Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

Post by narcissismo » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 11:23 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #231

> This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. It had a name, and that name was "Cadabra". It didn't become Amazon until Jeff watched a documentary about the Amazon River. His lawyer had already turned up his nose at "Cadabra", and Jeff was looking for something else. It's also worth noting that the idea didn't grow over time - Jeff always intended to build something like "Sears…

Post by ChrisRR » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 11:25 AM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #590

paxys wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. If you know what you want to buy, it takes seconds to find the absolute cheapest place on the internet to buy it. Then it's up to you to decide whether you trust the site or not. Brand name helps with perception, but definitely not discovery.

> Brand name helps with perception That used to be true with Amazon. Not anymore, not for me. Now I have to decide if I trust and endless array of 3rd party sellers. It is often just easier to buy from a manufacturer’s website since I know I’m getting the real thing and it’s not expired or otherwise screwed up. Maybe I pay a few more bucks, but I’m ok with that for a lot of things. (Exception: books and used)

Post by newswasboring » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 11:32 AM UTC

sobani wrote: post #828

baskire wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the market caps of each department spun out is likely greater than the current market cap of Amazon today. That is assuming the companies would all be as successful being spun out.

In a way that's the case with every company. Each part is more valuable on it's own, unless it's more valuable together with another part. :P btw, it looks like you have some sort of shadowban. I don't see any terrible comments among your last 20 or so, so you might want to ask @dang if he can look into your case.

Post by jonathanstrange » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 11:37 AM UTC

kevstev wrote: post #421

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that always stuck with me is I remember reading in a book about the internet long ago about how innovative the name Amazon.com was and how it was the future of internet business. It said it needs to be more memorable. You aren’t going to buy your books on Books.com you are going to use Amazon. Turned out to be very right. And this was in the pets.com era. Everyone thought you needed the most generic name po…

I think you are leaving out a really important aspect of the early internet- content discovery was really hard for users. If you were looking for something about Pets until google became dominant, you were just as likely, if not more likely, to type pets.com into your browser as you were to go to a search engine. Getting the initial traffic to your site was really hard in those days, the domain was really important f…

Post by morelisp » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 11:40 AM UTC

filoleg wrote: post #90

fakedang wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially if you can change the narrative from "evil capitalist who forces his workers to piss in buckets" to "pioneer O'Reilly tube colonist"

WaPo has publicized quite a few articles critical of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, even after WaPo was acquired. So this is something that seems to be just another baseless "jeff bad" take.