On Amazon

Yesterday I went to sign up for Audible, the audio book site.  I have never been a huge fan of audio books in the past, but I can’t keep up with all of the books I want to read right now so I am trying them again for the first time.

Audible is of course owned by Amazon, and when you sign up you create your account with Amazon credentials.  I started to think about how much stuff I now buy from Amazon, and it’s really amazing.

In the past year, as a household we have bought books (paper, Kindle and audio formats), music, clothing, toys, and lots of other stuff.  We are Amazon Prime customers, which has to be one of the best deals going anywhere.  Free 2nd day shipping on any item.  I also use Amazon for web hosting, file storage, and database services for my company.

Today I was listening (again) to the Random Show with Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss.  This is a great podcast if you don’t listen.  They were talking about how they buy regular every day household items from Amazon like paper towels and the like because it’s cheaper for them to buy it and have it shipped via Amazon Prime free to their house than to go to the store.  I had never really thought about doing this, but it makes perfect sense.  To top it off, Amazon is now trialing same-day delivery in Seattle.   As the Random Show guys said, it’s like Amazon is making the WebVan vision come true.  

There may be more flashy companies, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a company with more reach into the pockets of consumers and businesses than Amazon.