Amazon take over

We’ve all used or at least heard about the popular e-company Amazon. Most of us got our textbooks for classes from Amazon, but have you ever sat down and thought about just how big Amazon is? Sure, there is Amazon Prime, Alexa, and Audible, but the list of Amazon’s affiliates doesn’t end there.

Last year alone, Amazon reported 72.4 billion dollars in revenues1. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, owns nine other companies along with 15 other investments3. Amazon, with all of its acquisitions, is present in almost all types of markets out there from food to toys.

Do you happen to remember a store called Toys ‘R’ Us? They were the largest toy store that peaked in the 1990s. Erin Blakemore, a journalist and contributor to History.com, said, “At the height of its power, Toys ‘R’ Us sold 18,000 different toys in 1,450 locations around the globe and controlled 25 percent of the world’s toy market.”6

Today however, you can’t go shopping at any Toys ‘R’ Us stores. The company declared bankruptcy on Sep. 18, 2017. The once great category killer, a retailer that specializes in and carries a deep product assortment within a given category with an extreme advantage, was forced to close their doors with the rise of mass merchants, such as, you guessed it, Amazon. 

In just 25 years, Amazon was able to grow large enough to not only put out one of the leading super stores but also to be able to compete with large companies like Walmart and Target today.  

What does that mean for you? Well if Amazon continues to grow and expand into other markets, there is a large possibility that a number of smaller companies could go out of business. As more businesses go bankrupt and layoff workers, there are fewer jobs and more competition for the jobs remaining. 

Of course, our government wouldn’t let Amazon get so large that they could take over the world, but we should still keep an eye on Amazon as we go into the future.

For more information, please visit venturebeat.com and marketwatch.com.