The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (51 page)

1
One explanation, according to Wikipedia, is that “a round manhole cover cannot fall through its circular opening, whereas a square manhole cover may fall in if it were inserted diagonally in the hole.”

2
Ron Suskind, “Amazon.com Debuts the Mother of All Bestseller Lists,”
Washington Post,
August 26, 1998.

3
Ibid.

4
Jeff Bezos, speech to Commonwealth Club of California, July 27, 1998.

5
Jeff Bezos, speech to the American Association of Publishers, March 18, 1999.

6
Steven Levy,
In the Plex
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), 34.

7
Jacqueline Doherty, “Amazon.bomb,”
Barron’s,
May 31, 1999.

8
George Anders, Nikhil Deogun, and Joann S. Lublin, “Joseph Galli Will Join Amazon, Reversing Plan to Take Pepsi Job,”
Wall Street Journal,
June 25, 1999.

9
Joshua Cooper Ramo, “Jeff Bezos: King of the Internet,”
Time,
December 27, 1999.

10
Stefanie Olsen, “FTC Fines E-Tailers $1.5 Million for Shipping Delays,” CNET, July 26, 2000.

11
Michael Moe, “Tech Startup Secrets of Bill Campbell, Coach of Silicon Valley,”
Forbes,
July 27, 2011.

Chapter 4: Milliravi

1
Jeremy Kahn, “The Giant Killer,”
Fortune,
June 11, 2001.

2
Evelyn Nussenbaum, “Analyst Finally Tells Truth about Dot-Coms,”
New York Post,
June 27, 2000.

3
Mark Leibovich, “Child Prodigy, Online Pioneer,”
Washington Post,
September 3, 2000.

4
Ibid.

5
Steven Levy, “Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think,”
Wired,
November 13, 2011.

6
“Amazon.com Auctions Helps Online Sellers Become Effective Marketers,” PR Newswire, August 18, 1999.

7
Scott Hillis, “Authors Protest Amazon’s Practices, Used-Book Feature Comes under Fire,” Reuters, December 28, 2000.

8
Jennifer Waters, “Amazon Faces ‘Creditor Squeeze,’ ”
CBS MarketWatch,
February 6, 2001.

9
Gretchen Morgenson, “S.E.C. Is Said to Investigate Amazon Chief,”
New York Times,
March 9, 2001.

10
Sinegal’s comments are drawn from my July 2012 interview with Sinegal, the recollections of Amazon executives, and Andrew Bary, “King of the Jungle,”
Barron’s,
March 23, 2009.

11
Monica Soto, “Terrorist Attacks Overwhelm Amazon’s Good News about Deal with Target,”
Seattle Times,
September 27, 2001.

12
Saul Hansell, “Amazon Decides to Go for a Powerful Form of Advertising: Lower Prices and Word of Mouth,”
New York Times,
February 10, 2003.

Part II

Chapter 5: Rocket Boy

1
Chip Bayers, “The Inner Bezos,”
Wired,
March 1999.

2
Mark Leibovich,
The New Imperialists
(New York: Prentice Hall, 2002), 79.

3
“Local Team Wins Unicycle Polo Match,”
Albuquerque Tribune,
November 23, 1961.

4
Albuquerque Tribune,
April 24, 1965.

5
Leibovich,
The New Imperialists,
73–74.

6
Ibid., 71.

7
Ibid., 74.

8
Jeff Bezos interview, Academy of Achievement, May 4, 2001.

9
“The World’s Billionaires,”
Forbes,
July 9, 2001.

10
Bayers, “The Inner Bezos.”

11
Brad Stone, “Bezos in Space,”
Newsweek,
May 5, 2003.

12
Mylene Mangalindan, “Buzz in West Texas Is about Bezos and His Launch Site,”
Wall Street Journal,
November 10, 2006.

13
Jeff Bezos, “Successful Short Hop, Setback, and Next Vehicle,” Blue Origin website, September 2, 2011.

14
Adam Lashinsky, “Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: The Ultimate Disrupter,”
Fortune,
November 16, 2012.

