Amazon.com (AMZN) stock has been an absolute stinker this year, plunging 23% over the course of 2014, as investors lost patience with the e-commerce titan’s nonexistent margins. And who can blame them? In the last 12-month period, AMZN raked in a whopping $81.8 billion in sales. Of those, a mere 0.2% of that trickled down to the bottom line.

Enough is enough. It’s time for Amazon to crank its margins and start hauling in some actual earnings.

To do that, a great first step would be bowing out of the streaming war that’s ramping up between AMZN, Netflix (NFLX) and Time Warner‘s (TWX) HBO.

Content Battles: Costly and Useless

Netflix is more or less the undisputed king of streaming video, and even still, NFLX stock got absolutely demolished yesterday as U.S. subscriber growth slowed dramatically. InvestorPlace‘s own Dan Burrows explains:

“Netflix was expecting to sign up 3.7 million global subscribers during the third quarter. Some Wall Street estimates were targeting closer to 4 million. So when U.S.-weakness caused NFLX to sign up only 3 million subscribers over that three-month period, of course traders pulled the plug.”

NFLX stock is now down more than 6% on the year, underperforming the S&P by about 8 percentage points in 2014. If the best streaming video company in the world can’t catch a break in the stock market, why in the world would an e-commerce company want to break into that market?

Of course, AMZN isn’t going up against just NFLX with its Amazon Prime Video offerings. HBO just fundamentally changed the streaming video landscape by offering its content up online on an a la carte basis. Not only will the HBO move put pressure on cable companies to rethink their age-old strategy of packaging tons of channels together, it will spark more entrants into the online video streaming industry … like CBS (CBS).

Which, if you can believe it, could pressure AMZN margins even further.

But don’t take my word for it. Even before the NFLX stock meltdown and HBO’s bold declaration of war, AMZN stock prices were threatened by Amazon Prime and its costly excursions into streaming content. InvestorPlace.com Editor Jeff Reeves elaborates:

“In a new research note entitled, ‘Amazon: Is Prime Instant Video a Total Waste of Money?’, Bernstein Research analysts Carlos Kirjner and Peter Paskhaver point to costs ‘depressing (Amazon’s) margins and hiding the profitability of its core business,’ and a survey of 1,000 consumers that shows a mere 13% consider video the most important reason for subscribing to Amazon Prime.”

Bottom Line

Amazon’s margins are pitiful. Investors are looking for a reason to exit AMZN stock, which has performed miserably in 2014. Heavy margin pressure is coming from Amazon Prime Video — a service whose content is very arguably inferior to those of the warring giants NFLX and HBO.

And Prime users don’t even care that the service exists.

Abandon your ambitions in streaming video, Amazon. In the long term, we’re all dead. Focus on making some money for your shareholders in this lifetime. Wall Street can’t wait forever.

As of this writing John Divine held no positions in any of the stocks mentioned. You can follow him on Twitter at @divinebizkid.