Amazon employs more than a million people, both in traditional and non-traditional relationships. (In early February, Amazon agreed to pay $ 62 million to the Federal Trade Commission to pay complaints that it withheld tips from Amazon Flex delivery managers – workers who regularly drive their own vehicles.)
An Amazon that does not need so much of the post office, or transportation companies like FedEx, is an Amazon that can eventually compete with them even wider or even replace them. An Amazon that, by virtue of its size, offers an easier, cheaper way to handle your business’ hosting and computing needs, could eventually become a business with which such business is not much of a choice at all.
The potential of AWS – to immerse itself in every major industry in the economy – is truly staggering, and its biggest competitors, including Microsoft and Google, have a lot of catch-up. An unlimited AWS has no precedent, but perhaps some instructive: railroads, energy, banking.
Life for the average Amazon customer will of course continue to change as the company expands its trading and entertainment offerings. The old Amazon will stay ahead of the customer already there, and it offers opportunities to forge new relationships with the company, or to eliminate it: for food; for medicine; for security; for play.
Amazon Mr. Jassy helped build, the one he will soon inherit does not depend on the customer’s permission. Rather, it is defined by what and who they do not see. It is defined by conversations in which the loyal first-time subscribers are not a participant, but rather a source of leverage: across partners, suppliers, workers and, above all, newer customers.
Amazon has spent its first decades thinking ahead. Perhaps the next phase, under the supervision of mr. Jassy, to disappear into even greater power – surrounding, diffuse, inevitable. Like a comprehensive mist. Or a cloud.