The difference was that Amazon knew how to make a profit, but was reinvesting into infrastructure plays and bigger fish.
If they had to, they could have been a modestly profitable bookshop in 2002. AWS and monster logistics might not have developed to put them in the 13-digit club though.
Does any AI-centric play have that fundamental fallback? The services that seem to be most effective at direct monetization, the coding tools, are typically running at huge losses. If they raised costs to cover, precious few firms will pay basically the salary of a senior dev for an emulation of an enthusiastic junior dev with an affinity for footguns.
The less enterprise-focused products-- parasocial toys, image and video gen, will likely try to dip into consumer subs and advertising, but can that generate the cash volumes these platforms demand?
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 50 minutes ago
How much of that profit less decade was just them reinvesting in their company as opposed to burning money like you’re trapped on Everest and need every bit of heat you can get?
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 4 minutes ago
That’s the part they didn’t tell investors. Some call that the enshittification of the investment market. Lies everywhere.