Wal-Mart's push in e-commerce

It seems to me that if Wal-Mart leaves this business unit and does not interfere with their autonomy, this might actually be a wildly successful venture. It does appear that they are investing the resources. The fact that the operation is in California,  far away from corporate HQ in Arkansas augurs well for success.  Reuters reports that:

"[A] new unit of the company called @WalmartLabs near Silicon Valley which is crunching mountains of data from social networks and riding a wave of smartphone adoption in hopes of capturing more sales for Wal-Mart online...

@WalmartLabs is aggressively hiring software developers and has started what could turn into a string of global e-commerce acquisitions on behalf of the retailer overseen by former Evercore investment banker Brian Roberts...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wal-mart-throws-weight-behind-165625757.html