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Isn't it obvious that once you have a big selling platform, you can make it grow until you hit a competitor that is bigger than you? Which in the case of Amazon is not happening.

Can we please turn "selling" into a utility function, so that the "digital economy" can perhaps turn into something useful instead of a detriment?




> Isn't it obvious that once you have a big selling platform, you can make it grow until you hit a competitor that is bigger than you?

How'd that work out for eBay?

What is it with so many human beings where -- even in a clearly competitive environment -- we assume difficult things are dead simple and easy? History is rife with incumbents that failed on their own or were defeated by upstarts, you have to really go out of your way to pretend those don't exist or convince yourself that they were all full of the unusually stupid, and yet some people make it work.


> History is rife with incumbents that failed on their own or were defeated by upstarts (...)

Yes, this may happen if the upstarts manage to grab the sales channel (portal). But this is not likely to happen with Amazon.


> But this is not likely to happen with Amazon.

Agreed. But "unlikely to happen to [specific company]" is a wildly different assertion than "Isn't it obvious that once you have a big selling platform, you can make it grow until you hit a competitor that is bigger than you?"

The implication of the latter statement is that once you're ahead, you're destined to stay ahead unless you hit upon a competitor that's already bigger. Obviously, that hasn't been true in the real world.


You could read it in a probabilistic sense. The bigger you are, the less likely that some other company will swoop you away. But it can happen, yes.


Marketplace Platform Neutrality?




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