Why Amazon rules retail

And why Google feels more and more like the British Empire

Why does Amazon rule retail? We moved from Canada to France. Amazon didn't care. Add a French address? Easy. Use a Canadian credit card in France? Easy? Add a French card? Easy.

Then there's Google….

How many steps to get an Intermarché supermarket loyalty card to my Android phone? Dear God. The Play store won't even let me download the app unless I am Officially Registered as in France. With a French payment card.

Which means digging into multiple Google/Play/Android settings to enter the card number and change the country multiple times, and agreeing to multiple "ARE YOU SURE?" warnings.

It’s like Google is saying "Are you really certain that you want to leave America for a FOREIGN COUNTRY?

I just read Santham Sanghera's "Empireland", and wow, the parallels between Google and the British Empire are remarkable. The America-centric attitudes, and the assumption of superiority echo the worst of England’s rule over their overseas domains.

This realization was reinforced last night when went went out for dinner at a local village. The trip out, using Google Maps for navigation, took twenty roundabout minutes of backroad driving in the dark. The return trip using the satnav in our rental Citroën took FIVE minutes. This is not at all unusual. Google maps has proved unreliable on any number of occasions, and occasionally seems to run us in circles for no obvious reason.

That, plus Google’s ridiculously horrid pronunciation of French place names - I mean, first year high-school level French class pronunciations - suggests that much like Imperial Britain, Google believes that understanding any culture or language outside of California is just not worth the time and effort. Google’s size and influence is such that they simply must be the best, and all others should emulate them.

Right?

Meanwhile though, France has legislated new minimum book delivery prices which means that Amazon can’t undercut the prices that other book stores charge to deliver books. The hope, of course, is to encourage shoppers to buy from French stores instead of the global giant that offers free Prime delivery.