This Week in GAFAnomics #31
Amazon goes offline/ Google launches Trips / Uber’s asian problem / Amazon is the firm and the market
“This week in GAFAnomics” features top articles from FABERNOVEL’s internal Slack discussions on the Network Economy. Subscribe to our “Inside GAFAnomics” publication for your weekly dose of curated news about the Network Economy.
Amazon has planned to expand its sales strategy by increasing the number of pop-up stores within commercial malls in the US. However, the main goal of this effort appears to be driving more traffic to Amazon’s online store. And the most interesting may be the fact that it is not the retail team that leads the project but the devices team, which is in charge of Echo’s development. Meaning that the pop-up stores should rather look like showrooms dedicated to the display of Amazon’s latest products, and in particular the Echo, widely considered as its next big hit. — Curated by Patricia Silva
The new Google app pulls in a combination of data from Maps and crowdsourced contributions from other travelers, in order to offer a personalized travel guide. A wide range of functionalities like the offline mode (very useful when it comes to save data charges abroad) are available. Besides, Trips can also manage the reservations and visits directly from other Google services like Gmail. Eventually, “if you have privacy concerns about Google tracking your every step around the world, Trips is likely not the app for you. But if you’re comfortable with the trade-offs, I suspect you’ll find Trips to be a tremendously useful travel companion.” — Curated by Joachim Renaudin
Grab Taxi, Uber’s competitor in South East Asia just raised a new round of $750 million. After Uber’s exit from China, the competition is heating for the South-East Asian ride hailing market, where Grab is by far the market leader. Didi in China, Ola in India, Grab in Indonesia: Uber is facing a strong local competitor in most of its big markets. Why? Because Unlike Facebook or Google, Uber is intrinsically multi-local and and its global scale doesn’t provide strong network effects. — Curated by Joachim Renaudin
Amazon bills itself as “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” Yet its seems that Amazon’s algorithm is increasingly favoring its own products over other third party retailers, by offering “free shipping on eligible orders” (ie. Prime members). By doing so, Amazon is pushing its customer to its Prime program, which will offer them the best price…on the long run.
When you’re both the market and the firm, it can be tempting to favor your offer even if it’s not the best product to push to your customer. — Curated by Legrigeois Laurent
That’s all for this week, but follow us for more news about GAFAnomics next week! In the meantime, you can check our study about Uber’s viral growth model.
