Amazon's scorched-earth PR strategy
axios.com
axios.com
>/.../ And fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets.
Shouldn't everyone be able to respond to 'attacks' on them on Twitter regardless who the attacker is? It's not like Amazon went out to heckle the senator out of the blue.
That's called the first amendment.
This is disgusting. Bribing warehouse employees to give rosy descriptions of the company. The link from 2019 is even worse. Tracking them by affiliate id, to see what they said.
There's a difference.
For starters?
Not lie, or manipulate their employees to actively undermine their best interests.
Is it too much to ask?
Also since there are now 2 tribes, I wonder if they're thinking they can trash talk Warren and Sanders and at worst they'll always have customers, i.e. the people who demonize these 2 politicians.
They’re able to offer that competitive pricing because of the enormous economies of scale, bargaining power, etc. that no one else has.
This comment is totally alienated from Amazon's business. Amazon is not a website. Amazon is a retail company, and their barrier to entry is their logistics infrastructure. You don't buy stuff from Amazon because you can click a button. You buy from Amazon because it can ship your order right to your front door in a matter of hours or days, and do it without any added cost, and even allows you to return everything for free no questions asked.
Anyone can put up an website in a week, but no one can put up a high throughout low latency logistics network that allows for a turnaround time between click and doorstep as low as a few hours.
In fact, Amazon's website is notoriously horrible in classification and search. I'd argue that Amazon dominates in spite of its website in general, and search and detail pages in particular.
I think it's the use of the exclamation points that gets me.
Will NREs attract union attention? No! Will NREs save me money? Yes! Can NREs improve my share price? Yes! Do I have to invite NREs to Christmas Parties and other Company Social Events? No!
When she talks about snotty tweets (quickly spun by enemies into a claim that the ONLY thing she observes or cares about is the sass) what she's decrying is the observation that they will abuse workers, rig the whole system to destroy worker protections of any sort, AND then sass you for objecting in any way to it, even when it is literally your job to be the framework of rules and laws that contextualizes their behavior.
Amazon's scorched-earth strategy is consistent with what they inherently are, but that's also their big weakness. Warren is right that they expect to dismantle all laws and rules that stop them treating Americans like enslaved workers in obscure Asian countries, and THEN they expect to sass you about it on Twitter if you don't like that.
They expect to act as Gods, because they can afford to be. I get how Bezos gets that impression, but he's mistaken that it is in any way a good thing.
"I didn’t write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did. But you bet I’ll fight to make you pay your fair share. And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."
As much as monopolies bother me in the market ... I'm much more bothered by the monopoly of power represented by government. For a sitting senator to act like she can use the power of the government because someone was "snotty" to her is ridiculous.
The only control on senatorial power is elections ... and elections are driven by emotions and not long term views about what is good for the country. I'm afraid Warren and Sanders populism is now unopposed in the Democratic party ... just as Trumpist populism ruins the GOP.
I'm bearish on America now.
I don’t know what that means - are you proposing that governments not have sovereignty over the states in which they control? Or are you saying that we need to take her tweet in the most literal meaning possible and assume she is intending to use anti-trust as a means to punish Amazon for the sole reason of a middle manager sent a mean tweet?
But perhaps this shows that some politicians are far more willing to communicate with people more candidly.
Both of these senators ran in the presidential primary and not only were they opposed, they were defeated.
Too good for the first?
You're cherry-picking her quote, because that isn't all she said. A more charitable reading of said cherry is "companies shouldn't feel they're above the law".