Bookshop.org is a little bit this for books

This seems like a good idea. I don't know how anyone else realistically competes with Amazon on their own.

Their main advantage is their shipping centers, not the website itself imo. Can't hurt to try though!

You mean just Amazon, and not Amazon Prime? The main advantage of Prime is shipping.

And in a way, you're just describing Amazon, just slightly different. The Amazon storefront isn't just Amazon, it's also a bunch of smaller sellers using Amazon services, either to sell through Amazon or ship from their own facility, as well as sell from their own site. A random example would be 3D filament from Prusa. You can buy it from Amazon that ships locally (and cheaper), or you can buy it directly from their site that ships from Czech Republic.

The only thing that feels centralized to me, is their payment system. If I already have an account set up on amazon, I'll more likely buy it through their website than one that's not. That way I don't have to put in my personal info into another site just to buy from them.

I think it's a solid idea. I mean there's probably some stuff to figure out so people don't get outcompeted on their own website or scams and the like... But kinda reminds me of how competing supermarkets will be close to each other so people can visit both and spend more. Or how shopping malls or shopping districts work with everything in close proximity / under one roof.

The biggest problem with Amazon is already this kind of operation they call "drop shipping." I don't think having it all done in a non-centralized system, in a non-insured way would be better. At least you still have the benefit of contacting a single point for customer service if something goes wrong. What guarantees would a federated knock off have to keep customers safe from scammers?

Floh Market fleamarket in German is loosely the start of this.

The company I work for actually already tried it like 20 years ago, got immediately scammed with an expensive credit card chargeback (we'd already passed the money on) and the boss pulled the plug on it.

I think most shops don't want you to see competitors prices and be able to swap to them with a click. They were like walled gardens and only begrudgingly use Amazon because some people think the rest of the internet is scary and don't trust it.

Amazon already shows us where that approach goes. It results in a melting pot of the cheapest possible crap.

You're describing AliExpress.

Hey, can we also have local services, too? For example, if someone needs a magician or mind-reader / fake psychic in the Midwest, I'm your guy.

You know how Amazon has a bunch of drop shipment crap that’s exactly the same but with a different brand? Yeah, that’s what this will turn into.

You could have a company that curates and manages which stores get “federated” in but they’ll have costs and that means overhead and someone has to pay for that.

The participants will have to standardize on an API for accurate inventory, shipping calculations and guarantees, tax information, product details, reviews, etc.

You’re basically recreating what Amazon already does. Walmart, Target and others do this, too. But those stores run the storefront and simply pass on orders. Unless you can make it more cost efficient than selling through the big storefronts or add value in some way, it’s dead in the water.

Problem is that a shop probably doesn't want to show you listings from their competitors, and price aggregators don't want to share their listings with other price aggregators because they would lose their kickback if you buy from another referrer.

What you describe already exists in a non-federated way as these modern "marketplace" platforms like Amazon, where many third-party sellers can all list the same product at different prices and the platform aggregates all of the listings into one product page. Amazon is not the only site that does this.

If you had a federated protocol to implement this kind of marketplace, then you'd be adding an extra middleman to the transaction, because you'd need to compensate both the server that hosts the vendor's listing and the server that showed that listing to the buyer. This might make prices higher for consumers or margins thinner for sellers.

I don't think it's impossible in theory but it would need some good business experience to pull off successfully. You'd basically be competing with all of the incumbent giants (Amazon) right off the bat.

Unless your product is better priced than the other sellers, why would you want to be there?

Competing with the likes of Amazon can't just be done in software alone. Each merchant would need to handle actually shipping out products themselves, that's the real barrier to entry. And what of consumer protection, how do you keep this platform from being overrun by scammers and bots?