Whole Foods – Needull in a haystack

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So, what is Amazon doing with Whole Foods.

But it would be a bigger mistake to analyze Thursday’s news in a vacuum, because this announcement is bigger than heirloom tomatoes and two-hour delivery windows. In the broader context of Amazon’s ambitions—to build an operating system for the home, to expand into pharmacies and health care, to become a hit-making television production studio—this is the logical next step in turning Prime into the ultimate “life bundle,” a single membership program to bind consumers to every possible commercial need. As Amazon extends into more product areas, it can own both the search platform and the product, so that when a dad says to the smart speaker on his counter, “Alexa, I need brown rice and pork,” the product that arrives is an Amazon-branded box containing Amazon–Whole Foods–branded rice and pork.

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Derek Thompson — The Atlantic

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Sharing this needull as anything Amazon does is going to have some impact in our lives. And this is the biggest acquisition by Amazon.

Of course, buying Whole Foods doesn’t help Amazon reach the rural areas where Walmart rules. “Amazon is stronger in bigger cities, and the map of Whole Foods locations shows it is closer to these cities,” says Goldberg. Still, you can see the Whole Foods deal being the first step in a larger plan. “If this strategy proves out for Amazon, you could well imagine it could be opening a bunch more stores or doing more acquisitions just to cover the US,” says Goldberg. “And you could imagine it might have similar plays that it’s evaluating in other markets.”

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Davey Alba — Wired

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