The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power

The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power by Dana Mattioli

This is a hit piece on Amazon. It is filled with examples of many that have been wronged by the behavior of the company. While Amazon could probably point out examples of areas that the company has benefited people, the underlying culture still remains a concern. Amazon consists of a huge number of distinct business units with individual mandates. Employees frequently move between different units and there are few controls to prevent access to information elsewhere in the company. This all combines to result in extreme corporate bad behavior - even when unintentional.

Amazon is also obsessed with collecting and making decisions by data. If the data justifies an action, the action will be taken. The data also provides data for other units to compete. Parts of Amazon may collect data as part of partnerships. Other parts of Amazon may have access to this data as they are competing. On the employee side, data can be used for employment decisions. Data provides an "objective" shine to subjective decisions. With the cut-throat nature of employment at Amazon, managers will pick criteria to make their favored employees shine, while finding ways to make the ones they don't like look bad. Since they are "objective" measures it is hard to argue with them. However, they are often "objectively" pieces of data picked after the fact specifically to produce the outcome desired.

The retail arm of Amazon is made up of many distinct business units that ostensibly work independently, yet work together to give unfair advantage to the company. Amazon is a retailer that sells items itself. It also operates a 3rd party marketplace that allows others to sell items. Then item is in the manufacturing business, selling private label items as well as in-house-developed electronics (like Kindles) and software platforms (e.g. Alexa) and even a venture capital arm. Amazon also operates an advertising arm that helps promote products for sell. This leads to many opportunities for synergies as well as malfeasance. 

A company with an electronic device needs Amazon to certify it to ship with Alexa services. This gives Amazon pre-release knowledge of competitors products - knowledge that may leak to Amazon hardware divisions. Similarly knowledge from start-up due-diligence may be "remembered" by those that want to implement a similar product to compete in the similar space. Companies attempting to sell items in marketplace may also see Amazon try to copy their items and sell them on their own. (The book mentioned an example where a company saw their Chinese factory doing a run of identical items for Amazon.)

The marketplace free-for-all creates many conflicts for companies. If a company does not want to sell products on Amazon, an unscrupulous 3rd party seller may pop up and sell similar, counterfeit or knock-off goods. It is difficult to police these or stop them from appearing. Companies find themselves forced to sell on Amazon to counteract the "fake" products out there. Since it is a 3rd party marketplace, Amazon itself has limited liability.

For items that compete with Amazon, it is even more challenging. Amazon uses its advertising arm to promote Amazon products on the site. Amazon will send keyword searches to the competitor to the Amazon products, but it wont let companies bid on Amazon keywords. 

Amazon has for many years prioritized growth and expansion into new markets over profitability. This has allowed it to grow to dominate retail. It has gotten so big and cutthroat that even Walmart looks positive by comparison. Amazon has historically gone through great efforts to reduce taxes paid and limit government influence through complex maneuvers. Like other companies, it has eagerly sought out government hand outs. (It may brag about the many distribution center jobs it has provided - even as these have come from the destruction of local retail.)

What is the future of Amazon? It has grown to be so huge that it almost must be predatory to grow into new markets. It still has a relative positive position among consumers. However, partners are looking for alternatives. The culture of Amazon has many positives, however, it also breeds negative behavior that may be difficult to root out.