Are you kidding? Amazon's profits are nothing. 239m for their first profitable quarter in years. On 17 billion in sales. Amazon gives two shits about customers - they're following the Google business model, whereby you drive all the profit out of an industry so that nobody will compete with you when you're the only firm left. Apple gets clobbered when they declare quarterly profits of only 13 billion dollars, but if you add up all the profit Amazon has ever made you don't even make it to $5b.
Yeah, no. Amazon follows the Blitzkrieg model - raid and pillage then roll that money back into the war effort. Expansion uber alles. Works great until there are no more lands to conquer. I'd be curious as to what their actual cost on Amazon Prime is - they started it at $79 in 2006. Simply adjusting for inflation it should be $95 now and shipping costs have been up. Amazon's P/E ratio is over $600-1. Walmart's is 15. Amazon operates at negative cash flow. Apple has one tenth of ALL THE CASH. I look at the way Amazon operates and I think Enron or Worldcom. I'm not a smart enough or savvy enough investigator to make my case, but I get nervous nonetheless.