Their vertically-integrated logistics provides plenty of friction for switching.
Sure, you could type in a different URL. But the free shipping option will probably be slow if it exists, and you'll need to place several orders with different retailers if you want to buy products from disparate categories.
There's also the trust aspect. Would you really try to get a token discount on a new iDevice by purchasing it from a random redditor or a pop-up Shopify storefront? And where would those people get the cheaper devices, if Apple is providing Amazon with a cheap wholesale deal in exchange for control over who can list their products?
Machiavellian is such an odd word. People use it to mean mendacious, cunning, self-serving...but Machiavelli himself spent his later years in political exile.
His seminal work reads like a groveling apology masquerading as advice to the politicians who had banished him.
IMO, the word works fine for describing someone who gambled on their own dubious advice and lost. Even moreso if the loss stems from a cyclical event, like the boom/bust nature of financial institutions which let the Medicis buy their way to political power in the 1400s.
This is my go-to. "Hey, kids - let's learn how to cut glass tubes and produce gases like Hydrogen and Chlorine!" Most parents recoil.
But it's not really that dangerous in a well-ventilated, adult-supervised setting. The Hydrogen will make a nice "pop", and the chlorine might rust a few screws.
The important thing is to make the kids feel like they are learning about dangerous, forbidden knowledge. That'll help them stay safe, and encourage them to learn more.
People I talk to thought of it as a telescreen, not a video conferencing tool. That probably hurt sales.
I wonder if Meta could have made better pivots if they had accepted and embraced their untrustworthy image.