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Amazon pops up more shops

But why would you go to an Amazon store?

Amazon will be opening more brick-and-mortar stores in shopping malls in the US, apparently.

The $100bn-a-year retail nemesis of High Street quietly opened its first pop-up stores in late 2014, currently operates around a dozen in stealth mode, and will have up to 100 by next year, according to Business Insider.

But why would you go to an Amazon store when the company can deliver the same day, and typically offers superior prices and return conditions than Ye Olde Analogue Shoppe? Amazon is poised to make its thousands of casual delivery staff redundant as it embraces a creepy, posthuman future, with skateboarding drones dropping off the goods (if the hype is to be believed).

Amazon's shops are little more than a tasteful collection of tablets on which to order something from the Amazon warehouse. The "little more" is a fulfillment function: a bunch of parcels in the back that you can collect.

So why go to an Amazon store? It's partly to ensure that Amazon's own mobile shopping terminals (aka "Kindles") and eavesdropping tools (aka "Echo") remain visible. Just as the parasite needs to keep the host alive, Amazon needs the High Street and the mall just a little longer. ®

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