jeff bezos's e-commerce juggernaut is a
ravenous monster
scooping up conventional businesses and
bricks and mortar retailers by the dozen
into its insatiable more
but did you know one of its subsidiaries
essentially makes the internet work
or that another wants to take over your
health care one bit of amazon wants to
deliver booze to your house party
while another is eager to mend your
toilet join us now as we flush out the
facts and investigate exactly how big is
amazon
amazon's raw data is worth marveling
over in itself
last year the company reported revenues
of over 386 billion dollars
it's valued overall at 1.4 trillion
dollars
bigger than the next nine biggest us
retailers combined
roughly eleven thousand dollars worth of
goods are traded every single second on
its platform
and last year the firm delivered three
and a half billion packages
one for every two human beings on earth
it's the world's second largest private
employer behind only walmart but of
course that doesn't count some five
million sellers who sell goods via the
platform
a quarter of a million of whom each made
one hundred thousand dollars in sales
during 2019.
amazon prime the speedy premium delivery
club now has almost 150 million
subscribers
among them a sizable majority of all
american shoppers
like an iceberg however much of amazon's
grandeur is invisible
amazon web services or aws provides
cheap
reliable server infrastructure on behalf
of major organizations from netflix to
disney
bmw to ge tinder to the cia
being the world's it geek might sound
like a pretty humdrum
side hustle for a fast-moving business
like amazon but these days
aws is in fact the most lucrative
division of the business
raking in a whopping 60 of all amazon
profits or 50 billion dollars a year
aws isn't just helping you watch shit's
creek in hd
its servers provided the essential
computational horsepower which helped
pharmaceutical giant moderna
develop its covid19 vaccine in lightning
quick time
fascinating as aws is no discussion of
amazon's might would be complete without
goggling at its irl footprint
not least aws's awe-inspiring network of
trans-oceanic cables
snaking under the atlantic pacific and
indian oceans
and the mediterranean red sea and south
china sea
on top of all that amazon also maintains
175 gigantic fulfillment centers all
around the world
with many more planned these help run
its core business
varying drunk impulse buys to your home
in a matter of days or in some cities
hours more on that in a moment less well
known is the fact amazon is moving full
steam ahead into the very bricks and
mortar retail space
it's done more than anybody to destroy
take
amazon go a network of roughly a dozen
convenience stores dotted around seattle
chicago san francisco new york and
london
the gimmick here is there's no cashier
scan your phone on the way in
as cameras and weight sensitive shelves
suss out what you bought
and seamlessly invoice your amazon
account a subtle variation on this
is amazon fresh the cashier-less grocery
chain competing with small metro
supermarkets
offering amazon's own food products
branded solemo for amazon's own branded
coffee
and lifelong complete for pet food
there's already three of these in london
and 10 situated across california and
illinois
delivery has always been central to
amazon's runaway success
if anybody knows how to get stuff from a
to b it's amazon
you'll have seen their vans and trucks
zooming around wherever you happen to
live
but did you know its drivers typically
use an app called flex
which divvies out precious shifts to
hungry gig economy workers
and supports a thriving secondary market
in plug-in app bots that help drivers
secure the best slots by constantly
refreshing the landing page
small wonder when the job pays anywhere
between eighteen dollars and twenty five
dollars an hour
when amazon does use legacy state postal
services
it frequently does it's in a powerful
bargaining position
so much so that usps broke with its
long-standing tradition
and started delivering on sunday just to
help amazon meet demand
but that's small fry earlier this year
amazon snapped up a great deal on 11
boeing 767s
from struggling u.s carriers delta and
westjet
bringing their airborne delivery fleet
up to 66 aircraft
the plan is to have 86 planes by the end
of the year
and they've made no secret of their
plans to take on big carriers like ups
and fedex at their own game unbelievably
amazon air is later this year opening a
dedicated airline hub
essentially a private freight airport in
kentucky this follows its already
significant air hub presence in leipzig
germany
amazon is also making waves in the
notoriously hard to crack sea container
market
in early 2016 the company was granted a
license from the us federal maritime
commission
to operate as a non-vessel operating
common carrier for cargo shipments
between china and the united states
this is all part of bezos's dream of
vertical integration across
all aspects of sales and transportation
and it gives amazon a profound advantage
over rivals
through another required startup zoox
amazon will soon be ferrying humans
around too
via a fleet of self-driving taxis so
amazon is on the seabed criss-crossing
oceans
soaring through the skies everywhere on
land and potentially up in space
if it gets its kuiper satellite array a
rival to elon musk's starlink off the
ground
there's a good chance you've watched its
streaming service prime video
which not only carries a dizzying array
of legacy content
but makes its own very good content
sound of metal just won two oscars
they're currently working on an
inevitably awesome televised take on
lord of the rings
plus cutting-edge comedy like fleeback
amazon's music streaming service is
reckon superior to spotify by many
audiophiles
if you're a gamer you've probably used
streaming service twitch
snapped up by amazon for million in
2017.
