It's Actually Pretty Much Impossible To Quit Amazon

[AAM2012]

Kind of scary how much control they have.

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It's Actually Pretty Much Impossible To Quit Amazon


You may want to quit shopping at Amazon these days, considering how the whole blow-up with Hachette is going.

Amazon has come under fire for its handling of e-book negotiations with Hachette, the fourth-largest U.S. book publisher. Amazon reportedly wants to pay less to Hachette, but the publisher won't budge. While negotiations stall, Amazon has made it extremely difficult for its customers to buy some Hachette books, outraging some authors and readers. Amazon also has been criticized for poor pay and working conditions for warehouse workers and delivery drivers.

But breaking free of the Amazon empire is near impossible -- because of a part of Amazon's business you may never have even heard of.

Sure, you can visit a local bookstore for your books, order your Chromecast from Google or buy toys from the local toy store (if there is one).

But Amazon is much more than just "The Everything Store." It's also the largest provider of cloud services in the world. Its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, or AWS, touches nearly every corner of the Web.

Have a smartphone? Use apps on that smartphone? What about a Netflix account? Do you visit Reddit? Use Yelp? Shop at Etsy? Read The New York Times?

If you answered yes to any of those, then you're using Amazon. All of these companies use, or have used, AWS.

[pixy0stix]

Or have used. WTF kind of shoddy reporting is that? If they're not currently using it then you won't be using amazon.

[PinkSquirrel]

I view their cloud storage arm as pretty different from their general website. I don't really care if companies I use take advantage of their server farms. The people working on servers are going to be a few pay grades above warehouse workers, so that isn't as big an issue and their prices and services are good. Basically, they haven't pulled any major shadiness yet, so it's low priority for me. I haven't shopped at Amazon in 6 months and am still just as pleased with that decision.

[lostrn]

Shoot, Amazon does some cloud managing for the CIA even.