I took some liberties with one of Robert Scoble's pictures
It's ironic that one of the stated rationales for Amazon purchasing Zappos was for their corporate culture. Such a purchase will ultimately result in the end of Zappos' independent identity and with it any resemblance to the culture it once had. The real reason I suspect Amazon purchased Zappos is to cheaply remove a future competitor. Yeah, I just said $900,000,000 was cheap. To own internet sales in the US a little longer, it's probably worth a lot more to Amazon.
I have little doubt that Zappos would have continued to grow in strength and become a real force within the internet sales business. They had something unique and wonderful going on, and unfortunately I can't imagine how that can survive when your only shareholder is the 800lb gorilla of internet sales, Amazon. I'd really like to be proven wrong on this hypothesis.
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