it made 300 million dollars in ad
revenue in 2019 alone by the way
and prime gaming which offers games for
sale plus free loot for popular titles
like league of legends and grand theft
auto
but amazon's presence in the home starts
way before that
at your front door if the company gets
its way back in 2018
the company bought ring which isn't as
you might reasonably assume
smart wearable tech for your finger
instead it's a smart doorbell that
allows you to remotely check who's
calling and even grant access on your
smartphone
amazon ring isn't just for forgetful
housemates who've lost their key
the firm is expanding its amazon home
services division which deploys an army
of mobile house cleaners
and has lately started employing
technicians who'll come over and do
everything from assembling your new bed
to installing a cat flap to unblocking
that stubborn toilet
and thanks to amazon ring you needn't
even be home when they're at it
and that's not the only way amazon's
been cleaning up alexa the company's
nion omniscient ai assistant
is quietly listening in and offering
helpful advice from over 50 million
amazon echo devices
inspired by the friendly humble and
helpful computer from star trek
it's already woven into the fabric of
daily life for millions of daily users
amazon's head scientist in charge of the
alexa project rohit prasad
is working to make alexa even smarter
capable of not only following
instructions via hundreds of thousands
of apps
also known as skills but actively
anticipating what you'll need later
before even you do
that could be as prosaic as updating
your rubra order to meet a delayed
flight
or as nifty as remembering you need
vanilla essence to make your grands
birthday cake this weekend
and subtly steering you toward the
correct aisle in whole foods via your
echo earbuds
this is a good time for a quick look at
the vast array of hardware amazon
produces in-house
the company's consumer electronics
workshop in sunnyvale california
is called lab126 a clever nod to
amazon's logo where
a is one and zed is 26. the kindle was
lab 126 his first hit product
rolling out of the labs back in 2007.
later models they update regularly
offer smart features like color
temperature analysis and the ability to
sync what page you're currently on
across multiple devices
there's also the kindle fire a cheaper
rival to the ipad
the amazon fire tv or fire tv stick
amazon echo
which by the way incorporates seven
microphones to earwig on your innermost
wants and needs
has lots of different versions there's
the dot the buds
and the spot there's also the fancy
bells and whistles echo studio edition
or the echo show which incorporates a
screen and the echo auto in your car
bet you've never heard of echo frames
amazon's effort to pick up where google
glass left off
or the echo ring which this time
actually is a piece of smart wearable
tech for your finger
the less said about lab 126's failed
fire phone
the better perhaps until now amazon has
bought processing chips from
intel but following the lead of its aws
division will soon start using graviton
chipsets which is developed since
acquiring israeli firm annapurna
these graviton chips currently in their
second generation with a third on the
way
use the power efficient arm architecture
in much the same way as the new
generation of apple computers
think that's crazy in acquiring pillpack
for 753 million dollars in 2018
amazon won licenses to operate
pharmacies across much of the united
states
utilizing its vast delivery network and
commercial muscle
amazon is now able to get drugs to
customers cheaper and faster than rivals
it even interfaces neatly with the us
healthcare system
through a slick app that simply asks for
a user's social security number
amazon pharmacy vice president tj parker
said it was hoping to transform an
industry that can be
inconvenient and confusing the company's
nascent amazon care division seeks to
bring a lot of disparate services from
general practitioners to top specialists
under one umbrella accessible through a
friendly interface
of course critics have suggested handing
over all your healthcare info to a tech
giant
isn't necessarily the smartest move oh
and by the way
amazon is also very much in the business
of being a critic
owning both imdb and goodreads we could
go on
ever heard of amazon pay the rival to
paypal but you get the idea
how big is amazon amazon to use the
technical parlance
is bloody enormous what do you think is
it too big
let us know in the comments and don't
forget to hit subscribe for more
mad megalomaniacal tech content