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Who’s afraid of Jeff Bezos?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- forkandwait 13y agoReinvest in infrastructure and put quality ahead of everything, including dividends and share price? Wow, what a concept...
- chatman 13y agoSurprisingly, no mention of Washington Post. That keeps him firmly up there in the zone of evil. > Congratulations, sir The tone seems like that of a Bozo fanboy.
- dboat 13y agoI agree about the tone. The information makes a nice enough point, but the tone is a bit much. Edit: Also, is it normal for a post to get so many of its comments deleted? I thought we collectively moderated through scorn and disapproval, some of those comments were interesting.
- akulbe 13y agoWhat makes his buying WaPo evil? Seriously. At all. Anything?
- mynameishere 13y agoThere's nothing particularly evil about Bezos buying the WP, but it's another step in my long-held belief that all of the major traditional news organs will be controlled by people who make their money elsewhere.
- forkandwait 13y agoThat might actually be better for said news organs.
- jmduke 13y agoI think that's a better alternative than having traditional news organs being controlled by people who make their money from those news organs. (I would argue the best alternative is ownership by individuals/organizations who have no financial stake whatsoever in journalism.)
- lostlogin 13y agoExcellent point. There is another category of bad owners too, state owned. I'd almost prefer that to the square metre of adverts per story that the local rag produces though.
- jsankey 13y agoState controlled media is certainly bad, but that is not implied by state ownership. In my experience state owned organisations provide better quality journalism than their commercial counterparts, and the gap is widening as commercial media race each other to the bottom.
- CrankyPants 13y agoPerhaps better than mainstream, ad-supported commercial counter, but that's hardly the gold standard. "Not as terrible as those who go whoring for ad dollars" isn't a ringing endorsement. State-funded is not terribly far off, either: if funding depends to any real degree on the political climate, then the conflicts are unavoidable. The line between state-owned and state-controlled is incredibly thin, and is only one catastrophe away from being wiped out.
- samg 13y agoPlease read the post with a heavy dose of sarcasm mixed with admiration :) I'd very much like to see formidable challengers arise. And I actually wrote this post a week before Bezos bought the WaPo, although I think it only underscores the point.
- chatman 13y agoBefore you write anything again on Bozo or Amazon, please read http://stallman.org/amazon http://stallman.org/amazon. If you have already read it, fine.
- hef19898 13y agoI just read through that link. What a nice list of naive points. Well, maybe I miss some context on the UK angle, i can make some comparisons with the german one. The sweatshop warehouses, yeah. And you really think when you order a bokk by your local book store the people in the warehouse sending are treated any better? In this part of logistics, and I'm not at all proud of that, one of the easiest ways to cut costs (and everyone operating a warehouse will do that since logistics is regarded by most people as costs) is HR. The part of being ordered around by a computer, welcome to logistics in the 21st century. And that part is true for truck drivers, too. How are books delivered to your local book store again? If you think the boys and girls delivereing parcels for UPS and the like are treated any better, forget it. Most of them aren't even employed by these companies anymore, they are mere sub-contractors. And at least were I live, the credit of killing local, independant book stores goes to big bookstore chains and not Amazon. Quite ironic that these chains are now trying to get a share of the eBook market using the same DRM techniques everybody is blaming Amazon for. And this tax evading scheme. Hell I worked for big company that operated at the same site for more tha a decade before they payed ANY taxes there. The COO was quite sad they finally had to. Most european big corps are doing the very same thing with branches in, say, Delaware. All that is not to say I consider all this to be good or even OK. It's just the way it is. Classical case of hate the game, not the player. But I don't think Benzos is troubled a lot by all this.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- beautybasics 13y agoLarry-Sergey & Google is far more feature proof company Amazon - Solves easy problems at large scale Google - Solves complex problems at large scale
- forkandwait 13y agoGoogle -- solved a single very important problem really well by applying a well known tool (SVD and graph networks) to a novel example, also made android, otherwise not very exciting. Furthermore, brick and mortar problems are hard -- things break, rot, get lost, require staff to move them around, etc. Not to poo-poo Google or any other pure software company, but it isn't harder because its on a computer, it's actually easier.
