This guy’s predictions proved hapless more than 10 years ago, but it certainly seems he was right and Walmart was wrong. Or maybe they tried to buy Amazon and Bezos said no dice. Anyway, it’s probably a little late now.
You cannot look at Amazon today and think it would be anything close to what it is (even just the retail side) if Walmart had bought it. The Walmart management, like all old-school, b&m, long public corporations would have demanded instant profitability, or at least significant efforts in that direction. Bezos, famously, didn’t care. Walmart would have. Worse, the acquisition would have been dilutive, ramping up pressure even more.
Without Amazon e-commerce might have developed quite differently. While Amazon was not the only “new business” to eschew profits, they provided the model for it, got the VC’s enamored with the idea, allowed the entire internet bubble to expand and expand. (Not singlehanded, of course, but they were one of the brightest lights of the “new model”.)
I daresay the PtB at Walmart would have looked askance at the crazy idea to build triple the server power that was likely to be needed, or to get into the hardware business itself (Wally makes nothing, although it is happy to slap a house brand on somebody else’s factory-product.) The one big foray Walmart took was in distribution, buying McLane logistics to learn how to do it better for the benefit of their distribution centers and stores. And they have no divested that business, I believe.
Procter & Gamble didn’t invent Starbucks, CBS didn’t invent cable or the internet, heck, Walmart didn’t invent the Dollar Store or e-commerce or anything else that’s giving them fits. Corporations don’t gamble wildly, they place incremental bets in the direction they’re already going.
(And, it’s a bit navel gazing to talk about Amazon as though it was a ‘sure thing.’ It could just have easily flamed out, as thousands of other ecommerce companies did. We’re talking serious survivor bias here, no matter how smart it looks in the rear view mirror.)
