Companies Should Be as Mad About Amazon’s Ban as Shoppers

Amazon, the largest e-commerce site on the internet, has recently come under fire by Apple and Google due to Amazon’s decision to stop carrying the Apple TV and the Google Chromecast. Amazon’s reasoning is that they have a product that is competing in the same market, the Amazon Fire TV. Amazon released a statement explaining their decision: the two competitors were unable to stream Amazon Prime movies and shows. Amazon didn't want to sell items to consumers that would have the potential to cause confusion. In light of this, many consumers believe that Amazon’s decision is taking away customers’ choice when buying a TV gadget.

Numerous companies are worried about the decision, and rightfully so, because Amazon is the world's largest cloud computing company. This means that other companies use Amazon’s servers to host their own websites for a fee. Companies are concerned that Amazon will see them as competitors too, unexpectedly shut down their websites, and stop selling their products. Amazon continues to sell devices such as Roku, Xbox, and PlayStation. The reasoning for this is because it has the ability to stream Amazon’s beloved video service. I believe Amazon’s decision to do this could lead to many issues in the industry, if they are willing to do this in one product category, they will be willing to do it in another. This could have an effect on sales of many competing products that Amazon sells as they are the largest retailer around. Consequently, it could also lead to many people choosing to go somewhere else rather than buying their products from Amazon. I wouldn’t be so haughty if I were Amazon, considering only ⅕ of it’s customers use Prime.

The choice could also upset other companies that use Amazon to sell their goods because they could be wary of whether or not they can even trust Amazon. Amazon's cloud computing companies should also be wary, for example, parts of Netflix and Dropbox use Amazon's servers to operate correctly and Amazon again could decide to stop allowing this due to competition. Amazon's clueless decisions to stop selling certain products on their site could lead to many problems for the company down the road, including a slimmed customer base and widespread distrust. This could lead to problems down the road with Customers of amazon becoming distrustful of the company especially the ones that use amazon as a web hosting service rather then just as marketplace to buy goods. Amazon made the wrong choice for all of its customers in making the decision to limit the products that it sells based on if they compete with Amazon in the market.

Works Cited

          Metz, Cade. "Companies Should Be as Mad About Amazon’s Ban as Shoppers." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2015.

         Soper, Spencer. "Amazon to Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices." Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2015.