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Because they can switch on a 30% profit margin at a moments notice once the competition is sufficiently demolished



Not quite. Firstly, retail is not a huge loss maker like people make it seem. Amazon has shown in the past that it can make a 6.6% margin on retail (which is fairly huge). Even right now North American retail makes about as big a profit as AWS, losses are coming from international retail.

So in the end you can imagine Amazon being something like 6-7% margin on retail (that's not assuming any technological paradigm shifts like fully automated warehouses, amazon owned banking and payments, fully amazon owned logistics) and 25% margins on AWS.

On top of that you have a fast growing ads business that is destined to rival Google and Facebook (if not displace them) with fat margins, and a big chunk of the smarthome/IoT market via Alexa and AWS.


Doubt you will see Amazon compete in ads at a competitive level with Google or even fb.

Big problem is media buyers knowledge of their platform and willing to.learn it as well as integration with the ad ecosystem.


doesnt their history indicate that they can't have so large margins in online sales?


With vibrant competition, no




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