And were particularly bad at it for a long time. Selling books was the only thing keeping the company afloat during that span.
> They never have had a monopoly on websites that sell stuff to be delivered by mail, either.
Actually, they did on books. You seem like you may be young. In 1994-1996, credit cards were nowhere near as ubiquitous and certainly the online use of them was even less so. Online gift companies were still a big thing and not simply a given even into 1999-2000.
The big bookstores at the time all had physical presence. If they attempted to ship you book and not charge tax, some taxman was going to show up at their door. This stifled the development of the online websites for those companies.
Amazon had no presence that people could go after, so could skirt tax laws with far less danger. That gave them an in-built 5% advantage over everyone. And the small bookstores took it in the chin particularly hard.
The success of people like Bezos becoming huge by skirting the law is why we have people like Kalanick who thought they can become huge by skirting the law.