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Remote work, from anywhere for almost anyone. Which therefore could be established anywhere but still keep its job.
This is how he made one of the promises of the early era with the internet. A promise that was never really fulfilled. Perhaps not because technology was lacking, but because habits and expectations made remote work never more than the exception.
Then came 2020. Suddenly everyone who could work at home would. But not just work, most of life would somehow be run from home. To sum up this spring: everything that can be done digitally is now done digitally. And he went at lightning speed. It is like living in a laboratory where abruptly driven visions of digitization are tested. Buy everything online? Get all your entertainment from the web? Do you work online and have almost all social contact through a webcam?
It is a kind of emergency, of course. The later time will look different. But undoubtedly, some changes will be permanent, with winners and losers.
Some of the winners are obvious: like the Zoom video conferencing service, with violent growth and a crash course during the pandemic. Or at online grocery stores that saw so much pressure that the wait times for bringing pasta and paper towels to the door became almost absurd.
Photo: Henrik Montgomery / TT
But they are, in the bigger picture, peripheral phenomenon The ones who really have everything to win are those who were already about to crush smaller and older digital competitors. It probably doesn’t apply to a company more clearly than Amazon. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of stores have been forced to close, and a record number of stores are expected to go bankrupt before the economy and life return to some sort of normalcy. Who is left? Amazon, with a pandemic-compatible business model. The company has recruited 100,000 people and is now looking for another 75,000 to handle all deliveries.
Also, include all the other areas where Amazon is big, so you understand that the entire life of a quarantined person can fertilize Amazon’s cash register – during the day, video conferencing using the Amazon server service. At the end of the working day, home delivery of goods and food from Amazon.com. In the evening, entertainment through Amazon’s video service. Before falling asleep, for a time with an electronic book on your Kindle.
None of this is new. Amazon came to the physical bookstore and started making life miserable for retail a long time ago. The publishing world has been shaken by the e-book service. And Amazon Web Services, which is called the server service, has long been operating a substantial part of every site in the world.
Telecommuting begins to work so that neither employees nor employers see any reason to completely abandon it when the crisis is over.
No, it is not new, but the current crisis has set the trend for anabolic steroids. All processes towards digitization are now super fast, and while many people around the world yearn to stroll through crowded stores and work in offices as usual, they will leave a lasting impression. Stores are failing. Competitors can be eliminated. Telecommuting begins to work so that neither employees nor employers see any reason to completely abandon it when the crisis is over.
In Sweden, Amazon hasn’t made its actual entry as an e-retailer, so this looks a little different. But we are already seeing bankruptcies between chain stores. Of course, companies have had problems before, but now development is accelerating.
The Corona crisis is a tragedy. of gigantic proportions, but that technology and companies are affected in this way? That teleworking finally begins is good. And it’s hard to cry every clothing store that disappears. But you have to remember what comes next. Amazon’s tendency to assume a monopoly position is not directly weakened by the prevailing climate. When an industry goes online, it tends to benefit global giant companies, which gain economies of scale when they make the world their market. A Google, a Netflix or an Amazon are ready to take over when the neighborhood store or local cinema is forced to grow again.
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