For Wal-Mart and Amazon, the First Round of a Price Fight - NYTimes.com

Just last week, I tweeted from a Wal-Mart complaining that their site-to-store pickup service was shabby at best. Then a reported from the Wall Street Journal called me (from the tweet!) and said he is writing an article on Wal-Mart fighting the like of Amazon. Wal-Mart felt its Site-To-Store service was a perfect strategy against Amazon, who have no offline equivalent. If I were Wal-Mart though, I would look at Blockbuster vs Netflix - is Blockbuster's offline presence really giving it an advantage over Netflix?

I find it terrific that WalMart has some serious competition now. The surprising (maybe really, unsurprising) thing is that their major competitor is a totally online company. This is competition is going to lead to serious continued innovation in online product delivery and also offline product delivery, as Wal-Mart learns to deliver even cheaper / better with the burden of their overhead. In the end, as always, we consumers win.

For Wal-Mart and Amazon, the First Round of a Price Fight - NYTimes.com