Amazon’s Australian Launch Brings Excitement, Dread and Defiance

Sounds like they didn't open Amazon in Australian -- they opened Amazon Canada in Australia.

They missed their first launch date by a week and a half. The lack of retailers is probably in part due to lack of APIs available til very close to launch day (within a week for orders) and a non existent sandbox for testing implementations.<p>They aren’t yet offering their own products with a few exceptions for cables.<p>Disclaimer: worked on our implementation as a launch retailer.

What really is the &quot;dread&quot; factor for Amazon in Australia? My understanding from a linked article:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;19&#x2F;books&#x2F;australias-amazon-book-battle.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;19&#x2F;books&#x2F;australias-amazon-b...</a><p>is that there is a culture of loyalty in Australia. So, this should be a walk in the part for other companies.<p>Though as far as I know, and all of this is secondhand knowledge, normal retail in Australia is costly. So, there is a market for cheap discount based retailing in Australia. But I could be wrong.

Sigh. Heh, I completely forgot Amazon sold everything. I thought this was about AWS.<p>If only something AWS- and Australia- related could bring &quot;excitement, dread and defiance.&quot; That would be absolutely absolutely wonderful; getting any sort of hosting or VPS-type service here is nothing short of insane.<p>For example the only $20&#x2F;mo offers I&#x27;m aware of only offer like 256MB RAM for example. And there is a VERY low bandwidth cap, with extra bandwidth starting at &quot;eye-watering&quot; and skyrocketing to &quot;...wat.&quot; pretty quickly.

I&#x27;m struggling to find anything I want to buy on the Australian website. I can&#x27;t even get enough into the basket to get free shipping.<p>And their goods categorisation is abysmal - whatever department you&#x27;re in you seem to get heaps of unrelated dross.<p>It&#x27;s a terrible place right now.<p>When they pick their game up I don&#x27;t think there will be much loyalty to existing retailers. Australians are well aware and sick of the Australia tax, and desperate to join the rest of the western world.

The only thing I worry about is, if Amazon does decimate the retail industry, then where will young people find employment?<p>Youth unemployment in Australia is already quite high at 12.7%. If there is further erosion of the strength of industries that typically employ youths, then we will have a large component of a generation where unemployment is the norm.

Incredibly disappointing. They stuffed it.