Amazon has quietly become the back end of a huge number of businesses on and offline. Amazon takes their orders, warehouses their stock. Amazon ships what you buy – from them. Its infrastructure is ginormous. Its next target: same-day delivery. It may be the knock-out blow for physical retail as we’ve known it.
Apparently, Amazon already has about 30+ huge distribution centers,
in some but not all US states. They have to apply sales tax only if they
"have presence" in the state, and apparently avoiding this for remaining states
is becoming increasingly difficult.
As a good business, Amazon is taking this challenge to their advantage,
planning to have even more warehouses closer to buyers,
and enabling even faster delivery: same say.
Detailed investigation at FT.com
Amazon.com is becoming an "infrastructure" of the economy.
The low prices are not free, since working condition in warehouses are not great,
many popular affordable products are imported, and while it is easy to become
one of large number of sellers on Amazon (2+ million!) there is no sustainable advantage.
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