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Amazon did not literally consume all of commerce. It built a powerful position across several connected businesses: selling its own inventory, hosting independent sellers, handling fulfillment, selling ads and subscriptions, operating physical stores, and running AWS. Those activities help explain its reach, but they are not interchangeable measures of retail market share.
What does “consumed all of commerce” actually mean?
It is a provocative way to describe Amazon’s reach, not a literal description of the whole economy. Amazon acts as both a retailer and an intermediary: it sells goods directly, provides a marketplace where other businesses sell, and earns revenue from services attached to those transactions. It also has businesses, such as AWS, that are not retail.
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That mix matters when judging Amazon’s size. The company’s 2024 net sales were $637.959 billion, but that figure includes cloud-computing revenue and seller-service fees as well as sales through stores. It is company revenue, not the value of every product sold on Amazon and not a measure of Amazon’s share of all commerce.
How Amazon’s businesses fit together
Amazon’s model combines transactions with services around those transactions. In its 2024 Form 10-K, the company reported these figures:
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| 2024 measure | Amount | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Consolidated net sales | $637.959 billion | Amazon’s company-wide revenue, including North America, International, and AWS; not total retail merchandise value. |
| Online stores sales | $247.029 billion | Amazon’s reported sales through its online stores. |
| Physical stores sales | $21.215 billion | Amazon’s reported sales through physical stores. |
| Third-party seller services | $156.146 billion | Revenue from seller arrangements, including commissions and related fulfillment and shipping fees; not the gross value of third-party goods sold. |
| AWS | $107.556 billion | Cloud-services revenue, not retail sales. |
Amazon also reported $387.497 billion in North America net sales and $142.906 billion in International net sales in 2024. Those are geographic segments, while the other figures are sales categories; they should not be added together as if they were all separate product lines. The company says service sales primarily include third-party seller fees, AWS, advertising, Prime membership fees, and some digital subscriptions.
Why the model can reinforce itself
Amazon’s own account of its business emphasizes price, selection, convenience, and delivery speed. Its mix of retail and marketplace activity gives shoppers access to goods sold by Amazon and by outside sellers in one place. Fulfillment and shipping services can help sellers reach customers through that same channel, while advertising and subscriptions add other revenue streams around shopping.
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This helps explain how Amazon became a broad commerce intermediary: more sellers and products can make the marketplace more useful to shoppers, while shopper traffic can make the platform attractive to sellers. That is a description of the business logic, not proof that every seller benefits or that every shopper gets the lowest price.
How much of ecommerce does Amazon control?
There is no single market-share number in the available figures that establishes Amazon’s current share of all U.S. or global commerce. Estimates depend on what is being counted, which competitors are included, the geography, and the year. Company revenue, retail sales, and gross merchandise value (GMV)—the value of goods transacted—are different measures.
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| Estimate | Scope and date | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| About 40%; estimates of 50% or higher considered more credible by the report | U.S. online retail; discussed by the House Judiciary Subcommittee in 2020. | A historical committee assessment, not a current share of all retail or commerce. |
| More than 69% since 2015; another estimate was above 82% in 2022 | GMV among Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Target; estimates cited in the FTC and state plaintiffs’ 2024 complaint. | A litigant’s complaint citing outside estimates for four selected platforms—not an official government measurement or a share of all commerce. |
These figures cannot be collapsed into a current, general-purpose market-share claim. The 2024 filing’s revenue figures answer a different question: how much revenue Amazon recorded, not how much of the retail market it controlled.
What do shoppers and sellers gain—and what is disputed?
Amazon reports that independent sellers in the U.S. sold more than 4.5 billion items in 2023 and averaged more than $250,000 in annual sales per seller that year. Those are company-reported figures, not an independent survey of seller outcomes. They show that the marketplace can be a substantial sales channel, but they do not establish how dependent sellers are on it or how profits are distributed.
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The FTC and state co-plaintiffs allege that Amazon’s practices can harm competition for both shoppers and sellers. Their complaint describes alleged markets for online superstores and online marketplace services, and alleges that Amazon:
- Can bury sellers’ offers when they offer lower prices on other websites.
- Conditions Prime eligibility on using Fulfillment by Amazon.
- Replaces organic search results with paid advertisements and favors its own products.
- Charges fees that, the complaint alleges, can approach half of a seller’s revenue.
These are allegations, not settled findings. The FTC’s Chair, Lina M. Khan, said in September 2023 that the complaint alleged Amazon was using monopoly power “to enrich itself while raising prices and degrading service” for shoppers and businesses. That was her characterization of the case, not a court ruling.
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Amazon contests the claims. On its Competition page, the company said: “The lawsuit filed by the FTC today is wrong on the facts and the law, and we look forward to making that case in court.” Amazon’s position is that its investments and innovations increase competition, improve selection, and lower prices. That, too, is the company’s position rather than a judicial finding.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Is Amazon a monopoly?
That depends on the relevant market and on what the evidence establishes. A large business or a high estimate for a narrowly defined set of online platforms does not, by itself, settle whether a company has monopoly power under the law. The FTC’s case frames the issue around alleged online-superstore and marketplace-services markets; Amazon disputes the allegations.
The case was active in the court record described by the FTC and the scheduling order available for this article. The FTC case page lists a September 30, 2024 order on Amazon’s motion to dismiss and an October 31, 2024 second amended complaint. A separate amended scheduling order signed June 4, 2025 set a bench trial for February 9, 2027. Court schedules can change, so the date should not be treated as a guarantee of when the case will be decided.
What the claim gets right—and what it leaves out
Amazon’s influence comes from being more than a store: it combines direct retail, a third-party marketplace, seller services, advertising, subscriptions, physical retail, and cloud computing. That reach gives the company multiple ways to participate in commerce, and it has prompted serious competition allegations that Amazon disputes.
But “all of commerce” overstates what the available evidence shows. Revenue is not market share, estimates for selected online platforms are not estimates for all commerce, and allegations in an active case are not findings of fact. The most accurate description is that Amazon became a major, diversified commerce intermediary—not that it took over every market or every sale.
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