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Don't Forget to Turn Out the Lights, Tony

The announcement that Amazon is buying Zappos is so sad.What online retailing needs is more innovators, not fewer.
Written by Tom Steinert-Threlkeld, Contributor

The announcement that Amazon is buying Zappos is so sad.

What online retailing needs is more innovators, not fewer.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon (recommendation engine and free delivery over $25) and Tony Hsieh of Zappos (free delivery both ways, 365-day guarantee and social shopping) are at the top of their game. And the game.

Says here that Hsieh will move on within 18 months, after joining Amazon. He's a two-time winner, having sold LinkExchange, an advertising network he co-founded to Microsoft for $265M in 1998. And a guy clearly confident in his ability to find new veins of gold to tap in digital commerce.

But wouldn't it have been a lot better for etailing in general if we customers had witnessed and benefitted from a head-to-head competition across multiple categories of these two outfits?

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