- gbog 13y ago> not very exciting So you are "unexcited" by Glass, Loons, Earth/map/streetview, Go, etc.?
- forkandwait 13y agoStreetview is cool. I guess I am impressed by good navigation algorithms. Loons, glass, Go, lots of aerial data -- yeah, impressive, sure.
- sliverstorm 13y agoThey don't really make any money on those things, at least yet.
- agotterer 13y agoAnd lets not forget self driving cars
- enraged_camel 13y ago>also made android This is a common misconception. Google didn't "make" Android. They acquired it by purchasing Android, Inc.
- altoz 13y agoMarissa Mayer's going to be on this list shortly.
- eulerphi 13y agoShe's pretty and smells good but I think we need some more solid proof.
- jonchang 13y ago@shit_hn_says
- jmduke 13y agoThink about how much you hear about Yahoo in 2013. Think about how much you heard about Yahoo in 2011.
- ajkjk 13y agoEverytime I hear about Yahoo it's because we're all collectively cringing at yet another ridiculous thing they did. Or is that not how everyone feels?
- TheLegace 13y agoIt's funny that's the case. But Yahoo is picking up on demographic that's slowly but surely adapting the Internet. My mom being a great example. She's been on the Internet as long as I have, but I would say she's adapting now. Unfortunately using Facebook, but also Youtube and all of her services from Yahoo(mail, news, search). Say what you will about Marissa Mayer(I don't know enough about her). But she's making right decision on who her market is and although growth may be slower, I can see a larger number of people retiring that are going to be spending all sorts of time on Yahoo. Since HN is the anti-thesis of the Yahoo demographic, I think there is a more nuanced and emotional approach that Yahoo is taking. But I could be wrong. edit: Also if anyone from Yahoo read this, please fix the problem with Yahoo mail and Chromium in Linux. My mom is annoyed by being asked to upgrade(Safari or Firefox) and asked to change the theme.
- lvs 13y agoThere's a lot of overlap between business commentary and sports commentary.
- michaelwww 13y agoWhat does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
- tempestn 13y agoSports commentary has been called (paraphrase) 'a business built on talking about the results of a weighted random number generator'. I expect that parent is using this comparison to express a judgement on the value of the article...
- michaelwww 13y agoTrue story: I just woke up with a dream. In it, I was suggesting to political commentator William Kristol that Jeff Bezos was the new Steve Jobs who could fill the void left by Jobs passing. Never underestimate the power of the narrative ;-)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- snowwrestler 13y agoIt's a good question: who in technology is afraid of Bezos? While a lot of technology leaders might admire Bezos for his leadership of Amazon, I wonder how many fear him. Most of what Amazon does, does not compete with technology companies. In the few places they do, they're not a juggernaut. For example, despite years of effort, the Kindle Fire has not significantly harmed the market share or margin of the iPad. Google and Samsung have done far more damage to Apple. And Amazon's media sales are not much of a threat to Apple: they haven't stolen significant share, and Apple does not try to make money on content anyway. I think there are a lot of people who do fear Bezos, but they are mostly retailers and hosting companies.
- selectiveshift 13y ago> Most of what Amazon does, does not compete with technology companies. In the few places they do, they're not a juggernaut. Since when is AWS not a juggernaut...
- ankitml 13y agoRackspace is slowly eating AWS up. Their customer service is unmatchable.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoI've found their customer service to be great, but pathetic from a technical perspective (i.e. they're very nice and apologetic when shit goes south, but its still going to be a while before they figure out how to fix it). And slowly eating up AWS? No. That's Digital Ocean eating the lower end of the market. Rackspace outsources their CDN to Akamai, and their Cloud experience is damn near abysmal.
