Amazon, not Google inspires fear in the boardroom
Microsoft and then Google used to be the exemplars of companies whose ambition seemed to know no bounds. Increasingly, though, that title seems to belong to Amazon. With its latest purchase of Whole Foods, it's started to seem like the e-commerce giant has its hands in nearly every industry out there.
Other companies - and their investors - have certainly noticed. Amazon has become a popular point of discussion when executives at rival firms are talking with analysts and shareholders. As we can see in this chart from Statista - based on data from FactSet and Recode - Amazon has overtaken Google as the most mentioned company in public corporate conference calls.
It's unclear from the data whether these discussions are largely focused on executives praising and wanting to emulate Amazon or investors worried the Seattle tech behemoth will hurt their companies' businesses. But there's some reason to think its the latter. Foot Locker executives, for example, were recently put on the defensive about the e-commerce giant's impact on the footwear retailer's business when the company's quarterly results, which came soon after Amazon announced a partnership with Nike, fell short of Wall Street's expectations.
