Nightly news said he's going to focus his next efforts on philanthropy, the Washington Post, and space travel. Maybe we'll see a little more from Blue Origin soon.
Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
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Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#542It’s weird he mentions 1-click as one of their crowning achievements. Couldn’t any software engineer do that in an afternoon?
1-click ordering is a product innovation, not a technical one
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#543So... Now that Jeff is retiring, whom I should address emails after various support teams fail at their jobs? Before it was jeff@amazon.com, now, I would assume, andy@amazon.com?
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I remember that era pretty fondly and I don't ever recall just typing in random URLs, except maybe jokey ones like sex.com or fuck.com for kicks. We had Yahoo's search engine at the time and worked well enough. And to a lesser extent Lycos/Hotbot/Inktomi/DMOZ. The pre-Google web was pretty interesting and a bit more sophisticated than gets credit today. I also feel you were less likely to discover retailers on the we…
It was really common to type in random words as domains expecting something. People would make mistakes so people would buy domains with common spelling mistakes.
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#545Earlier 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…
The irony is domains like books.com sounded like a sure winner but that only works for books. How would Jeff be doing today if he ran books.com and just sold ... books. bookswebservice (BWS) doesn't have that same ring to it.
BWS is actually an Australian liquor store brand. Beer-Wine-Spirits. Memorable enough once you get used to it as well.
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
BS dude. He wasn't laughed at. The man went to Princeton. Right next to other billionaires like Andy Florence. His family was rich etc... He was already a millionaire. It's not a rags-to-riches story by any stretch.
He went to Princeton because he was smart, not because his family was rich. It isn't a school of billionaires or something. The majority of Ivy League enrollment is regular kids from working class families. They all have the best need-based scholarship programs in the country. His dad was a Cuban immigrant who worked as an engineer at Exxon.
That's a nice song you're playing to yourself.
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Corporations should never be allowed to get this large. Make your case instead of dropping your groupthink everywhere. Why? And: What is the maximum size a corporation should be allowed to grow? Who gives that permission now?
It’s obvious. Too much power under one non elected person with very few checks. It’s similar to a dictator of a small country, with global scope.
All people only have 24 hours a day even if they're rich. It's easy to combat them if you care more than they do; all these huge tech companies have surprisingly little political power and constantly lose local battles to activist groups and retired homeowners.
Bezos can hire people to do things for him, but clearly this has limits, he isn't sending hitmen after Amazon critics even if he could pay them $1 billion Amazon shares each.
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#548Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#549"If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive."
Re: Email from Jeff Bezos to employees
#550Love him or hate him, Jeff Bezos has been a legendary figure in the world of business for over 25 years now. His focus on the long term has led to the tremendous success Amazon has undergone. When he started selling just books, he was laughed at by some people; but he had a why behind starting off with books. One thing is certain, Bezos has stayed consistent on his principles. His annual letters to his shareholders c…
BS dude. He wasn't laughed at. The man went to Princeton. Right next to other billionaires like Andy Florence. His family was rich etc... He was already a millionaire. It's not a rags-to-riches story by any stretch.
I always find comments like this interesting. This is similar to the comments I see whenever anyone says something remotely nice about a wealthy person on HN. What does going to Princeton have anything to do with being laughed at for selling books on the internet ? Who claimed he had a rags-to-riches story ? It oozes insecurity and envy.