It would cost Amazon 40-50b to buy Fedex, probably twice as much for UPS. If they really plan to run their own fleet they probably have a plan beyond just doing Prime deliveries.
The shipping market is incredibly complex with USPS and FedEx actually being each other's largest customers.
DHL used to have its own delivery network everywhere in the US, too, but they found it hard to compete.
Not sure what I would do if a shipping went missing while in front of my apartment door, but from past interactions with Amazon, I’d assume they send a new one without asking questions.
Let me tell you a secret, Amazon's relationships with shipping companies are so good that they can get incredible deals on rates. That may seem obvious, but it's true and it's important. Because it means that there isn't a huge amount of savings to be had by buying up a shipping company. The advantage to Amazon would be acquiring the business of the shipping company, but those companies operate on thin margins and have to deal with a lot of hassles that our outside of Amazon's business scope right now, so overall it doesn't seem like a good idea.
In terms of vertical integration, it makes far more sense for Amazon to simply build whatever it needs itself if it really wants to, it's already done some of that with Amazon Fresh so they are keenly aware of the issues in that part of the business and have a good idea of when it would make sense to get into it or not (currently, for last mile delivery, the answer is "sometimes but usually not").
Not even remotely close. Amazon's total retail shipping volume represents about 5%-6% of UPS by itself. Amazon's total shipping costs annually are equal to about 9% of the revenue UPS does currently. You're dramatically underestimating how big UPS + Fedex + USPS are. Those three deal with shipping for businesses and consumers representing $40+ trillion in global economic activity, and of course have a huge share of the US $18 trillion economy. Amazon is still just a large drop in that vast shipping ocean.
I general, a lot of shipping revenue comes from business-to-business, which is not threatened by Amazon.
Check your next credit card bill. I'd be willing to bet that over 80% of all you spending in a given month is shipping.
There have been fascinating studies done on the psychology of it. It's become such a large part of our cultures that most people forget they even do it. There was a documentary that followed 17 people through their daily lives in a major US city for 6 whole months. Most people didn't even remember shipping something most days, yet on average each person when into either a Fedex, Ups, or USPS store 37 times per day to ship things. Absolutely amazing.
You had me going for a second until I got to this line. Genius.
Combined revenues of USPS, UPS and Fedex are easily found and are a little over $150bn per annum