Amazon makes a ton of money. They don't make profit because Amazon's horizon is 100 years from now. They are trying to slowly drive all other retails into starvation by forcing them to operate at unreasonable margins (margins amazon is only able to break even at because of scale).
Talking about amazon as if they're a charity is not apt. Amazon makes a great deal of money and judiciously reinvests it.
>They are trying to slowly drive all other retails into starvation by forcing them to operate at unreasonable margins (margins amazon is only able to break even at because of scale).
This is not true in the hosting arena, at least.
Amazon is like everyone else in this industry; when they came out, they came out with very compelling prices.
Well, costs fall with moores law. Amazon prices (especially bandwidth prices) have not.
There are... a lot of new entrants to the market, and they /all/ have prices that are dramatically cheaper than amazon.com. hell, most of them make me look overpriced, and it wasn't so long ago that I was the unreasonably cheap option.
They're a publicly traded company. However you want to characterize their strategy – and I think everyone agrees with your summary of their strategy – as a shareholder I'm not interested in 100 year time horizons because I will be dead by then.
The argument goes, no other company gets such a free pass from their shareholders. Amazon could be amazingly profitable right now; in real terms, shareholders are subsidizing their current strategy in ways that Apple or Microsoft or Walmart could never get away with.
So why are you a shareholder? Or why haven't you attempted to change the policies from long term thinking to quarterly thinking like most companies these days?
Talking about amazon as if they're a charity is not apt. Amazon makes a great deal of money and judiciously reinvests it.