Amazon is now taking on the trucking industry:
Days after raising the bar for retailers by moving from two-day to one-day shipping for Prime members, Amazon is racing to disrupt another industry. The e-commerce giant launched a trial version of its online freight brokerage platform on Friday, undercutting market prices by more than a quarter, according to FreightWaves.
BusinessInsider.com
Amazon, which delivered a first-quarter earnings beat last week, relies on a nationwide network of trucking carriers to move huge volumes of products across America. It has decided to cut out the middle man and act as the broker between shippers and truckers. As a result, it should have greater control over its access to trucking capacity and the price it pays.
Can Amazon do this?
Probably. But at what cost?
I’ve noticed a real decline in the Amazon platform as a consumer of late. Those organic search results (once the strong point of the Amazon search engine) have been replaced by paid ads.
Yuck.
This, of course, has come about because Amazon is trying to compete with Google and Facebook in the online ad space.
I’m still an Amazon fan. But I frankly miss the days when Amazon did one thing–and did it very, very well.
No, Amazon’s demise is probably not imminent. But more than one “too big to fail” conglomerate has been ruined by reckless expansion.
