Books / Media

60 Minutes gives Amazon free advertising the day before Cyber Monday

Today is Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving when millions of workers return to their offices and—so the story goes—buy tons of merchandise online for the coming holidays.

Amazon should be doing huge business today. And it can’t hurt that 60 Minutes, under the guise of journalism, basically gave Amazon a free commercial last night. The report by Charlie Rose was basically a puff piece about how dominant Amazon is in the online space—with virtually no time spent on how the company is driving indie bookstores and brick-and-mortar retailers out of business with deep discounts and same-day delivery, or the abysmal conditions that have been reported in their warehouses.

Getting the most ink today is the revelation that Jeff Bezos is working on “Amazon Drones,” unmanned aerial vehicles that can deliver products directly to consumers. The use of “drones” is more than a little chilling in this context.

I’ve got mixed feelings about Amazon—as a consumer of content, I think they’re great, but a future in which Amazon dominates the content-delivery and retail landscape is terrifying.

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