Amazon.Com Evolution Paper

Amazon.com is an E-commerce marketable giant that has made a break through as a front-runner in the world of on-line retailing. As a leader in the e-business world, Amazon.com sells just about any product that a consumer is looking for. Their real strength is in pricing. Amazon has mastered the art of finding the right price to sell a product. They have mastered "making money in low-margin, inventory-driven businesses" (Sherman, 2009, para 5).

Many people wonder whether or not Amazon is moving away from its core competency of being an online retailer. The question stems from the company's decision to being offering some of its extensive infrastructure to other companies in an effort to help them run their "technical and logistical parts of their businesses" (Rainer, 2009). It does not appear as though they are getting away from their core competency of being a leading online retailer, although that argument could be made. It appears as though Amazon has decided to be innovative and a leader where they got their start: the worldwide web. They are positioning themselves to compete for a larger share of a customer base that is going to the internet for products and services and who are leaning away from corporate giants, like Microsoft. Amazon has been investing heavily into developing a Platform-as-a-Service (Paas), along with its package of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) (Enterprise Web 2.0. 2008.). Their main competitor now is Google, with its own version of a PaaS and package of SaaS. Meanwhile, software giants such as Microsoft, are falling behind in what is becoming the future of computer operating platforms and the software used with them. Is this a different direction for Amazon? Yes but it does not mean they are still not a leader in the on-line retailing business. They have merely diversified their market share of different customer bases.

Microsoft has ruled the IT industry for years by delivering operating systems and office suites used by organizations and almost every home with a computer. Consumers, who utilize Microsoft are used to these perks and benefits offered. Microsoft that became a norm to stay with the same search engine. By 2004, Google became one of the biggest search engines on the worldwide web. According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon's "profits soared to 71% in January of 2010." In an effort to compete with Google, Amazon has developed a new search engine called A9.com. " Amazon.com Inc. is betting it can muscle into one of e-commerce's most profitable niches -- search engines called "A9" a commercial search engine and potentially put the company on a collision course with another Internet icon, Google." (Liedtke, Michael, 2003) Goggle has built creditability by providing customers with IT Platforms that provide customers with enormous space to run their databases. The biggest challenge that Amazon may encounter is getting customers to convert from Google to A9.com. People are used to some standards and may not see the benefit to making the switch.

Amazon is the world's largest online retailer with annual excess sales of $10 billion (CITATION). In recent years they have lost their competitive advantage as new competition powerhouses