The part I consider sharecropping is the lack of communication with your customer. In Amazon's case they've been able to build a very strong brand with lot's of global mindshare, but they had to rely on a webpage in a Kindle blog to explain the changes in the iOS app. They couldn't even put a link in the release notes to explain the loss of a popular feature. In this case, it's sharecropping because you drop your high value branded crop in the Apple cotton gin and Apple decides what commodity that suites their needs comes out the other side.