Amazon Buys Online Pharmacy, Competitors Lose $11 Billion

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rgMekanic

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CNBC is reporting that Amazon has signed an agreement to purchase online pharmacy PillPack. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, competing pharmacies lost $11 billion in market value after news of the purchase broke. Rite Aid dropped 11.1%, Walgreens fell 9.9%, and CVS went down by 6.1%. Meanwhile, Amazon shares went up nearly 2.5%, adding more than $19.8 billion to their market value.

It's honestly getting scary how much power Amazon has. Thanks to @cageymary for the story.

"PillPack’s visionary team has a combination of deep pharmacy experience and a focus on technology," Jeff Wilke, Amazon CEO Worldwide Consumer, said in a statement. "PillPack is meaningfully improving its customers' lives, and we want to help them continue making it easy for people to save time, simplify their lives, and feel healthier. We’re excited to see what we can do together on behalf of customers over time."
 
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Neo...welcome to Amazon. The world of the real.
 
This is exactly how you know the other Amazon news story about how it's encouraging entrepreneurs to create an amazon specific delivery service is complete BS and isn't going to be profitable. If Amazon sees something anywhere near it's core business that it can start doing and making money from, they'll do it... they won't encourage someone else to try it... that means they've done the math and know it's not profitable enough.
 
Something about Amazon having the data about what drugs people buy is going to be a bitter pill for some to swallow. Not sure when 2 and 2 are added together that it is a good idea.

Who might they sell it to (or perhaps who is going to steal it from them).
 
{NG}Fidel said:
Why is AWS scary but Walmart and all other monopolies were ok?
The Fuck?
Click to expand...

I can't speak for anyone aside from myself, but I didn't like Walmart either before and I don't like AWS now. There probably are people who dislike Amazon but were ok with Walmart of course.
 
Scary isn't Amazon's power, scary is how the market works, the mere information that Amazon bought something and all the others more or less "instantly" lost value, not because they had a bad product, less sales, or anything, else, just blam you're not worth as much now. A ton of pharmacy companies lost 11B in value, yet Amazon gained nearly 20B in value?
 
_l_ said:
something about Amazon having drugs to sell just doesn't sound quite right to me
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I feel the same about Walmart. I don't like either company but the price of drugs right now is insane and frequently the pricing has nothing to do with reality. If Amazon manages to find away to out-asshole or just plain bully the drug companies and force their prices down somehow I'm OK with it.

SighTurtle said:
I can't speak for anyone aside from myself, but I didn't like Walmart either before and I don't like AWS now. There probably are people who dislike Amazon but were ok with Walmart of course.
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Sure but I think what {NG}Fidel was getting at is that it makes no sense to freak out about what Amazon is doing here when others like Walmart are already involved and every bit as bad if not worse. After all Walmart was putting small town America stores and mid sized chains out of business with cheap but mediocre Chinese knock offs while treating its workers like crap and paying them intentionally low enough wages so they'd qualify for welfare as a roundabout state sponsored dole long before Amazon ever showed up.

The ship sailed on the whole "corporate shitlord" issue upwards of a decade ago (IMO it'd be in the 80's but its very IMO) when voters decided not to vote out the politicians who were allowing the big companies to merge into bigger ones or do pretty much whatever they wanted in their respective markets and to their labor. At this point worrying about what Amazon is doing to retail, shipping, and now apparently the prescription service industry is beyond pointless and IMO is more of a indicator of gross naivete and ignorance of how industry and business has been functioning for a long time.

Amazon just seems to be so much better than others at it (it being corporate shitlord'ing it up) right now is all so they're stomping the perceived "normal" market competitiors so hard its just finally becoming too obvious to ignore to most everyone now what is going on which is why they're getting more attention.
 
