The Power of Amazon

Have you looked lately at what's for sale on the Amazon website?

Not that long ago, Amazon was the place for books, CDs and DVDs. Then it branched out and started selling computer games, computers and  then every kind of electronic gewgaw you could imagine. Then it got into baby stuff (rivalling Mothercare, etc) and then sports stuff (did this cause the loss of high street sports shops, I wonder?) and then groceries (what's that done to Tesco and other supermarkets, not to mention smaller speciality food suppliers?). Then it got into special offers (watch out Itison, Groupon, etc).

Amazon can also do you second hand stuff if you don't want brand new, so you feel you must be getting a bargain. But you have to look very carefully at Amazon's prices these days. The company seems to charge for books on a whim: a paperback can cost more than a hardback - and a Kindle book can cost more than either. And if you order, you need to double-check the delivery charges these days or you can find yourself paying for the special delivery service rather than the free delivery your Scottish heart tells you is a better deal.

And it's quite hard to avoid using Amazon: I use Lovefilm and I like the service: prompt, good library of movies, especially world cinema, good price. It's just been bought over by Amazon and they want me to use my Amazon password to access Lovefilm.

Now the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has bought a newspaper, the Washington Post - and finally, alarm bells are ringing. Peter Wilby in this week's New Statesman warns journalists not to rejoice too soon. It's unlikely Bezos will be the saviour of printed news. Amazon is not a philanthropic organisation.

He claims that 'Amazon is a threat to every form of retail life on the planet' and I tend to agree. Amazon lacks any ethical sense in the way it does business. It avoids paying tax. Not breaking the law of any country, you understand. Just using accountants to avoid paying the social dues the rest of us have to pay. It has admitted supplying information clandestinely about authors and its customers to the CIA and other law agencies. It treats its employees abominably. Amazon seems to have invented the 'zero hours contract.' It pays minimum wage and does all it can to discourage employees from joining a union.

So why has Bezos bought the Washington Post? It could be a platform for his own personal political views. It could be the start of a press empire owned by him. Forget Rupert Murdoch - so yesterday's news. What if you one day download a book to your Kindle and find you automatically get the Washington Post and its views - and the Washington Post gets access to your Amazon account and can target its reporting and advertising at you? And advertisers would love access to a huge audience like Kindle readers, wouldn't they?

Or maybe I'm just being paranoid. But then, I never imagined the first Amazon website would end up the size it is today. Who knows what it may become tomorrow?