Amazon.com Nears 10-Year Anniversary

mopslik writes "Amazon.com is nearing its 10-year anniversary. "Soon after Amazon.com Inc. debuted 10 years ago, Jeff Bezos and his handful of employees spent late summer nights packing books in a tiny warehouse, scrambling to ship a growing gush of orders. Today, the man who has grown accustomed to being hailed the king of Internet commerce runs a global powerhouse that did nearly $7 billion in sales last year, dealing in everything from banjo cases to wild boar baby back ribs." Although Bezos has drawn some ire from his collection of patents, there's no arguing that his company is one of the most successful online sites today."

Comments

Does Amazon have a birthday wishlist?

[callipygian-showsyst]

I want to buy it a present!

Patent absurdity

[Threni]

And make the most of it - for legal reasons, this'll be the last 10-year anniversary party you'll be able to have without obtaining prior written consent from Mr Bozo!

Will be interesting to see outcome of his patents

[team99parody]

It's interesting to see how Amazon's playing the patent game. In some ways it looks like they recgonise it's an absurd game and are taking out all these borderline patents that wouldd be a great case study as to why patent reform is needed.

If he does take that approch, he could be seen as a great hero to your average /. guy, with quite a bit of positive PR. Wonder if this segment of the market matters enough for him to do this.

yawn..

[ShaniaTwain]

..dealing in everything from banjo cases to wild boar baby back ribs.

Wake me up when I can buy banjo cases made out of wild boar baby back ribs.

One fine day...

[AtlanticGiraffe]

...my birthday will be a slashdot story :D

Commoditization

[DanielMarkham]

FTA --

"I think Amazon's biggest challenge is itself. They've really raised the bar for the entire industry," said Kurt Peters, editor of Internet Retailer, a monthly magazine covers the business.

Amazon is generally considered to be one of the pioneers in the field. If I remember my business theory correctly, there is a certain amount of time between when a new market opens up and when it becomes a commodity. Right now, the technical hurdles are still high enough to keep Mom and Pop out of the Amazon business (to a certain degree). But Amazon has obviously set the bar and defined the standard, even coming up with this distributed marketing deal where you can reommend books and get paid for it.
At some point, however, you've covered all the bases. Amazon is already selling everything imaginable on that site, and they're exploring a lot of the horizontal and vertical market tie-ins. To me, this means that the industry is ripe to move towards commoditization: farming out all the stuff that Amazon does and connecting the creator of the material directly to the consumer. My two cents only.

Learn Management, Kid!

Look out, would-be celebrants

[Junior J. Junior III]

I hear that Bezos has applied for a patent on the 10-year anniversary.

Buy it a present....

[htrp]

Give Amazon every patent you ever owned....

or if you never actually owned a patent, send Jeff a list of obvious ideas that he should patent.

Nice Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriusly, what does Amazon's patents have anything to do with their 10 year anniversary? Can't you have left that out of the story? What was the relevance here?

You may not like Amazon's patents, but it's pretty irrelevant to the subject at hand. To me, this was a cheapshot for the sake of pumping up RMS' and his hordes agenda.

I like how slashdot can't leave even this one story alone without trying to start a flamewar. The editors are the biggest trolls here.

Oh come on

[DrMrLordX]

Is this really news? Approaching a 10th anniversary, hmm? Are you going to run the same story when we actually reach their 10th anniversary? This is nothing more than a dupe in the making.

I suppose you could run a story about the aftermath of Amazon.com's 10th anniversary once it's all over, too. Fine journalism, that.

Amazon and patents

[daniil]

Actually, the one-click patent cited in the GNU link was really not so obvious after all. Even Tim O'Reilly, the man that offered $10,000 rewards for finding prior art to this, has later admitted this.

That's the problem with the patent game

[grahamsz]

If your competitors play it then your hand is forced and no large corporation can afford to NOT patent random crap.

For the most part these patents only exist to create some sort of nuclear stalemate - where your competitors are too afraid to sue you since it's certain that they violate some of your patents.

