
I predict Amazon will acquire Lyft in the next 18 months - stephencoyner
https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/9su0zw/i_predict_amazon_will_acquire_lyft_in_the_next_18/
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touristtam
> Additionally, with a Lyft acquisition, Amazon would acquire yet another
> interesting asset, Detroja notes: Lyft's self-driving technology, which
> highlights an area that Amazon has expressed growing interest in over the
> past year.

This is the bit of the article that makes the most sense. Amazon is already a
large player in several different technology market, but hasn't got publicly
visible investment into self driving vehicle, that would help with their
current trend of automating warehouse/distribution center. I think the author
is a bit mislead with the whole gig economy.

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Budabellly
OG post:
[https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6462686...](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6462686670281150464/)

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jeromebaek
Interesting idea, but there's several problems.

\- Uber is one of AWS's most important customers. If Amazon does a move that
directly competes with Uber, to the point where Uber loses significant market
share, enterprise customers will certainly lose trust in AWS. This is already
an issue for AWS - Satya just gloated about it during the earnings call - but
such a high-profile case as Uber vs. Lyft will only drive this point home
further, allowing Azure to accelerate (which is already growing faster than
AWS).

\- Amazon makes no money, except through AWS. Purchasing Lyft is a significant
investment over a a long time, and the money has to come from somewhere. If
AWS lags during this critical juncture, this could cripple Amazon hugely.

\- And Amazon has no giant cash pile sitting around like Apple. It cannot
afford to cannibalize customer trust in AWS when it is imperative to their
survival. See: their stock dropping, partly because their growth slowed
slightly, and partly because it seems Azure's growth is faster.

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dm8
> \- Amazon makes no money, except through AWS. Purchasing Lyft is a
> significant investment over a a long time, and the money has to come from
> somewhere. If AWS lags during this critical juncture, this could cripple
> Amazon hugely.

Did you forget Prime? Then there is Amazon Media Group, A9 etc.

In fact with PrimeNow and AmazonFresh, AMZN gets the readymade footprint of
last mile delivery network. Not to mention same network can be utilized for
last mile delivery of urgent/priory shipments via Prime/AMZN.

> \- And Amazon has no giant cash pile sitting around like Apple. It cannot
> afford to cannibalize customer trust in AWS when it is imperative to their
> survival. See: their stock dropping, partly because their growth slowed
> slightly, and partly because it seems Azure's growth is faster.

Eh, it's just one customer that gets lost due to this (albeit big one). And I
doubt Uber is sticking around AWS because of AWS brand, in fact most likely
they are sticking around due to combination of tech debt and cheaper deal that
they are getting. Why can't they move to GCP (ala Spotify) or Azure if they
get better deal there?

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jeromebaek
The point isn't losing merely Uber; the point is losing trust. Granted this is
a competitor talking, here is Satya a few days ago: "No customer wants to be
dependent on a provider that sells them technology on one end and competes
with them on the other." Uber and Lyft is one of the great tech rival stories
of our time. If Amazon comes in and crushes Uber, will any startup trying to
make it big want to use AWS?

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dm8
I co-founded a startup, and lot of my friends work at or run startups. At the
end of the day everyone realizes, AWS/GCP/Azure etc. are all infrastructure
players. It is given that all big 3 cloud providers will be competing against
you in one way or other. And infrastructure becomes a cost center once you
start growing. So doesn't matter whether you are competing against them or
not. Even Apple uses GCP. At certain scale, the costs questions starts popping
up a lot.

>> If Amazon comes in and crushes Uber, will any startup trying to make it big
want to use AWS?

Heck yeah! And startups are not the bread and butter of AWS. They are trying
to go upstream with enterprise and government contracts that are multi million
$$.

