The Everything War

I was surprised by the writing in this - where was the editor? Starting and ending a paragraph by saying that a relationship “was symbiotic”. Yeah, I got it the first time. This happened a couple more times and - given that I read Brad Stone's The Everything Store - I decided to DNF.

Enjoyable deep dive into the history and sus actions of Amazon. At times it felt repetitive, but it was still an informative and shocking read.

Journalist Dana Mattioli provides an overview of 30 years of rule breaking, tax evasion, and ethical malfeasance by the company that claims to be “relentlessly customer-focused.” I knew that Amazon was Evil but this book helped me to understand the breadth and depth of its vileness. It's so depraved that stories about warehouse employees who pee in a bottle in an attempt to meet the company's unreasonable productivity metrics might not even make a list of the Top 5 Worst Things About Amazon.

As a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, Mattioli herself helped uncover one of Amazon's darkest secrets: its history of offering partnerships to innovative businesses, learning enough about their products to reverse engineer them, stealing allegedly confidential consumer data, and then mysteriously revealing their own identical products at a lower price. That's how they got Alexa, folks!

I suspect that few people will give up their fast, easy package delivery of toilet paper and facial cream after reading this book (myself included). Amazon is already integrated into every facet of our lives. (The fact that they own Goodreads is its own strange irony.) If it's a war, they've already won.