Nothing like investing in a company whose model is to take pills that were already available in recyclable plastic bottles and separate them into 30 different plastic bags that we all know are ending up in landfills.:vomit:
 
Jeff Bezos and Amazon are the CIA's primary business partner, and Amazon handles the CIA's cloud data infrastructure. Amazon is also one of the foremast data-harvesting and peddling companies there are. You can expect that all data Amazon collects from its store, from its delivery services, from its digital keypads, from its Echo and Alexa devices, and from customer pharmacy purchases and everything else goes straight into the CIA's servers, where it is automatically compiled into virtual profiles of every person who uses Amazon and Bezos services and devices.

The plan here is obvious: Create a network of key services that forms a comprehensive data-dragnet to build a digital god-view of society and its people.

Expect Bezos / Amazon to buy up more seemingly-unrelated, yet key services in the future to help flesh out that data-dragnet to make the CIA's digital god-view of the USA's citizens (or subjects?) more complete.


I also would not be surprised in the least (only disheartened) if Microsoft was a part of the same CIA project.

Facebook already is, with oversight of the content posted on it recently being handed to Atlantic Council - which is a US and NATO-funded propaganda and disinformation war-mongering organization that has a history of both maliciously attacking individuals to demonize them for spreading truth that is inconvenient to US propaganda, and also of being routinely wrong in its assertions.

Atlantic Council also openly advocates for troll farms and information wars against the USA's geopolitical challengers, such as Russia and China. And Atlantic Council coordinates directly with the US government to boost and amplify US propaganda initiatives.
 
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SighTurtle said:
I can't speak for anyone aside from myself, but I didn't like Walmart either before and I don't like AWS now. There probably are people who dislike Amazon but were ok with Walmart of course.
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Neither did I. It just seems like AWS is the only one people want to focus on. What about BIG ISPs? and on and on. I just wish we focused on reducing all forms of this shit. But we do baby steps and leave big players in place long enough after that they can dismantle the rules in 20 - 30 years.
 
mesyn191 said:
Dude keep that crap in Qanon or some other echo chamber for the undiagnosed mentally ill, don't post it here.
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Please, shut it, and don't quote me with such a hideously ignorant post. I have no interest in reading that dribble - and it's all the worse that you appear to actually think you're being intelligent by it.


Back in reality, Facebook content is indeed now being overseen by Atlantic Council - the US and NATO-funded propaganda and disinformation organization that recently hounded various innocent people with false accusation of them being Russian bots just because they posted information that contradicted US propaganda.

Atlantic Council is also one of the US propaganda outlets that, along with Jeff Bezos' / the CIA's Washington Post, and propaganda rag Daily Beast, partnered with the CIA to create and push the now dicredited and disgraced "PropOrNot" propaganda and disinformation program that was dumped by the public and US news media about as quickly as it appeared on the scene, after it labelled every US news outlet that didn't parrot the CIA's anti-Russia propaganda as "Russian propaganda".

https://steemit.com/news/@fortified...ntic-council-promoted-anti-russian-propaganda

And Atlantic Council does indeed coordinate with the US government to push and amplify the US government's propaganda, and a recent example was Atlantic Council making an article calling for an "NATO for infowar" to coincide with the US government announcing that it was transforming US Cyber Command to an aggressive and hostile cyber-attack unit.

Atlantic Council is also constantly shovelling out anti-Russia propaganda and disinformation:

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/news...nsive-website-to-track-russian-disinformation

To date, all of Atlantic Council's claims against individuals it alleged to be Russian bots or Russian anything have been disproven. But Atlantic Council doesn't care - they operate out of a 'keep throwing stuff against the wall and see what sticks' philosophy.

Atlantic Council recently gave an award to Bana Alabed, the Syrian 7 year-old who was making Twitter posts from Aleppo in perfect English, while Syria, Russia, and Iran were freeing Aleppo from US-backed terrorists. But Bana, who it turned out could barely speak a word of English, wasn't making her Twitter posts - her jihadist mom was. Meanwhile, Her dad was part of ISIS, and her photographers were ISIS propagandists who posted praises for jihad on social media and took photographs of the beheading of children and of themselves paling around with the beheaders and smiling with them. The Twitter postings in her name were ISIS propaganda, and Atlantic Council exploited them to hype anti-Russia and anti-Assad propaganda, and even just gave an award to Bana for her parents' terrorist propaganda - which is just the normal lack of morals and honesty from Atlantic Council.

