In 2015, when Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar bookstore, there was a lot of speculation about what the company was really up to. Were the stores designed to sign up new Prime subscribers? Were they hubs for the company's expanding same-day delivery operation? Could they be stations for the company's budding drone fleet? Or perhaps these stores were just what they appeared to be: Amazon's first step to replace the bookstores it had driven out of business.
By the end of 2017, Amazon will have seven bookstores, making it the fifth-largest chain bookstore in the country—itself an alarming sign of what happens when the company infiltrates a supply chain. But with its $13.4 billion purchase of the high-end grocery chain Whole Foods, all of that speculation seems quaint. Shortly after it opened its first bookstore, Vox's Matthew Yglesias wrote, “Amazon is opening a bookstore for two big reasons: 1. It can. 2. It is driven by a relentless desire to conquer literally everything in its path, and brick-and-mortar retail is a thing.” The purchase of Whole Foods is a sign that CEO Jeff Bezos's vision of the Everything Store is frighteningly literal: Amazon's goal is a takeover of retail itself, both physical and digital.
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