ANTITRUST UPDATE: Amazon is on its way to becoming the next Standard Oil, amassing inordinate market power to set the terms by which goods are bought and sold in the United States.

Amazon, in just 23 years, has gone from a website offering books at a discount to a behemoth with revenues that now surpass all of America’s department, grocery store and restaurant chains combined. Most worrisome is that the company dominates all e-commerce, which grows five times faster than brick-and-mortar retail, and is going to enter the financial services and healthcare sectors. This is in addition to its recent entertainment ventures and its new entry into the $8 trillion industrial market, providing everything from valves to industrial motors and maintenance supplies.

The company has a market capitalization value of $602 billion, which is, ironically, bigger than was New Jersey’s GDP in 2016.

Heh.