Amazon is a global superstore, like Walmart. It’s also a hardware
manufacturer, like Apple, and a utility, like Con Edison, and a
video distributor, like Netflix, and a book publisher, like Random
House, and a production studio, like Paramount, and a literary
magazine, like The Paris Review, and a grocery deliverer,
like FreshDirect, and someday it might be a package service, like
U.P.S. Its founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, also owns a
major newspaper, the Washington Post. All these streams
and tributaries make Amazon something radically new in the history
of American business. Sam Walton wanted merely to be the world’s
biggest retailer. After Apple launched the iPod, Steve Jobs didn’t
sign up pop stars for recording contracts. A.T. & T. doesn’t
build transmission towers and rent them to smaller phone
companies, the way Amazon Web Services provides server
infrastructure for startups (not to mention the C.I.A.). Amazon’s
identity and goals are never clear and always fluid, which makes
the company destabilizing and intimidating.
[...]
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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/17/140217fa_fact_packer?currentPage=all