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When I saw the headline I said, "Ugh. That sounds like something MG Siegler would write." Then I saw that he had wrote it and I said, "I bet half of it is really about Apple..." I guess if nothing else you know what you are going to get from Siegler...
Wait, just which game are we talking about here? I thought it was chess and checkers but now we're on to cards. I'm only sort of kidding -- Bezos certainly does seem like a genius to me, no argument there. But this is just the author going "No, you don't get it, he's so smart!"
(Also, as it happens, the above would tend to be a terrible poker strategy.)
He said the same thing in all the paragraphs as in the headline - Bezos is playing a smart game that the rest of us don't get. So what exactly is that game?
A consistent problem I've seen with e-books and streaming video is lack of live content, in particular breaking & current news. Apple provides some live sports, and just added SkyNews, but that's all third-party encapsulated content limited to AppleTV. Google scrapes the Web for news, but just gives pointers to content instead of packaging it. Bezos isn't buying a newspaper, he's buying a content-gathering service -…
There's something else going on here.
> Occasionally, you’ll have to show those cards and win a hand to prove that you can. But the rest of the time you call and fold, as you await the monster to take the entire pot. Wait, just which game are we talking about here? I thought it was chess and checkers but now we're on to cards. I'm only sort of kidding -- Bezos certainly does seem like a genius to me, no argument there. But this is just the author going "…
I thought that was a pretty poor article - no real argument and essentially a mixed metaphor between the title (chess) and the body of the article (cards/poker). The bit about "negative cash cycles" seems hopelessly outdated - comparing Amazon to bricks and mortar companies seems appropriate to 2002, not 2013.
As evidence, I'd point to a great negative working capital businesses. Dell. No one's arguing that Dell is a super business thanks to the cash it generates because of its negative working capital cycle.
Bezos is obviously brilliant. It's possible that he made the decision to stick to low margin businesses because he knows that won't attract competition. That would be counter-intuitive and pretty brilliant if you're certain you can out-execute your competitors in the low margin space.
> Occasionally, you’ll have to show those cards and win a hand to prove that you can. But the rest of the time you call and fold, as you await the monster to take the entire pot. Wait, just which game are we talking about here? I thought it was chess and checkers but now we're on to cards. I'm only sort of kidding -- Bezos certainly does seem like a genius to me, no argument there. But this is just the author going "…
I don't like the article. Full of sensationalist filler with little real content. What's his point? That stock price reflects the perceived expected value of the company now and in the future? He never really connects Amazon's investment into its infrastructure with Bezos' purchase of a newspaper. He talks about corporate profits as if they are a bad thing (and uses Apple as his sole example) - what about the second largest company in the world? Exxon Mobil hasn't had the same pattern as Apple at all. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples as well. So how does one data point prove his point that withholding profits is a good idea (and I'm not saying it isn't, I'm just confused by his argument)?
Anyways, yes Bezos is trying a strategy of targeting long-term growth. He makes that abundantly clear. Will it work out? Is he really a genius? Honestly, it's too early to really say definitively, isn't it? But that's boring, so no one would write an article saying that.