Atlantic Council also had, for the previous few years, worked very hard to frame reports of a massive neo-Nazi issue in West Ukraine as Russian / RT disinformation... until the evidence was so overwhelming that continuing to deny it was undermining what little credibility Atlantic Council might actually have among what few eager dupes out there listen to them. And so, Atlantic Council just did a complete about face on the topic and admitted that West Ukraine is infested with neo-Nazis. And RT noticed.

Atlantic Council is as depraved and deplorable as state propaganda gets - and is who is now officially monitoring Facebook to decide what counts as propaganda and what isn't.


And the CIA is indeed partnered with Amazon for data hosting ventures, with multiple contracts pertaining to it. Why would Amazon not sell its gathered data to the CIA when selling data is a part of Amazon's business, and why would the CIA not be interested in buying it when the CIA is hacking every electronic device it can to get all the data that it can? It is an entirely practical venture, though not a positive one for society. That you think what is today's norm a conspiracy shows that you've been too influenced by Hollywood movies and have a cartoon interpretation of reality.
 
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Delicieuxz said:
Please, shut it, and don't quote me with such a hideously ignorant post. I have no interest in reading that dribble - and it's all the worse that you appear to actually think you're being intelligent by it.
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I don't think I'm being smart or even "smart" by telling you keep that garbage elsewhere. Its just that your posting is obviously indiscernible from the crap that gets posted there so its more of a matter of fact thing.

What with all your intentional mis-statements of what the articles you're linking are actually saying. That and the linking to RT too. That is a big tip off these days. Certainly no one sensible would do that.
 
What makes Amazon so scary is the core business is very low margin.

This low margin base makes takeovers very attractive as it provides margin accretion. Walmart is actually in the same boat here.

If you look at a company like Apple with a similar war chest it's the opposite. The core business of Apple is super high margin so therefore any purchase also must be super high margin to make sense from a shareholder perspective. It's for this reason Apple is not nearly as scary as Amazon.

If your business is higher margin than Amazon WATCH OUT! They are coming for you.
 
I see a lot of hate on Amazon, but if they can break into the prescription business and totally rock the pharmacy world with much lower prices, I wouldn't be too upset about it. These drugs are way overpriced and I don't knock anything that will force prices down.
 
I thought big pharma was the reason for the outrageous prescription prices, not the pharmacies. Anyway, I'd say we're still another 5-10 years out before "Amazon is evil!" gains any real traction and the herd moves elsewhere for their shopping. Hell, brick & mortar will probably start being trendy again when all the kids who rarely seen a store as a kid start hitting 18.
 
mesyn191 said:
I don't think I'm being smart or even "smart" by telling you keep that garbage elsewhere. Its just that your posting is obviously indiscernible from the crap that gets posted there so its more of a matter of fact thing.

What with all your intentional mis-statements of what the articles you're linking are actually saying. That and the linking to RT too. That is a big tip off these days. Certainly no one sensible would do that.
Click to expand...

Fact checking is a homosexual-trangender-lesbian-Jewish-black-arab-hispanic-religious(but not the one I'm in)-SJW-lizard man from inside the hollow flat earth-asylum seaker-women's conspiracy against our freedom.

Pay no attention to what is actually said, or facts in general. Pay attention to what it might mean if you look at it a specific way. Also while cropping and editing heavily.
 
they literally wanna be the one stop website for everything. Im very much looking forward to the Front page News when they buy up all the hookers and blow in Vegas and I can get either shipped to me via Prime.
 
When an entity is expanding and becomes monstrously large, does that signal disaster for those in proximity, or for the entity itself?

