Also, I disagree that Amazon snapping up Monoprice (or any other online retailer that beats Amazon in any particular area) would be a great thing for customers. Maybe in the short run it'd be fine, but the way it's supposed to work is that competition from Monoprice and other retailers should force Amazon to deliver lower prices.

You do see some of that with their Amazon Basics line of cables, which are pretty cheap, though not quite as cheap as Monoprice, because at some point, most people would rather just deal with one or two online retailers instead of hundreds of them. Amazon Prime is another advantage they have -- I can't imagine anyone would pay for "Monoprice Prime" unless they have a serious cable addiction.

My fear is that if Amazon were to simply acquire every business that comes close to them on price and customer satisfaction, the quality would eventually suffer. This is pretty much the case in any market that gets dominated by a single player, and we're pretty close to that with Amazon. I'm actually glad states have started pushing on them to assess sales tax, and even though I have to pay 6% more at Amazon, they're still usually the cheapest option from a reputable retailer, but at least they're not taking advantage of loopholes to take money away from state/local retailers.

I guess what I'm saying is that I loves me some Amazon, but they're at just the right size right now that I'd be scared if they got much bigger.