While the first wave allowed Amazon to increase its market share, the second wave will considerably increase its domination.

Nicolas Barré takes stock of a current economic issue.

This is the big winner of the second wave: Amazon is as essential as it is criticized.

Amazon symbolizes the ambiguity that inhabits us.

The confined consumer that we are can no longer do without it and the citizen that we are also laments the damage it causes in small businesses.

This is what one might call the Gafa paradox.

The service of Amazon, Google or Facebook is all the more effective as these colossi crush the competition.

The more countries confine themselves, the more they reduce social interactions and the more these services flourish.

Amazon is the reverse side of the virus, a kind of oxymoron of commerce.

The less physical trades there are, the more this trader grows and earns profits.

And nothing seems to stop it.

Stores are closing, Amazon is hiring.

The American giant employs more than a million people against 30,000 ten years ago.

There aren't many other organizations that have such a large staff.

The Chinese Army has 2.3 million people, the US distributor Walmart is just over two million.

But none are aware of the growth of Amazon which has created 400,000 jobs since the start of the year.

At this rate, Amazon is growing by the equivalent of a Carrefour in nine months.

It's not just small businesses that can be afraid of it.

In the third quarter alone, Amazon had sales of $ 96 billion, more than Carrefour in a year, and made a profit of six billion.

And that was before the second wave of the virus.

The first wave allowed it to increase its market share, the second wave will accentuate its domination.

That said, Amazon is not alone in taking advantage of this period.

The French eCommerce champions like Cdiscount and Fnac.com are not left out.

The shock of confinement also led local retailers to organize themselves in the face of this tsunami, in particular by developing what is called "click and collect" as booksellers do with sites such as Placedeslibraires.fr or Parislibrairies.fr .

The problem is that the virus crisis is accelerating the digital shift.

But it takes time and money to adapt to such massive changes.

In the midst of a crisis, this is what is most lacking.

For many traders, unfortunately, the story moves too quickly.