Or both; first the former, then the latter?
 
{NG}Fidel said:
Why is AWS scary but Walmart and all other monopolies were ok?
The Fuck?
Click to expand...

Because when Wal-Mart opened their pharmacy, the newly competing companies didn't drop 9 points automatically. Wal-Mart's business was primarily built during a time before companies tracked your every waking moment. Wal-Mart was also built during an age where people didn't distrust everything under the sun. Wal-Mart has a physical presence and always has whereas Amazon does not (I can walk into a Wal-Mart and buy what I need, I can't get near an Amazon warehouse without getting arrested).

And finally, while any company having a monopoly is not okay, if you were to argue this before the FTC they'd laugh you right out of the room as neither Amazon nor Wal-Mart have a monopoly on anything. What we're looking at is a growing oligopoly where Amazon and Wal-Mart and a few other companies are washing out the rest of the smaller competition (small chains, mom-n-pops) but neither is going to topple the other just yet because 1) the cost of doing so is far too high and could irreparably damage the 'winning' company (even one as seemingly invincible as Amazon) and 2) doing so would cause them to be a monopoly which would effectively be a death sentence as the FTC would likely step in. Now I'm not saying that an oligopoly is any better than a monopoly, but I am saying that traditionally the FTC won't break companies up for that (see: the current state of cellular and internet providers).
 
It astounds me that other companies haven't banded together to compete against Goliath.
 
Delicieuxz said:
Jeff Bezos and Amazon are the CIA's primary business partner, and Amazon handles the CIA's cloud data infrastructure. Amazon is also one of the foremast data-harvesting and peddling companies there are. You can expect that all data Amazon collects from its store, from its delivery services, from its digital keypads, from its Echo and Alexa devices, and from customer pharmacy purchases and everything else goes straight into the CIA's servers, where it is automatically compiled into virtual profiles of every person who uses Amazon and Bezos services and devices.

The plan here is obvious: Create a network of key services that forms a comprehensive data-dragnet to build a digital god-view of society and its people.

Expect Bezos / Amazon to buy up more seemingly-unrelated, yet key services in the future to help flesh out that data-dragnet to make the CIA's digital god-view of the USA's citizens (or subjects?) more complete.


I also would not be surprised in the least (only disheartened) if Microsoft was a part of the same CIA project.

Facebook already is, with oversight of the content posted on it recently being handed to Atlantic Council - which is a US and NATO-funded propaganda and disinformation war-mongering organization that has a history of both maliciously attacking individuals to demonize them for spreading truth that is inconvenient to US propaganda, and also of being routinely wrong in its assertions.

Atlantic Council also openly advocates for troll farms and information wars against the USA's geopolitical challengers, such as Russia and China. And Atlantic Council coordinates directly with the US government to boost and amplify US propaganda initiatives.
Click to expand...


Had to check my browser to make sure I hadn't stumbled onto Abovetopsecret.com by mistake...
 
Step 1 - Buy company for $1 billion (hypothetical since it wasn't disclosed)
Step 2 - Stock goes up, company gains $19 billion in value

Nice way to make a profit - make billions for signing a paper!
 
Devilpup said:
Step 1 - Buy company for $1 billion (hypothetical since it wasn't disclosed)
Step 2 - Stock goes up, company gains $19 billion in value

Nice way to make a profit - make billions for signing a paper!
Click to expand...


but a genius would have been positioned to sell some amazon stock at the peak, but an EVIL genius would have also shorted the stocks for the other major players.. to reap maximum profits

all of course under the protection of various shell companies.
 
motomonkey said:
Had to check my browser to make sure I hadn't stumbled onto Abovetopsecret.com by mistake...
Click to expand...

Worth noting that it's not a conspiracy if they do it in front of you. Random lizard-people aside, that much information in the hands of so few people has the potential to be devastating. We are already familiar with the business world's track record for security.
 
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