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acquisitions
Posts Tagged “
Jeff Bezos
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acquisitions
Jeff Bezos invests undisclosed amount in Twitter
The favorite downtime-riddled platform for sharing the lumps life gives you in 140 characters or less, Twitter, has received a hot investment infusion of an undisclosed amount from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital. Spokesperson Biz Stone promises everyone that "Twitter will become a sustainable business supported by a revenue model," though they must have been a bit more specific when pitching to Bezos and Sabet. Sabet, for his part, earned himself a seat on Twitter's board with the deal. [Twitter Blog]
mine is bigger
Keeping Bezos, Ellison and Schmidt safe cost $3.4 million last year
Keeping Oracle CEO and cofounder Larry Ellison safe cost the company $1.7 million over the fiscal year ending May 31, 2007. Most of that money went to guards at his homes as well as installing and repairing home security systems, according to Oracle's SEC filings. Part of Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos's 2007 compensation included $1.2 milion for personal security. Google CEO Eric Schmidt spent $475,000 on security in 2007. A lot of the money probably goes to security precautions that might seem a lot more like luxuries than necessities. More »
google
Street View finally coming to Seattle
The Google Street View car was Spotted in Microsoft Country last week after launching in many smaller markets around the country first. Apparently the drivers, rather than use some fancy, newfangled Internet doohickey, simply burn the data captured by the rooftop camera array onto a CD and mail it back to Mountain View. The fact that Portland, Oregon and Juneau, Alaska were added to the list of Street View cities before Seattle inspired an April Fools article in local publication Naked Loon quoting a fictional Google spokesmonkey as saying the addition of Seattle was "extremely unlikely, save for some kind of highly localized disaster centered somewhere in Redmond." More »
quotable
Jeff Bezos just wants his shareholders to know he's still having sex
Attention, Amazon.com shareholders! Your money is not, repeat not in the hands of a sexless technomonk. Jeff Bezos took a moment to share some evidence of this at his annual shareholders meeting in Seattle. He reprised an anecdote about The Joy of Sex and its pivotal role in the early days of Amazon, lifted from his turn as Carnegie Mellon's commencement speaker last month: "I have a whole mess of children," then demurred, "I have to be a little delicate here because my parents are in the audience."
death of print
Attempt to spark Kindle flame leaves publishers cold at Book Expo
LOS ANGELES, CA — Consumers aren't the only ones not buying the Amazon Kindle pitch. At a presentation by Amazon.com representatives at Book Expo America on Saturday, publishers proved an equally tough sell. The reps held a special session to introduce publishers to Amazon's tools for uploading, publishing, and managing inventory for the Kindle. While the Digital Tools for Publishers system is slick and easy to use, the company wasn't particularly transparent about questions regarding the size and makeup of the market for Kindle e-books. More »
amazon.com
Jeff Bezos pitches the Kindle, BookSurge to skeptical mob at Book Expo America
LOS ANGELES, CA — Jeff Bezos pitched the Kindle to attendees at Book Expo America today in downtown LA, and then sat down with Wired editor and author of The Long Tail Chris Anderson for a little chit-chat. The takeaway? Much like Apple, Bezos uses the euphemism "customer experience" for "vertical integration," especially when it comes to the new Kindle and the requirement that print-on-demand publishers work with Amazon subsidiary BookSurge. After the jump, some choice quotes from before Anderson's questions (presumably from his notes, on regular old paper, pictured here) started to veer into extreme audience irrelevance when he brought up EC2 and Bezos' space ambitions. More »
taxes
Amazon.com exploits corporate welfare in the Keystone State
Texas isn't the only state going after Amazon.com for abusing the Supreme Court decision that requires mail-order retailers to collect sales taxes only on purchases in states where the company has a significant physical presence. In Pennsylvania, which is about to become host to a new Amazon distribution center, a local editorial is questioning the legality of the company avoiding state sales taxes by putting the warehouse titles under the names of subsidiaries. More »
e-commerce
Amazon.com encourages Kindle casual encounters
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos may not be a sexless monk, but what about owners of the Kindle e-book reader? Hoping to ignite the flame of consumer desire across America, Amazon has set up a page for people to "See a Kindle in Your City."Whether you want to meet at your local coffee shop, a public park, or your favorite watering hole is up to you. We hope you enjoy meeting your fellow Kindlers.I give the program two weeks before "Kindle owner seeks Tina for PnP" hits the site.