Re:That's the problem with the patent game

[FreeUser]

For the most part these patents only exist to create some sort of nuclear stalemate - where your competitors are too afraid to sue you since it's certain that they violate some of your patents.

You're joking, right? Surely you aren't really that naive.

Amazon has already sued Barnes and Noble for "violating" (read: independently developing) one-click purchasing capabilities on their competing website. In other words, Barns and Noble were competing, in age old fashion, by trying to make their on-line store at least as convinient and easy to use as their competitors' (Amazon, in this case).

Amazon is doing anything but collecting a portfolio of defensive patents...they are actively stockpiling offensive weapons to use against any competitor, anywhere, for any reason they like. Usually that reason is because said competitor is simply too successful for Bezos' taste.

Add to that his sleazy misrepresentation of PriorArt as an anti-patent cooperative (when in fact he was using it as his own private research group for strengthening his own patents), and you have one asocial prick. He may be a rich and successful asocial prick, and he may have built a company that, despite its despicable patent record, does have redeaming qualities (I buy on Amazon occasionally, and as a book shop it is quite good. However, as an "inventor" it leaves a lot to be desired), but his actions define him, nevertheless, as an asocial prick.

Secret of Success?

[webword]

I'd sum it up in one word: usability. Sure, there are other reasons, but the Amazon User Experience (UX) is outstanding. Few other sites compare in terms of ease-of-use.

(I'd say the same thing about Google too.)

Re:Secret of Success?

[Anonymous Monkey]

Yes, but it can be a pain if you want to suprise your wife with a gift, and it pops up on recently viewd items next time she checks amazon. From now on all anniversary gifts will come from brick-and-mortar stores and be purchased with cash

Re:Secret of Success?

[Deinhard]

I'll second that. I was thinking about my history with ecommerce a few days ago and looked up my old Amazon orders. My first order was Spear of Mars a short story compilation. That was on April 4, 1997. Since it was out of print, it wasn't shipped until Sept. 6, 1998. Amazon's system kept looking until it found a copy.

I've always been impressed with Amazon's experience. In fact, I'm considering an experiment this year to see if I can purchase all of my Christmas gifts just from Amazon.

Re:Secret of Success?

[Dolly_Llama]

You just need to be more imaginative. You browse for diamonds, making sure that an expensive diamond is left in the search history, then you go out and buy a cubic zirconia!

Amazon.com's success.

[OrangeStar]

It's no secret why Amazon.com has succeded when many other online stores have fallen. They have fairly good prices, good service, and deals(like the current $25+ free shipping). It is just as easy as going to a real store, with no downsides.

They have a steady dependable business model of selling almost everything.

Amazon.com just works.

Note: I'm just a happy customer.

Amazon versus Yahoo board posters

[FunWithHeadlines]

In the late 90s, I was one of those investing in Amazon stock. I used to read the Yahoo investment message board for Amazon, and I remember all those posters who were absolutely sure Amazon was going down. They used to post detailed diatribes about profit and loss estimates, and how Amazon was fooling everyone with their accounting, and that their end was going to be soon and hard.

Yeah, yeah, I know, you get those types on every Yahoo stock board, and some of them are just shorts trying to scare people away. But the meme on the Amazon board was that they were losing money on every sale...but making it up in volume! Hardy har har. These people were absolutely convinced that Amazon would never succeed at their profit margins. And indded, Amazon was losing money every quarter.

But Jeff Bezos kept saying that the important thing was growth and market share and mind share, and that to go to profitability too soon would be a mistake. The Yahooligans roundly laughed at Bezos for saying stuff like that. But in the end, Bezos pulled it off. Amazon survived the dot-bomb, and is a solid company. But I'll bet anything if I went to the Yahoo board today (I'm no longer an investor in them, so I don't check), they will still be saying that Amazon's end is nigh.

Shows you the value of ignorning conventional wisdom if you have a new idea and a strong vision of how to implemenent the idea in the long term.

