Amazon eats the real world
Well, Whole Foods at least. You hear about software eating the world all the time, but Amazon is quite literally expanding into the real world quickly with its $13.7 billion (!) acquisition of the supermarket chain, Whole Foods.
It sounds absurd maybe when you first hear it, but over time it makes a lot of sense: Amazon's swallowed the online "everything" marketplace whole, but it needs a lot more to expand into taking over the real world where there's even more opportunity.
It's easy to see this laid out in how the company's acted over the last few months. It earlier announced pilot grocery stores with no attendants, which are fully automated, is pushing Alexa heavily as a tool for ordering whatever you need in your home, and even has a handy little wand for automatically re-ordering stuff you've run out of. The whole picture is there, and it's coming together slowly.
Longer term, it's an even smarter play: the company gets 465 distribution points around the world, and millions of customers it can tap into to sell its other services to. It's easy to imagine big discounts on food if you happen to use Amazon Alexa, Amazon Video and are a Prime subscriber.
There's a reason other companies, like Facebook, are expanding into other verticals such as AI, virtual reality and even internet programs for Africa – they're looking to spread their tentacles and it turns out the real world is a great place to do it.