quotable
Jeff Bezos to remind John Doerr he's not a virgin
Speaking to young graduates, including eight new Amazon.com hires, at Carnegie Mellon University's commencement ceremonies on Sunday, Jeff Bezos admitted that he's a nerd who does "a mean interpretation of Captain Picard," but is not a sexless monk. That classification was suggested by Amazon board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins. Citing Bezos as an example, Doerr said the perfect founder "is undistracted because he has no sex life." Bezos intends to remind the sex-negative venture capitalist of his many children at Amazon's next board meeting. John, if you need a retort, just exclaim how "resourceful" Mackenzie Bezos is.
widgets
Bezos-backed Kongregate moves to Facebook platform
Kongregate, a sort of YouTube for Flash games backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos as well as Greylock Partners, will adapt some of its 4,500 games to Facebook's platform this week, Kongregate CEO Jim Greer told Inside Social Games. Kongregate makes money, or tries to, through advertising it shares with third-party game developers. Facebook doesn't need more gimmicky games, but with other widgetmakers like RockYou and Slide asking for (and getting) nine-figure valuations, don't expect the deluge to let up any time soon.
great moments in journalism
Portfolio scooped on Jeff Bezos by children's book
"Who knew that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos chose his wife in part because he felt she could, if necessary, get him out of a third-world prison?" Portfolio scribe Kevin Maney asked at the start of a Q&A for the magazine. The answer: Any 13-year-old who's read Jeff Bezos: The Founder of Amazon.com. Bezos goes on to explain to Maney that his criterion was really a proxy for resourcefulness. More »
jackpot
How Jeff Bezos makes ends meet on an $82,000 salary
Less than a week after Forbes sang the praises of his "modest $82,000 annual base salary," Jeff Bezos cashed in another 2.15 million shares of his Amazon.com stock, adding another $168 million to an earlier $135 million sale to boost his take for the last three months to a cool $300 million-plus. Not forgetting those less fortunate, Jeff also set aside 252 Amazon shares, or about .01 percent of last week's sales, for donation to a nonprofit.(Photo by Zhang Yong/ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)
earnings
Amazon.com, like Google, defies economic worries
Jeff Bezos can safely unclench his legs. Amazon.com reported first-quarter earnings of $143 million, up 29 percent from the same quarter last year, on sales of $4.14 billion, up 37 percent. Wall Street dithered over the forecast, sending shares down in after-hours trading, but the underlying reality is this: Amazon.com, already large, is growing at a prodigious rate at a time in its life when most expected it to slow down. And the growth had little to do with digital sales or Web services. No, people are simply buying more online, more often. CFO Tom Szkutak said the company saw no signs of a recession in U.S. shoppers' buying behavior. How can that be, as other companies complain of economic woes? More »
amazon.com
Wired publishes feature-length version of Jeff Bezos's PowerPoint
Wired spent 13 columns of fine print detailing the birth of Amazon Web Services, Jeff Bezos's scheme to rent out his online store's Web infrastructure to startups. The magazine stayed carefully on message; if you attended Bezos's talk at last Saturday's Startup School, you'll find the story extremely familiar. "You don't generate your own electricity," Bezos asks, rhetorically. "Why generate your own computing?" This is the same line Bezos has been peddling for years. Aside from the rehashed quotes, Wired did squeeze a few numbers out of a reluctant Bezos. The facts about Amazon Web Services, stripped of the hype, amount to roughly 100 words: More »
clips
Charlie Rose on Charlie Rose on the Internet, by Samuel Beckett
Over the years, Charlie Rose has hosted Silicon Valley titans like Wired editor Chris Anderson, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and Google cofounder Sergey Brin on his late-night public television interview show. When Facebook launched its Beacon advertising program in New York, Rose played master of ceremonies. But not until now, with the discovery of this clip titled "'Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett," has Rose effectively explicated the industry. More »
great moments in journalism
Fortune recycles its Jeff Bezos profile
There is only one story ever written about Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos: That he has defied the skeptics, has had the last laugh, and is now looking to the future. Fortune's latest iteration of the formula is no exception. It begins with an obligatory near-death experience — in this case, a not-quite-fatal helicopter ride near Bezos's West Texas spaceport. And then, Christlike, the escape from death, the resurrection, and the glory. The glory: A stock price driven up not by technical innovations like Amazon's Web services, but by expanding profit margins, the result of tightened R&D spending. Wall Street, not Bezos, has the last laugh, but that conclusion doesn't fit the formula.
ashley alexandra dupre
