If you live in Texas, you can avoid Whole Foods altogether with Central Market.

Retail Titans thumping chests -

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/21/wal-mart-is-reportedly-telling-its-tech-vendors-to-leave-amazons-cloud.html

Sure, if 10,000 companies have the budget to deploy numerous huge datacenters and build out dozens of reliable services, they could more or less copy AWS.

Today, half of all U.S. households are subscribed to the membership program Amazon Prime, half of all online shopping searches start directly on Amazon, and Amazon captures nearly one in every two dollars that Americans spend online. Amazon sells more books, toys, and by next year, apparel and consumer electronics than any retailer online or off, and is investing heavily in its grocery business.

https://ilsr.org/amazon-stranglehold/

We once imagined that the web would be a democratizing force in the economy, making it easier for anyone with a good idea to start a business, find an audience, and succeed. “The digital revolution was supposed to create an age of empowered micro-entrepreneurship, with power devolving to the masses,” observes Steven Strauss, a visiting professor at Princeton.7 It hasn’t turned out that way. Five years ago, Americans spent $170 billion shopping online, and Amazon accounted for one in four of those dollars.8

This is that happens if you do not read PV blog posts.

What customers pay for Prime is less than it costs Amazon, which loses an estimated $1 billion a year on the shipping perks alone. But the point of the fee has never been about money. As Vijay Ravindran, a former technical manager at Amazon, explained to Brad Stone: “It was never about [the fee]. It was really about changing people’s mentality so they wouldn’t shop anywhere else.” Signing up for Prime greatly reduces the chances that a person will shop around, in part because the more one orders from Amazon, the more value in free shipping one derives from the annual fee. Less than 1 percent of Prime members visit competing sites while shopping on Amazon, and Prime members spend almost three times as much with the company as non-Prime customers do.

https://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/ILSR_AmazonReport_final.pdf

Going further

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul. 12, 2017-- (NASDAQ:AMZN) – On a day with incredible deals reserved exclusively for Prime members, sales on July 11 surpassed Black Friday and Cyber Monday, making it the biggest day ever in Amazon history. With hundreds of thousands of deals, this year’s Prime Day was too big for 24 hours – so Prime members had 30 hours to shop. The Prime Day 2017 event grew by more than 60 percent compared to the same 30 hours last year, and sales growth by small businesses and entrepreneurs was even higher. More new members joined Prime on July 11 than on any single day in Amazon history. Tens of millions of Prime members made a purchase on Prime Day 2017, more than 50 percent higher than the prior year.

Prime members’ most popular purchase was the Echo Dot, which was not only the best-selling Amazon device this Prime Day, but also the best-selling product from any manufacturer in any category across Amazon globally. Prime Day 2017 was also the biggest sales event ever for Amazon devices in the U.S. and around the world, including record sales for Echo, Fire tablets and Kindle devices. The all new Element 55-inch 4K Ultra HD smart LED TV – Amazon Fire TV Edition was the best-selling TV deal in Amazon history – selling through record units in less than four hours. Top sellers from around the world, excluding Amazon devices, included:

Other, not pretty side of Amazon

The spy agency's CIO (chief information officer) John Edwards said that its watershed deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the "best decision we ever made". Edwards was appointed as the spy agency's CIO last year, during the US intelligence community's (IC) shift to adopting cloud computing.

Speaking at the AWS summit in Washington D.C., Edwards provided an unclassified peek at how America's 17 intelligence agencies that are a part of the nation's IC are using cloud computing. The CIO said that the spy agency's cloud was "pretty close" to being invincible.

“If we’re going to have the best military in the world, as we must have, 10, 20 years, 30 years from now, we need to strengthen our partnership with companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing and many others that I’ve met out here. I’m determined to do that. It’s part of the responsibility of the department, not only to fight today’s fight but to make sure that we’re superior for tomorrow’s. And the most important ingredient is our wonderful people, but secondly, it’s technology,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said following his visit to the Amazon Headquarters in Seattle.

The Defense Innovation Board is an organization set up in 2016 to bring the technological innovation and best practice of Silicon Valley to the U.S. Military. The board has dozen members including Jeff Bezos. Eric Schmidt is the chair.

The Defense Innovation Advisory Board voted to approve 11 recommendations that covered issues such as boosting cybersecurity for advanced weapons, and funding new research in artificial intelligence.

This guys are not your friends, they do not put Echo to please you. This guys will use your voice and your habits to destroy you if you start to do something bad for ruling class.

Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD) announced today the launch of Kenmore products on Amazon.com, as well as the integration of the full line of Kenmore Smart appliances with Amazon Alexa. This marks the broadest distribution of Kenmore, America's most trusted home appliance brand, outside of Sears branded stores and related online retail platforms. Kenmore Smart connected room air conditioners integrated with Alexa are now available on Amazon.com. The distribution on Amazon.com is planned to be expanded to the full line of Kenmore home appliances in all U.S. market segments, with Kenmore, Sears Home Services, and Innovel Solutions providing white-glove service for delivery, installation and extended product protection for a full range of home appliances.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sears-launches-kenmore-products-on-amazoncom-including-alexa-enabled-smart-appliances-300491359.html

Tens of thousands of Amazon sellers might have just sold a whole bunch of their items in one go...to the e-commerce titan itself. According to CNBC, the Fulfilled by Amazon team has emailed thousands of sellers in the US, offering to buy their goods at full retail price so it can have them in store in its warehouses. The Fulfilled by Amazon program already keeps and ships paying customers' items for them. This particular project was conjured up as a way to reach out to sellers that aren't part of a program -- Amazon is even foregoing additional fees

It is part of much worse program. As even very small visibility seller have on Amazon will be completely gone. And you must not mistake, as after retail price lure it'll be fast pressure to sell at big discount and finally abandoning intermediates one by one for all more or less popular offers.

Again, while retail is what they are known for, it is NOT how Amazon makes money:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/27/it-looks-like-amazon-would-be-losing-a-lot-of-money-if-not-for-aws/

http://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-intuit-juniper-go-all-in-on-amazon-cloud-2016-1

And the list of companies that use AWS doesn't even publicly include feature many who love to "analyze" what kind of data you are consuming (like US DoD, NSA, etc.).

In your day-to-day life you could use numerous services, apps, SAAS, etc. and think you are jumping all around the internet but in reality are truly ONLY interfacing with Amazon, either in the front or backend. And that is a LOT of data that they have about you, what you like, what you don't like, etc.

Retail/E-Commerce is how they bring you in but is essentially meaningless to their bottom line, now. Netflix does not have one physical data center that they use anymore. Think about that. The world's largest user of internet traffic (http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/netflix-250-million-hours-1202010393/) uses AWS exclusively. And they are only one company out of thousands...

The tables are turning.

One more opinion

Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt - many jobs being lost!

Donald J. Trump