AMZN

The most powerful woman at Amazon: Amazon’s HR chief Beth Galetti is hiring hundreds of people a day. As the company’s workforce swells, so do her challenges. In her six years at Amazon, Galetti is the highest-ranking woman at the company & she’s quietly become one of its most influential figures. Her job is far from just hiring new employees. She’s been dealing with Amazon’s workplace practices — from investigations into its warehouse workers’ ability to take bathroom breaks to strikes at unionized facilities in Europe. Here’s a day in the life at what I imagine to be the busiest, most chaotic place on Earth.

“Beth is not short on guts, but she is a calculated risk-taker.”
 
Amazon's CEO is pumped. Jeff Bezos spent a section of his annual shareholder letter plugging the machine-learning tools that Amazon Web Services sells. Meanwhile, tech publication The Information reported that sales for one of Amazon's core A.I. products are low, underscoring that A.I. is still nascent for most businesses.
 
Amazon China

Amazon is all but killing off its Chinese e-commerce operation, which faces stiff competition from Alibaba and JD.com. From mid-July, customers visiting the site will only see a selection of items from Amazon's overseas sites. The firm said it was "working closely with our sellers to ensure a smooth transition and to continue to deliver the best customer experience possible." BBC
 
Amazon Prime

Amazon is pushing to deliver products to Prime subscribers around the world within one day rather than two. The company will invest $800 million this quarter in an attempt to halve the delivery window. CNN
 
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Report: Amazon in talks to acquire self-driving truck startup TuSimple
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Amazon.com Inc. is in talks to acquire Chinese self-driving truck startup TuSimple, according to a Chinese media report Tuesday. Quoting people close to Amazon executives, TMPost (Titanium Media) claims that the two companies are currently in negotiations on an acquisition deal. (SiliconANGLE)
 
The FTC is asking Amazon's rivals if they are being crushed by Jeff Bezos' company
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The Federal Trade Commission is homing in on Amazon. A new report from Vox revealed that the government agency has been questioning Amazon's rivals about some of its business practices, including how it competes with its own third-party sellers and whether its Prime services are unfairly undercutting competitors. While this doesn't mean that the FTC has launched an investigation on Amazon, it signals that the tech giant is becoming the focus of increased scrutiny. (Business Insider)
 
If your software works with fewer bugs, if you deliver faster than the competition, if you make customer returns incredibly simple, if you respect your customers time more than your competitors do, if your pricing is more up front and honest, if your customers choose you over your competitors, are you "unfairly" undercutting competitors.

Traditional monopolies were built by selling at a loss to force competitors out of business or to sell to you (think J.D. Rockefeller, who famously said, "competition is a sin." ) Amazon so far as we know, does not engage in any of these practices. It buys businesses at competitive prices that are not competitors at the time of acquisition. This practice allows Amazon to move into entirely new ventures. It competes by doing things better than the competition. Is that unfair?

Amazon is not trying to sell at lower prices than Walmart or at a loss, in an attempt to drive Walmart out of business, and it is not interested in buying Walmart. It competes with Walmart.com by doing things much better than Walmart.com does them! And it will eventually put Walmart.com out of business, unless Walmart changes the way it does business. Amazon buys, so far as I know, only non-competing businesses! Although Amazon was trying to make headway into the grocery business before it bought Whole Foods, no one in their right mind would, before the purchase of Whole Foods, have said that Whole Foods and Amazon were legitimate competitors.

I think Amazon will come through any FTC investigation, based on current statutory law, without much difficulty. Where they are more vulnerable would seem to be within the political arena. But I don't think they face much difficulty there either.

So long as Amazon has legitimate competitors in all its areas of operation I think it will easily withstand FTC scrutiny. The problem for Amazon is rather an ironic one. If it doesn't stop doing things so much better than the competition it may indeed eventually end up having a monopoly in one area or another. Then, through no fault of its own, Amazon may become an accidental monopoly.
 
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