I really don't understand Amazon's strategy here at all.<p>Every large company goes through this stage where they switch from actively building their business to essentially being afraid that something will come along and kill them. It happened to Microsoft in the 90s (although, in fairness, the Internet did almost kill them). It's happened to Google (Google Offers anyone?). And it sure as hell looks like it's happening (big time) to Amazon.<p>Amazon is really good at two things:<p>- selling you stuff<p>- oddly enough, cloud services.<p>Several years ago they, for whatever reason, embarked on a strategy of wanting to be in online content and mobile platforms.<p>Amazon Prime was (and is) a hugely popular service. Yet it's been bundled with Prime Instant Video, essentially a Netflix clone. Why Amazon felt this was necessary or even a good idea is beyond me.<p>As soon as you force bundle one service with the other it makes the latter worse and hides the deficiencies of the former. Good products and services sell themselves at a certain point. If Amazon Instant Video was really great, why can't I buy just that? Why make Prime more expensive? Amazon is creating room for a comeptitor here.<p>And then we get to the Fire tablets, phones and now media sticks. Amazon decided to treat Google as a competitor here so none of their devices come with the Google apps. This is a curious move because Amazon obviously sees itself as a competitor and rival to Apple, Google and Microsoft here. Why exactly?<p>If you're going to be in the phone business and competing with someone, do you really want to be beholden to the platform that company produces (ie Android)? Sure they can fork it (and have) but you know they'll be taking updates too.<p>I really have to wonder if Bezos has gone all Howard Hughes lately. He seems to feel this strategy is deeply important yet, as best as I can tell, these products are mediocre at best and no one has really articulated why this is important to the future of Amazon.<p>Disclaimer: I work for Google. These opinions are purely my own.