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Amazon takes off the gloves and makes bold move to buy Whole Foods. Will it work?

In the ever evolving battleground known as the Omnichannel Wars Amazon has dropped what could be the equivalent of an atom bomb in it's agreement to purchase Whole Foods. One article from Chain Store Age (http://www.chainstoreage.com/article/amazon-buying-whole-foods-market?tp=i-H43-Q5S-3mq-5klKX-1u-14Qs-1c-5kr1Q-PxptV&utm_campaign=BreakNew&utm_source=Experian&utm_medium=email&cid=14560&mid=85026709) summed it up nicely stating; Jeff Bezos is a master of PR," said Kelly Sayre, analyst, retail/CPG, IHL Group. "He is brilliant at timing announcements for coopting the news cycle. The drone story and Amazon Go stories of the last two years just happened to coincide with Black Friday weekend. It is not lost on us as analysts that this announcement just happens to coincide with the day(s) that Lidl opened its first stores in the U.S., and Walmart bought Bonobos (http://www.chainstoreage.com/article/walmart-acquire-bonobos?tp=i-H43-Q5S-3ms-5kyiv-1u-14Qs-1c-5l4Q8-11fZ5s&utm_campaign=BreakNew&utm_source=Experian&utm_medium=email&cid=14562&mid=85078193). And it came just after Aldi announced a 3.4 billion level of investment in expanding in the U.S." So adding onto that the Bezos historically looks at the long-game what role does Whole Foods play in the Amazon universe? Is this about Amazon getting a profitable business with high margins while leveraging Amazon's buying power and logistics to drive penetration and scale for Whole Foods? It also now puts Amazon squarely in an even broader competitive set that includes the likes of Acme, Giant, Publix and others that are most likely not looking fondly at the growing list of retail brethren that have been crushed under the Amazon wheels-o-retail and are shuddering in anticipation of trying to figure out how to compete against the likes of Amazon.
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