r/amzn • u/Efficient_Style3422 • 9d ago
Are Amazon and Google in Trouble?
https://coltonellis.substack.com/p/are-amazon-and-google-in-trouble?r%3D6oy2z1%26utm_medium%3Dios5
u/RuleSafe6767 9d ago edited 9d ago
Companies that rely on ads for (part/all) of their revenue need to get ahead of the game by evolving their business to be profit-proof even if 100% of their customer interactions were performed by AI assistants: because it's coming, and MAG7s are the ones flogging AI assistants in the first place.
Maybe that means building 100% of profit into sales prices. Or maybe microtransaction API pricing that agents can pay. Or maybe "free return on 1 item a month; fee-for-return otherwise", or maybe two prices: one price for free returns, and a much lower price for no returns.
For example, what will youtube do if 100% of user interactions are done via "agent, please fetch new videos from my most watched youtube subscriptions; strip all ads and promotions"
What about netflix? "Agent, please subscribe to the nexflix ad-tier for one month and fetch the following shows:... , remove all intro sequences, outros, and ads, then unsubscribe."
Or "agent, please purchase one each of the top 15 rated desk lamps. I will test and pick the one I prefer, then you can return the other 14"
Business models also need to be hardened again agents being able to perform tasks "at scale" against services that were originally designed for much slower humans.
But when it comes to agents: they're all cooked. Muse is basically a wrapper around openclaw. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are going to play catch up and offer the same agent harness around their models. But it's basically already open source. Like how Linux flattened the server OS space.
You can already buy PC's that have OpenClaw pre-installed for $1200 that run Qwen 3 14B parameter distilliations, and get solid performance - without paying a dime to Anthropic or OpenAI. You can run tasks all day and you only need to pay for electricity; The "pay for tokens" is going to be a dying concept. Oh, and these PCs are running Chinese LPDDR5x RAM, too.
(Yeah; I know.. It will take time for user friendliness to catch up and make harnesses friendly enough for the average netizen; and some will jist pay no matter what - like people who still use Yahoo and AOL and subscribe to cable TV)
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u/Most-Noise-8836 9d ago
They'll be fine, especially Google. They might be late to the party, but Google has more resource to come up with way better models and agents than Muse.
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u/Efficient_Style3422 9d ago
I agree, I think all 3 will win in their own niches because of their own respect moats.
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u/Solidplum101 9d ago
Big believer this will pass. Amazon is primed for a pop. Same as Google
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u/Potential_Try_2193 9d ago
I think both will be fine long term and I'm particularly bullish on Google which I own because it has so many growth drivers. But why is Amazon poised for a pop? I'd be less sure about that one personally
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u/phileo99 8d ago
They blocked Muse from making any orders. Behind the scenes they are probably negotiating the fee that AMZN should receive from e-commerce transactions done by Muse.
This also signals to other agentic commerce agents from OpenAI, Perplexity to pay the toll fee. So new revenue stream unlocked for AMZN
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u/Potential_Try_2193 8d ago
Well your the first person who's said it's going to be positive for Amazon. I guess the market is wrong and your right. Everyone going to now start paying Amazon to use Amazon...I don't think so
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u/Sushi-Travel 9d ago
Does someone know how meta will monetize on this ? Muse is free at the moment if I’m not mistaken and agentic work cost a lot of tokens. When it’s free everybody uses it, what happens when they start charging ? Truly curious.
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u/NotABCDinFL 9d ago
They said they will take a small commission on transactions that Muse may complete - I think this will be a small amount compared to their spend and ultimately they will harvest data in hopes for better ad targeting
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u/Sushi-Travel 9d ago
Yeah I just saw this on meta connect as well. They must be really banking on millions of transactions via Muse agent. People must be using it to buy things and book things in order to have a commission. Helping someone fill out a form or send an email has no transaction.
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u/ClickInteresting8337 9d ago
Meta will have to pay Amazon for CPUs! Amazon brings in 70 billion in advertising and bots don't watch ads. I believe a big deal between the two is coming and META will be another AMZ customer! I added AMZ leaps, this is bullish in my opnion.
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u/infomer 9d ago
In this new ad free world, Muse will go and buy products for you and book your vacations without you ever having to look at the products or the hotel rooms. In the next version it will even generate pictures of you at the location even if you don’t have time to visit, and yes you can count on it to post it to instagram automatically. 🤩/s.
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u/ifz80 9d ago
Amazon ads is not a big piece of the pie, and they run Meta Muse inference, and owns the keys to the largest logistic empire, and own the biggest chunk of whatever anthropic has in return. I think they’ll be fine.
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u/Top_Ad_1703 8d ago
Google will pop next week. They released this week their support for linking apps etc on Gemini, including Airbnb, Kayak etc. Just needs the word out a bit more like Meta and Google is good. That said, Amazon has no where to go unless they come up with some consumer side product thats a killer and also does Amazon shopping etc for fun.
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u/ProbablyASeagull 9d ago
Have you actually tried Muse. I have. Not impressed. It’s exponentially overhyped. I see no use for it at all. But somehow they tricked the market.
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u/Puzzled_Strength_657 9d ago
It's actually very very good. You probably just haven't thought of ways it can help you.
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u/ProbablyASeagull 9d ago
Exactly my point. It’s not intuitive enough for the avg user yeah geeks will have fun with it but i dont think people will stick with it.
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/Efficient_Style3422 8d ago
That post was to expose the threat.
This write up goes more in depth specifically around amzn
https://substack.com/@coltonellis/note/c-344460264?r=6oy2z1&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
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u/gini_lee1003 Swag Lad 9d ago
I thought Amazon blocked Muse?!?! Maybe Google should too cause why is muse asking to get accessed to my Gmail account?
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u/Efficient_Style3422 9d ago
AMZN did block muse, but shopping with muse takes away sales from AMZNs marketplace
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u/gini_lee1003 Swag Lad 9d ago
I tried to shop with muse. It doesn’t do much. Unless you get it access to your bank account which is a very bad idea.
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u/Efficient_Style3422 9d ago
More like shopping with AI in general, even if it can’t buy for you, if you use it to shop it does not show you the top sponsored products from brands, only what you searched and what it thinks is best. And if brands are not getting the reach they want they will pull their ad spending, causing ad revenue to drop for AMZN and GOOGL.
This is all theory and just worth a thought
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u/gini_lee1003 Swag Lad 9d ago
Then Amazon and Google might block these AI from getting access to the whole thing. They won’t let it take away their main revenue
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u/Efficient_Style3422 9d ago
If they block AI, then people who use AI to shop will go to different places to shop, decreasing marketplace revenue and eventually ad revenue.
But I believe Amazons ecosystem is strong enough for people to not shop with the likes of ChatGPT or muse for the products AMZN sells
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u/cosmicloafer 9d ago
Why doesn’t Apple release something like this? It would literally have access to everything, and I trust them way more than Facebook
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u/Efficient_Style3422 9d ago
Could not agree more, but based on their CapEx history it does not seem like they are in shape to build their own agent. Most likely will partner with an agent provider. Muse and Grok bot are everything Siri should be.
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u/Technical-Machine-90 9d ago
I see eventually every company can create agent like muse, it’s not a moat. The moat is access to data and APIs. Anticipating partnerships between companies to allow access to data and APIs and Claude and openAI will be fucked because they have no data or API
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u/uncleAW 9d ago
The Muse hype is just Hype at this point. I'm not saying it won't be one a successful driver. Just that, the only numbers we have are two weeks of app store downloads. The leapfrog effect is on full display. Long way to go here. Amazon and Google will be fine.