominate, but all the existing Kindles feature an incredibly small screen and a pretty week user interface. Why can't they make a 8-9" Kindle? Seems like there is still a large market for e-Ink readers. I usually read on my iPad, but every time I consider picking up a Kindle (just to reduce eye strain when reading) I can't believe how unnecessarily tiny these things are. +1 Rather than the luxury Voyage, I would like a bigger one. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkbabang Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 Instead of spending time creating products like the Fire phone, why doesn't Amazon focus on improving the e-Ink Kindle? This is one piece of technology they're able to dominate, but all the existing Kindles feature an incredibly small screen and a pretty week user interface. Why can't they make a 8-9" Kindle? Seems like there is still a large market for e-Ink readers. I usually read on my iPad, but every time I consider picking up a Kindle (just to reduce eye strain when reading) I can't believe how unnecessarily tiny these things are. +1 Rather than the luxury Voyage, I would like a bigger one. ;) I suspect that the need to pay e-ink for the screen is the reason. Amazon would probably have to charge $350+ for a large screen device. The device could be improved though. The reason I have a Kobo Aura HD rather than a Kindle is because the Kindle doesn't support epub and I don't want to go through the time consuming process of converting all of my thousands of epubs to mobi. The Kobo's screen is great, but the user interface is beyond horrible. What I want is an e-ink device that runs Android and has a Kindle app, a Kobo app, an app to view epub and pdf, etc... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now