Chapter 6: Chaos Theory

1
Saul Hansell, “Listen Up! It’s Time for a Profit; a Front-Row Seat as Amazon Gets Serious,”
New York Times,
May 20, 2011.

2
Jeff Bezos, speech to the American Association of Publishers, March 18, 1999.

3
In 2012, my research assistant Nick Sanchez filed a comprehensive FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request with the U.S. Department of Labor for any complaints or compliance violations for Amazon.com from 1995 through the present day. In addition to the much-publicized heat complaints reviewed by the
Allentown Morning Call,
regional and subregional OSHA offices returned a few
dozen employee complaints, including bathroom-break issues at a call center in Washington; forklift horseplay in New Hampshire; improper tornado sheltering in Pennsylvania; and concerns like water-cooler mineral buildup, break-room mold, inadequate protective headgear, and harmful levels of noise and fumes. In all cases, Amazon responded to OSHA with evidence of compliance or immediately remedied the situation, and it settled the vast majority of concerns without need for OSHA inspection or citation. A $3,000 citation given to an Amazon Fresh center in Washington for not having an adequate emergency evacuation plan to deal with ammonia fumes was the most serious citation we found. But multijurisdiction FOIA requests have to be forwarded by the federal OSHA office to state and regional offices, and it is nearly impossible to obtain all such records for a company with a nationwide footprint as big as Amazon’s, even with a year of lead time.

4
In July of 2012, Amazon established its Career Choice tuition-reimbursement program to help fulfillment-center employees with three consecutive years of service return to school to continue their education. Amazon said it would cover up to $2,000 a year in tuition for up to four years for each employee.

Chapter 7: A Technology Company, Not a Retailer

1
Gary Rivlin, “A Retail Revolution Turns Ten,”
New York Times,
July 27, 2012.

2
Gary Wolf, “The Great Library of Amazonia,”
Wired,
October 23, 2003.

3
Ibid.

4
Luke Timmerman, “Amazon’s Top Techie, Werner Vogels, on How Web Services Follows the Retail Playbook,”
Xconomy,
September 29, 2010.

5
Shobha Warrier, “From Studying under the Streetlights to CEO of a U.S. Firm!,”
Rediff,
September 1, 2010.

6
Tim O’Reilly, “Amazon Web Services API,” July 18, 2002, http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1707.

7
Damien Cave, “Losing the War on Patents,”
Salon,
February 15, 2002.

8
O’Reilly, “Amazon Web Services API.”

9
Steve Grand,
Creation: Life and How to Make It
(Darby, PA: Diane Publishing, 2000), 132.

10
Hybrid machine/human computing arrangement patent filed October 12, 2001; http://www.google.com/patents/US7197459.

11
“Artificial Artificial Intelligence,”
Economist,
June 10, 2006.

12
Katharine Mieszkowski, “I Make $1.45 a Week and I Love It,”
Salon,
July 24, 2006.

13
Jason Pontin, “Artificial Intelligence, with Help from the Humans,”
New York Times,
March 25, 2007.

14
Jeff Bezos, interview by Charlie Rose,
Charlie Rose,
PBS, February 26, 2009.

Chapter 8: Fiona

1
Calvin Reid, “Authors Guild Shoots Down Rocket eBook Contract,”
Publishers Weekly,
May 10, 1999.

2
Steve Silberman, “Ex Libris,”
Wired,
July 1998.

3
Steven Levy, “It’s Time to Turn the Last Page,”
Newsweek,
December 31, 1999.

4
Jane Spencer and Kara Scannell, “As Fraud Case Unravels, Executive Is at Large,”
Wall Street Journal,
April 25, 2007.

5
David Pogue, “Trying Again to Make Books Obsolete,”
New York Times,
October 12, 2006.

6
Jeff Bezos, speech at Lake Forest College, February 26, 1998.

7
Walt Mossberg, “The Way We Read,”
Wall Street Journal,
June 9, 2008.

8
Mark Leibovich, “Child Prodigy, Online Pioneer,”
Washington Post,
September 3, 2000.

9
Clayton Christensen,
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
(Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 1997).

