The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (48 page)

Will antitrust authorities eventually come to scrutinize Amazon and its market power? Yes, I believe that is likely, because the company is growing increasingly monolithic in markets like books and electronics, and rivals have fallen by the wayside. But as we have seen with the disputes over sales tax and e-book pricing, Amazon is a masterly navigator of the law and is careful to stay on the right side of it. Like Google, it benefits from the example of Microsoft’s antitrust debacle in the 1990s, which provided a powerful object lesson of how aggressive monopolistic behavior can nearly ruin a company.

These are not fever dreams. They are near inevitabilities. It’s an easy prediction to make—that Jeff Bezos will do what he has always done. He will attempt to move faster, work his employees
harder, make bolder bets, and pursue both big inventions and small ones, all to achieve his grand vision for Amazon—that it be not just an everything store, but ultimately an everything company.

Amazon may be the most beguiling company that ever existed, and it is just getting started. It is both missionary
and
mercenary, and throughout the history of business and other human affairs, that has always been a potent combination. “We don’t have a single big advantage,” he once told an old adversary, publisher Tim O’Reilly, back when they were arguing over Amazon protecting its patented 1-Click ordering method from rivals like Barnes & Noble. “So we have to weave a rope of many small advantages.”

Amazon is still weaving that rope. That is its future, to keep weaving and growing, manifesting the constitutional relentlessness of its founder and his vision. And it will continue to expand until either Jeff Bezos exits the scene or no one is left to stand in his way.

Jeff Bezos, childhood portrait.
(Courtesy of Amazon)

Jeffrey Preston Bezos, age five, with his grandfather, Lawrence Preston “Pop” Gise, in Cotulla, Texas, in 1969.
(Courtesy of Amazon)

Bezos in 1982, as a senior at Miami Palmetto High School.
(Seth Poppel/Yearbook Library)

Ted Jorgensen in 1961.
(Photograph courtesy of Ted Jorgensen)

Ted Jorgensen in his bike shop, the Roadrunner Bike Center, March 27, 2013.
(Photograph by Benjamin Rasmussen)

Jackie and Mike Bezos at the 29th Annual Aspen Institute Awards in 2012.
(© Patrick McMullan/Photograph by Patrick McMullan)

Bezos relaxes at home with MacKenzie and his mother, Jackie.
(© David Burnett/Contact Press Images)

Jeff Bezos and Amazon employees.
(Courtesy of Laurel Canan)

Founding employee Shel Kaphan (left) with an early Amazon engineer.
(Courtesy of Laurel Canan)

Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos (center) celebrate with Amazon employees at a company costume party.
(Courtesy of Amazon)

Amazon and Deutsche Bank employees who worked on Amazon’s 1997 IPO celebrate with family members in Cabo, Mexico.
(Courtesy of J. William Gurley)