- justinsteele 13y agoDo you have a source? From conversations in my tech groups, it seems people are moving away from Rackspace. Not to AWS specifically. Either way, I wouldn't have made the statement originally as I don't have any proof and I'm curious if they both released active customer #s that I missed?
- area51org 13y agoNot much new here — who doesn't already realize this — and Heroku does not belong on the list of EC2 competitors, given that they actually host on EC2. There's a big difference between IaaS and PaaS.
- jordanthoms 13y agoWell, AWS has been making moves more towards Heroku PaaS territory with elastic beanstalk, rds, etc.
- curiouslurker 13y agoI will make the bold claim that within 10 years amazon will fall apart at the seams like a cheap suit in a storm. You cannot run a non profit forever no matter how large your market share is or how obsessed you are about customers. The culture (from what we can glean from the excerpts of the new book on Bezo's) is also toxic and is unlikely to produce an enduring successful company. Senior execs can't pass gas without Bezos' permission? When he steps down, there is unlikely to be the continuity that produces great enduring companies.
- hacknat 13y agoThey are hardly a non-profit. He is maybe the most aggressive CEO in the US right now for putting money back into the company. Amazon's cash flow is insane, if they put the brakes on reinvestment right now, they would be making billions and billions per quarter.
- hncommenter13 13y ago1. I'm not so sure about that. According to the most recent financial statement[1], AMZN hasn't generated much in the way of net cash from operations over the past 12 months. Worse yet, they're spending an amount in excess of that on investments (some of which is really capitalized operating expense, like internal software development, that companies like MSFT expense directly). In fact, for the 12 months ended 6/30/2013, the only reason ending cash was greater than beginning cash was because they undertook financing transactions (selling stock, issuing debt, etc.) See the section that discusses "free cash flow," which is in itself a non-GAAP measure, as it omits non-avoidable expenses like operating lease payments, principal repayments on debt, etc. In other words, even that measure doesn't really represent distributable cash. 2. Unlike SaaS companies that sign multi-year contracts as their main source of revenue, the vast majority of Amazon's revenue is products, for which revenue is recognized almost immediately. Over time, then, the cash the company collects should roughly correspond to its GAAP income, unless services that are paid up-front for consumption over time increase as a % of its revenue (e.g., reserved instances, annual subscription fees, etc). In other words, it is unlikely to profitlessly generate cash; the two should rise or fall together. 3. Amazon is a fearsome competitor. But ORCL makes vastly more money. In fact, when Walmart's revenues were the size Amazon's are today (in the early 80s, roughly, adjusting for inflation), it was far more profitable then than Amazon is today--despite having to operate stores and truck fleets. [1] http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312513303204/d542614d10q.htm http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/00011931251...
- stevewillows 13y agoI admire Bezos tactic of reinvesting in new markets. It's something that the other 'kingpins' in the article haven't done as well. Beyond that, he's done quite well in these markets.
- badman_ting 13y agoWell, whoever doesn't had better start. His empire is huge and just getting started. And he is by all accounts a formidable thinker. I have a lot of respect for him, as opposed to biz-mag dorks like Ballmer.
- saabster27 13y agoLet's not overlook Jack Ma of Alibaba. When it started Taobao in China to compete with eBay China, eBay had 85% of the online auction market in China. Within a few years, eBay was forced out of the China market completely. And if one looks at Taobao closely, its model is much friendlier to small businesses and that's the main driver of its success. I wouldn't be surprised if Taobao starts competing with eBay globally within the next few years. And then there is alibaba.com...
- r00fus 13y agoChina is not a normal market. It's clear that the communist party has their hands in all the pies, and where they can promote Chinese companies, foreign ones will suffer intense competition or be forced out of the market. I'll start paying attention when Taobao actually competes outside of China before proclaiming it's success over eBay.
- snambi 13y agoIf everyone is is afraid of Amazon, then Amazon should be afraid of everyone. Potentially any one of them can topple amazon. The truth is, amazon hasn't killed any companies other than certain old bookstores. Have they killed walmart, costco, ebay, target, macys ? Nope, not even close.