10
Jeff Bezos, interview by Charlie Rose,
Charlie Rose,
PBS, February 26, 2009.

11
David D. Kirkpatrick, “Online Sales of Used Books Draw Protest,”
New York Times,
April 10, 2002.

12
Graeme Neill, “Sony and Amazon in e-Books Battle,”
Bookseller,
April 27, 2007.

13
Brad Stone, “Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books,”
New York Times,
September 6, 2007.

14
Jeff Bezos,
The Oprah Winfrey Show,
ABC, October 24, 2008.

Part III

Chapter 9: Liftoff!

1
Ben Charny, “Amazon Upgrade Leads Internet Stocks Higher,”
MarketWatch,
January 22, 2007.

2
Victoria Barrett, “Too Smart for Its Own Good,”
Forbes,
October 9, 2008.

3
Jim Collins,
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 180.

4
Zappos Milestone: Timeline, Zappos.com, http://about.zappos.com/press-center/media-coverage/zappos-milestone-timeline.

5
Parija B. Kavilanz, “Circuit City to Shut Down,”
CNN Money,
January 16, 2009.

6
Ben Austen, “The End of Borders and the Future of Books,”
Bloomberg Businessweek,
November 10, 2011.

7
Annie Lowrey, “Readers Without Borders,”
Slate,
July 20, 2011.

8
Scott Mayerowitz and Alice Gomstyn, “Target Among the Latest Chain of Grim Layoffs,” ABC News, January 27, 2009.

9
Brad Stone, “Can Amazon Be the Wal-Mart of the Web?”
New York Times,
September 19, 2009.

10
Miguel Bustillo and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, “Wal-Mart Strafes Amazon in Book War,”
Wall Street Journal,
October 16, 2009.

11
Brad Stone and Stephanie Rosenbloom, “Price War Brews Between Amazon and Wal-Mart,”
New York Times,
November 23, 2009.

12
American Booksellers Association, Letter to Justice Department, October 22, 2009.

13
Spencer Wang, Credit Suisse First Boston analyst report, February 16, 2010.

14
Mick Rooney, “Amazon/Hachette Livre Dispute,”
Independent Publishing Magazine,
June 6, 2008.

15
Eoin Purcell, “All Your Base Are Belong to Amazon,”
Eoin Purcell’s Blog,
May 14, 2009, http://eoinpurcellsblog.com/2009/05/14/all-your-base-are-belong-to-amazon/.

16
According to court testimony, on Jannuary 29, 2010, the general counsel of Simon & Schuster wrote to CEO Carolyn Kroll Reidy that she “cannot believe that Jobs made the statement” and considered it “incredibly stupid,” http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases/show.php?db=special&id=306, page 86.

17
Motoko Rich and Brad Stone, “Publisher Wins Fight with Amazon Over E-Books,”
New York Times,
January 31, 2010.

Chapter 10: Expedient Convictions

1
Jeff Bezos, interview by Charlie Rose,
Charlie Rose,
PBS, July 28, 2010.

2
Fireside Chat with Jeff Bezos and Werner Vogels, Amazon Web Services re: Invent Conference, Las Vegas, November 29, 2012.

3
“Editorial: Spitzer’s Latest Flop,”
New York Sun,
November 15, 2007.

4
Vadim Tsypin and Diana Tsypin v. Amazon.com et al.,
King County Superior Court, case 10-2-12192-7 SEA.

5
Miguel Bustillo and Stu Woo, “Retailers Push Amazon on Taxes,”
Wall Street Journal,
March 17, 2011.

6
Aaron Glantz, “Amazon Spends Big to Fight Internet Sales Tax,”
Bay Citizen,
August 27, 2011.

7
Tim O’Reilly, blog post, Google Plus, September 5, 2011, https://plus.google.com/+TimOReilly/posts/QypNDmvJJq7.

8
Zoe Corneli, “Legislature Approves Amazon Deal,”
Bay Citizen,
September 9, 2011.