Re:Amazon versus Yahoo board posters

[MsWillow]

Jeff has always been one darned smart cookie. Back when I worked with him at Fitel, he told me of how he once wrote a program to convert / translate the tape counter on several different VCRs, so that the American ex-pat community could figure out where on the tape their favorite tv show was located. Clever, and non-obvious.

I knew darned well he'd make money. He used to talk US Tax law at lunch, and how the IRS gives a company X years before they must show a profit. He used that time to build up his company, to be strong enough to compete.

He's good, and a decent dude, too, tho Ellie may not agree - Ellie usually lost at the lunch tab games played with Jeff and I :) Heck, Jeff even came to my wedding in 1988 - a Wiccan handfasting, back before Wicca really took off.

Good guy, Jeff. Hopefully, he learned from Graciella how to attract the best and brightest employees, and how NOT to treat them. Fitel was a bear of a place to work. I could not have survived without Jeff and his then-gf Annette St. Onge.

Who can take that over

[grahamsz]

Connecting the buyer and seller is all about trust.

Lots of people (myself included) would rather buy from amazon marketplace rather than eBay. Amazon probably take a bigger cut, but they provide decent customer service and bail you out when things go wrong.

Amazon have brand recognition and consumer confidence and it'll be a struggle for anyone else (particularly a non-profit organization) to garner that kind of support.

10 years

[niXcamiC]

This week amazon inc. filed a patent for keeping a dotcom open for 10 years. "We were the first to do this so I think its rightly ours" said amazon president Jeff Bezos.

Spammers.

[sadtrev]

One of my staff bought a book from them a year ago from a work account. Since then they've been sending me unsolicited offers for things I have no intention of buying.

Their e-mail contains no return or unsubscribe link. I believe that here in the UK that is illegal. I have struggled even to find a phone number or postal address on their website to send a cease-and-desist letter.

Yes, they're big and successful but their behaviour bears all the hallmarks of spammers.

barnesandnoble.com

[pickapeppa]

will have to blow out the candles TWICE when it's their tenth anniversary

How successful?

[syphax]

A quick glance shows that Amazon may actually achieve a level of zero net tangible assets (they've been in the red for years) this year. Similarly, another glance shows that 2004 was the first year Amazon actually made a real profit (2003 was about breakeven).

I am impressed, though, that Amazon actually hung in there through years and years of losses and now actually has a profitable, reasonably sustainable business.

5 easy steps

[drewness]

1. Go to amazon.co.uk
2. Click on the "Your account" button
3. Follow the link called "Update your communication preferences"
4. Sign in
5. Change your preferences. They're all pretty straight forward. There's even one called "Don't send me any messages that aren't related to my orders, bids or services that I sign up for directly."

Re:Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail

[maw]

So you're saying that overpaying for things is good for the economy?

Amazon's 10th anniversary

[nimblebooks]

I had a job interview over the phone with Jeff Bezos shortly after they launched (must have been Dec. 1995 or so). I got off the phone and my wife said, "He's a lot smarter than you, isn't he?" ;-) I wanted to take the job, but couldn't afford the 20% pay cut to $33K...

Nope,that's how patents are used by big pharma too

[Dioscorea]

For the most part these patents only exist to create some sort of nuclear stalemate - where your competitors are too afraid to sue you since it's certain that they violate some of your patents.

You're joking, right? Surely you aren't really that naive.... Amazon is doing anything but collecting a portfolio of defensive patents...they are actively stockpiling offensive weapons to use against any competitor, anywhere, for any reason they like.

That may be the case, but the parent post was right that this is common practise. This is exactly how patents are used e.g. by big pharmaceutical companies, who stockpile patents on various processes as a sort of Mutual Assured Destruction policy against each other.

I personally agree with you that MAD is nuts, and counter to the public interest. I also hate patents on "streaming media", etc. However, Amazon's behaviour shouldn't be seen out of context. The point is that many other technology companies are doing this too, and perhaps (as the FSF has decided) a more accurate barometer of their intentions is the way in which they use these patents.

(FSF, at least, seems to think the Barnes and Noble lawsuit ended without too much collateral damage; see link in article summary.)