Shopify’s Pivot to an Integrator

One of the most important companies in making both of the non-Amazon value-chains work is Shopify, which is a platform, not an Aggregator. Google and Facebook may collect the customers, but it is Shopify (and WooCommerce, its open-source competitor) that provides the infrastructure for merchants to actually sell things online.

Many have argued that these announcements are related to each other: Shopify needs to build a customer-facing application in order to take-on Facebook, and the announcement of Facebook Shops is why. My takeaway is the opposite: the inevitability of Facebook Shops — thanks in part to a surprising culprit — is precisely why Shopify should not spend m... See more