THREE YEARS AGO, as lockdowns forced consumers to move much of their spending online, a golden age for e-commerce appeared to be dawning. Optimistic investors, convinced that shoppers would keep buying on the internet, lifted valuations of e-merchants to frothy heights. Retailers old and new raced to expand delivery networks.
Today those heady days look like a distant memory. On August 3rd Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, reported 11% year-on-year growth for the second quarter of the year, excluding its cloud-computing division. That was better than expected—and provoked a roughly 10% jump in the company’s share price. Yet it was a fraction of the 42%
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