[throwaway6497]

Walmart was forced to pay $15 Billion by Amazon, I think. Amazon-India is already a force to reckon with in India. They have a ton of customer love in India, and they are killing it. There is no reason for them to buy Flipkart. They did the required to hurt their competitor by feigning interest. Bezos is a master at deception. Well played, Bezos and Flipkart investors. Stingy Walmart has to cough up more money.

[seshagiric]

If Walmart pays a large amount, it is still advantageous to Amazon but does not look like that was the only ploy.

Amazon may have actually tried hard to prevent Walmart gain a foothold in online retail. Flipkart is reported as the largest or 2nd largest online retailer in India, to prevent that volume going to Walmart Amazon may have tried hard and pushed price in the process.

[wpietri]

And I'd add that a high price hurts Walmart more than Amazon. Amazon's market cap is 3x Walmart's. Amazon has $31 billion in cash and short-term investments; Walmart has about $7 billion. On top of this, presumably Walmart will be investing heavily in expansion.

I think Walmart's stinginess is also an important point here. At this price, plus the additional money they put in, a good ROI gets harder. Bezos has never really cared about short-term ROI, but I wonder if Walmart will be inclined to be impatient or under-invest later because of the high price now.

[skinnymuch]

Is anyone besides Google contributing. I think I read Google is giving $3B so that’s a decent chunk.

I’m guessing they wanted Softbank out for control in general and since Softbank loves to control, otherwise they could’ve saved another $4B and let Softbank keep 20% control.

[ENOTTY]

"Google-parent Alphabet Inc. is likely to participate in the investment with Walmart, said one of the people"

Walmart is getting help.

[mtgx]

That may be so, but now that it can afford it, Amazon has every intention of becoming a monopoly in the markets it enters. It's why they bought the #1 retailer in the Middle East, too:

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-amazon-s...

People love Amazon now, but I think it's time to fear it. They're already in bed with governments for multi-billion contracts, and are aiming for monopoly power. They won't behave well for much longer, and I'd argue they've already started behaving badly (raising prices on consumers, lowering commissions on affiliates, and so on).

[HillaryBriss]

> I think it's time to fear it.

as a consumer, i agree. but so do a lot of companies.

Run down the list of private sectors that spend the most on information technology -- health care, banking, retail, insurance -- and all of them worry Amazon is coming for them.

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-02-15/worried...

[Cyph0n]

The acquisition of Souq was mainly a response to the announcement of Noon, a $1 billion Souq competitor out of KSA.

[dominotw]

I agree with amazon killing it. I used to shop both on flipkart and amazon. Now I just shop on Amazon. At some point I just stopped checking flipkart.

[piyush_soni]

Same here. I think the reason was the amazing customer service at Amazon, and mostly the effective price on Amazon was always lower.

[rakamotog]

From India, wish there was a way to separate, cheap products (yes, I can filter via price) and counterfeit products to get some high-quality products (albeit at a higher price point). So many of my recent decisions have been offline because I can't figure out which products are high quality. ex:- phone charger (the quick charge one, wire tears in days), infusion water bottle (breaks in months), Bluetooth earphones (This one was a nightmare) Wish there was a filter for this on Amazon!