5 Internet Myths From Jeff Bezos
from the correcting-the-record dept
Jeff Bezos has come up with a list of five internet myths that helped overhype e-commerce, and which he thinks still persist today. (1) The internet is a gold rush. He points out that the internet doesn’t “run out” like gold did. (2) Wall Street reflects business operations. This one should be obvious to most people. But, he apparently has a nice graph overlaying their growth in customers against their stock price and showing how the two don’t match up at all. This one is a bit amusing, of course, because for many years, people said that Amazon spent more time selling their stock than their products. (3) E-commerce will kill traditional retail. I’m not sure how many people still believe this one anyway, but I’m surprised that he predicts that e-commerce will end up being only 10% of all retail operations. He might just be saying this to calm down the brick-and-mortar retailers he’s threatening. (4) The core skills between selling online and offline are the same. This is pretty obvious from the number of retailers that haven’t been able to successfully translate their offline retail operations into online success stories (and also the number of those companies that have decided to outsource the online part to Amazon. (5) Fulfillment is e-commerce’s biggest capital cost. He says it’s technology, and he would – because Amazon spends a ton each year improving their technology, but have become quite efficient at fulfillment. Clearly, all of these are designed specifically with Amazon in mind and to further their position, but it doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
