> AI is a legit threat to Amazon because headless Amazon makes it more difficult for Amazon to sell ads

No, the threat is bigger than that. If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference.

You have to own the consumer experience. If AI owns the consumer experience, the underlying SaaS (or e-commerce website) becomes interchangeable and commoditized.

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gz5 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

>If AI automatically places orders on Amazon's site, tomorrow it could place the order on another company's site, and the user won't know the difference.

Agree that is a big-time longer-term threat but "user won't know the difference" means the user gets the order with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc...that won't be replicated overnight, at least not at scale (interesting to think what products could be done first...similar to Amazon starting with books).

Meanwhile ads made Amazon $19.8 billion last quarter alone, even while detracting from our user experience. Can't rip that business away overnight either, but it is less of a lift imo.

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carefree-bob an hour ago | parent [-]

"with parity in delivery time, product quality, returns experience, etc."

How would the user know that? Many sites, including Amazon, make their bones providing decent quality at a lower cost, and then once they build up their market they start reducing the features and raising the costs. Amazon tends to be more expensive nowadays and suffers from product quality issues. It is super easy to use and has a good return experience, but it used to be a leader in all four areas.

And the AI replacement will be incentivized to do the same thing. And so will the LLM provider, etc. All businesses do this - once they acquire a dominant position, they start screwing over the customer.

	▲	bix6 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Still can’t beat the delivery time though. Their logistics network is insane.

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fc417fc802 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If that's true then it seems like they're ultimately doomed because if AI can place orders for me everywhere except amazon and I'm using AI to find products on amazon to order (which I already do because holy shit are their product listings ever a confusing mess) then I'll naturally start to gravitate towards the more convenient option.

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ihsw an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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