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Jeff Bezos: AWS Will Break $10 Billion This Year (windowsitpro.com)
v3rgEz writes: Jeff Bezos is bullish on the cloud, pegging AWS' sales for this year at $10 billion in a recent letter to shareholders. But he said there was a surprising source of that success: The company's willingness to fail. That said, with AWS now spanning 70 different services, Amazon can afford to fail some as long as few, like EC2 and S3, keep winning. Bezos wrote: "One area where I think we are especially distinctive is failure. I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it's going to work, it's not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there."
Amazon seems to have a great culture for innovation.
They seem to have some excellent tax lawyers as well.
I wonder if the AWS business will actually lead Amazon to make a profit, I've read so much about how they never make a profit in the news, I seriously wonder if this could be the tipping point (product).
That should be "a few".
A seemingly minor omission but it almost reverses the meaning.
At the bottom of the
It's generally a bad idea to use foreign phrases in writing when you've only heard them spoken.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
$10 billion is sales is easy. Buy stuff worth $12.5 billion and sell it at 20% off.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Kindles are just a rip off of the iPad.
Not really like for like, except for the Fire but it's not really a Kindle in my opinion. Anyway, the first Kindle was about 3 years before the first iPad.
Am I alone in wondering what the heck this article is about?
Here on slashdot? Yeah pretty much...
It's one thing if Bezos is ok with the company failing for a strategic product/service that was his decision. I wonder if he's as forgiving when the failure rests on someone else within the company.
I would guess it depends how you fail. Trying something new to see if it has potential and failing is very different from nit being able to do the job. 3M used (still does?) to let employees spend some percentage of time and money on ideas that interested them; the theory was if only a small percentage were successful it still was a good bet and a failure in one area could turn out to be wildly successful in another. Post it notes came from a failed attempt to make a super strong adhesive and Scotch Brite reflective tape form a failed attempt to make reflective material for use on roads. The inventor of Scotch Brite rose to be the CEO of 3m. By encouraging people to experiment and try things without worrying about failing spurred creativity and innovation. It sounds like that is Bezo's goal.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Perhaps what we are talking about here is TAXABLE profit? Amazon, among others, have been in the news for not paying any tax due to what can best be described as trickery.
Amazon doesn't pay a lot of tax primarily because they don't make a lot of profit. While they definitely do some of the same shenanigans other multi-nationals engage in (and shame on them for that), Amazon doesn't do as much of it because they don't need to. They only get taxed on their profits which have been generally scant. They generate a lot of revenue but their margins aren't huge and they re-invest much of that into the company or in building products to get bigger and their primary business (online sales) isn't a fat margin business to begin with.
Unlike companies like Apple which generate huge profits but then route it through countries with low tax obligations or other overly clever schemes, Amazon just generates minimal profits by actually investing in their business. As such they don't pay a lot of tax mostly for a reason I can actually get behind - building their business. Believe me I'm hugely against companies that dodge taxes through financial engineering but I think as a general proposition there are better companies to target tax dodging rage against at the moment than Amazon.
It wouldn't surprise me if in time AWS turned into the real profit center for Amazon. I think the same thought has occurred to Amazon management
Kindles came first. I know what you mean though - it truly was gracious of Apple to let everyone else make flat things with screens.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.