As the daily drumbeat of all political news all of the time continues on, there are many business stories that will most likely have larger, long-term implications. And two of these come to mind.

The first is Amazon’s proposed acquisition of food purveyor Whole Foods for nearly $14 billion (€12 billion) that was announced in June. On the surface, it appears to be another vertical integration/domination play by Amazon by applying the scale-distribution-logistics model that has become an all-too-familiar trope in business news coverage. However, what if this is actually a cover for something that’s NOT working at Amazon?

Overwhelming or overreaching?

In the last technology rise-up and ultimate breakdown was the now incredibly disappointing AOL acquisition of TimeWarner in 2000 for a still jaw-dropping $165 billion (€139 billion). Back in 2000 when this merger was announced, it had all the earmarks of the “new paradigm” of vertical inte