Final Analysis: Love It or Loathe It, Amazon Is a Major Presence

Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when Amazon.com became the Borg?

Me, neither. It just sort of happened.

One day, Amazon was this little online bookstore that couldnt make a profit. The next, it had 65,000 employees, $48 billion in annual sales and the same fearsome presence as those boxy hives of shared consciousness from the Star Trek franchise. The Borg Collective, youll recall, is an assemblage of ruthless cyborgs that prosper as a community operating with one mind. It assimilates new members by force, turning them into drones that seek perfection by subsuming other forms of competition.

The only difference is that the Borg is bent on interplanetary domination while Amazon is limited to this little blue marble of ours. At least for now. Once Jeff Bezos gets his Blue Origin spaceship running on a reliable schedule, all bets are off. Amazon will rule the galaxies and we will be motes of space dust caught up in its orbit.

Who knew? When Amazon started in the mid-1990s, most of us thought the idea of buying books online was a little odd. Especially in Seattle, which is so into books and bookstores and book clubs and book readings and book smarts that one of its most famous people is a librarian with her own action figure. When Nancy Pearl announced recently that she had joined the Borg, er, the Amazon family to give exposure to obscure, out-of-print books, it was as if David had surrendered his slingshot and signed on with Goliath Industries. Pearl, who once ran the Washington Center for the Book and is revered for her books Book Lust and More Book Lust, as well as her recommendations on public radio and her TV interviews with authors, admitted that she wasnt prepared for the backlash that greeted her announcement. One Seattle bookshop owner, who simply couldnt believe Pearl had aligned herself with Amazon, told The Seattle Times: Amazon is absolutely antithetical to independent bookselling and, to many of us, truth, justice and the American way.

Amazon long ago ceased being just a bookstore. As Donald Trump might say, its yooj. It sells everythingfrom songs to thongs to beer bongs. It offers web services and will store your stuff in its own cloud. When something gets so enormous that it can induce a solar eclipse, its human nature to fear it. Think Microsoft. The Bell System. The New York Yankees.

I suspect Im like a lot of people who fear Amazon but also use it. Ive bought books and music there. Even some clothing. Didnt know I could buy tires until I got on the website the other day and clicked full store directory. Also didnt know the best seller on the Lab & Scientific Products page is the Carson lighted pocket microscopea deal at $11.

I have not been persuaded that I need a pocket microscope, but its good to know I can get one at the click of a mouse. And when I drive through South Lake Union now, its energizing to witness the reawakening of a moribund neighborhood by thousands of blue-badged Amazonians who work in Paul Allens new office towers and eat in Tom Douglas new restaurants. Critics see this gentrification of South Lake Union as yet another example of Amazons dangerous reach. Someone even came up with a quiz and posted it on utility poles in the neighborhood. Answer yes to any of six questions about boorish behavior andboom!you are officially an Amhole. The real test will be whether Amazon has the ability to turn the Borg into something wed want to like on Facebook. Because the Borg is one spectacular model of efficiency. It just needs to work on that whole ruthlessness thing.

JOHN LEVESQUE is the managing editor of Seattle Business magazine.