Amazon Dethrones Walmart as World's Biggest Company by Sales (bloomberg.com) 19
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon has officially dethroned Walmart as the biggest global company by revenue, a milestone attesting to the massive scale the e-commerce and cloud-computing giant has achieved since its humble beginnings in 1994 as an online bookseller in Jeff Bezos' Seattle-area garage.
Walmart, which had been the largest company by revenue for more than a decade, on Thursday reported sales of $713.2 billion for the 12 months ending Jan. 31. Amazon, which operates on a fiscal year ending in December, earlier this month reported 2025 sales of $717 billion.
Bezos carefully studied Walmart founder Sam Walton, embracing many of his business strategies while building his company. Over the past decade, Amazon's revenue has increased at almost 10 times the pace of Walmart's, fueled by a shift in consumer spending from stores to websites and its rapidly growing cloud-computing business, Amazon Web Services.
Walmart, which had been the largest company by revenue for more than a decade, on Thursday reported sales of $713.2 billion for the 12 months ending Jan. 31. Amazon, which operates on a fiscal year ending in December, earlier this month reported 2025 sales of $717 billion.
Bezos carefully studied Walmart founder Sam Walton, embracing many of his business strategies while building his company. Over the past decade, Amazon's revenue has increased at almost 10 times the pace of Walmart's, fueled by a shift in consumer spending from stores to websites and its rapidly growing cloud-computing business, Amazon Web Services.
What prevents these companies from succeeding? (Score:3)
Wal-Mart is not the first retail giant dethroned by Amazon despite having a web presence, that was Sears. Ironically, they had just defeated Montgomery Ward in the catalog sales business, just in time for that to become irrelevant.
Sears' website was garbage, but their prices were also garbage. The former thing was not entirely unexpected, but the latter was weird. I tend to suppose that actually points to deliberate failure to execute in order to further the goal of liquidating the company.
Wal-Mart is more puzzling to me. They have natural advantages over Amazon that they don't seem to be able to actually benefit from, like their existing retail locations. And they also already had their own trucking fleet before Amazon even came into existence at all. I would have thought they could have parlayed this into superior performance to Amazon, but their delivery periods are tragic.
What prevents Wal-Mart from dominating here? They were basically Amazon before Amazon. Now they're Temu Amazon.
Re: What prevents these companies from succeeding? (Score:3)
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(sub) Prime subscriptions.
Mine is now utter crap.
Pay to remove ads, they add ads.
Pay for next day (or same day)
and you can't get delivery for 2 or 3 days.
Utter shite now.
Oh don't get me onto Amazon Prime Video. FFS!
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Pay to remove ads, they add ads. [...] Oh don't get me onto Amazon Prime Video. FFS!
FFS indeed. Even if you pay to remove ads, there are still ads. Fuck all of that.
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Wal-Mart is not the first retail giant dethroned by Amazon despite having a web presence, that was Sears. Ironically, they had just defeated Montgomery Ward in the catalog sales business, just in time for that to become irrelevant.
Sears' website was garbage, but their prices were also garbage. The former thing was not entirely unexpected, but the latter was weird. I tend to suppose that actually points to deliberate failure to execute in order to further the goal of liquidating the company.
Wal-Mart is more puzzling to me. They have natural advantages over Amazon that they don't seem to be able to actually benefit from, like their existing retail locations. And they also already had their own trucking fleet before Amazon even came into existence at all. I would have thought they could have parlayed this into superior performance to Amazon, but their delivery periods are tragic.
What prevents Wal-Mart from dominating here? They were basically Amazon before Amazon. Now they're Temu Amazon.
You can buy shit on Amazon that you absolutely cannot buy on or at a Walmart. (You could probably buy actual shit on Amazon. No bullshit. Actual shit.)
If you want to cater to 60% of the planet, you're Walmart.
If you want to cater to 90% of the planet, you're Amazon.
Business lesson? Don't be a fucking prude. You'll sell more shit. Don't worry. It'll only cost you your soul in the end when you put Soylent Green on the shelf.
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Amazon is selling all sorts of crazy low quality stuff from knock-off brands contributing a lot of volume. As bad as wal-mart is, even they wouldn't carry a lot of that junk on shelves.
The other thing that may play a factor is that Wal Mart is *notoriously* dickish to suppliers. Refusing to accept certain things the suppliers want to sell, demanding packages that don't make sense even as the sales prove the supplier right, wal mart keeps pushing.
Re: What prevents these companies from succeeding? (Score:2)
You and geekmux don't seem to have actually looked at Walmart's website. They sell the same kind of AliExpress sourced shit, but not quite at the same low prices.
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However Amazon does two things that WalMart will never replicate, and in some ways gives them an enormous edge.
AWS was a byproduct of Amazon building their own logisti
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Misleading headline (Score:2)
Amazon's retail business is small compared to Walmart. The only way in which Amazon is bigger, is if you throw in AWS, which dwarfs its retail sales. So Amazon's retail operations have not overtaken Walmart, not even close.
only just happened? (Score:2)
i thought it happened several years ago at the peak of COVID. prior to pandemic I'd made less than $500 of purchases from Amazon.
since early 2021, it's close to $10k
Re: only just happened? (Score:2)
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several reasons - variety of products that local stores simply couldn't match - it quickly got to the point where if i so much as thought "hey i wonder if there's a " there was someone on Amazon selling it.
COVID restrictions on stores & transit made shopping so much more difficult for me - a single guy who relies on public transit and works long hours, often including weekends.
no questions asked return policy didn't hurt although i've only returned a handful of items so far.
also COVID co-incided with my
The battle to be Buy'n'Large (Score:2)
And why.... (Score:2)
And why should anyone care?
Once when I was checking out at Walmart, and mentioned a better purchase, cheaper, fast delivery, the woman cashier in checkout said:
"Every time you buy stuff from Amazon, it puts a local merchant out of business." I bit my tongue, but wowzers. :-)
--JoshK.
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I'd have laughed right in her face, involuntarily.
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I suppressed a chuckle, but then recalled the maxim: "Best way to argue with a nimrod...don't." So I concur.
But yeah, the irony and hypocrisy of working for Wally World, while decrying Amazon about "causing local businesses to close."
--JoshK.