Slashdot Mirror
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Becomes World's Third Richest Person (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: Strong earnings from Amazon and a boost to the company's stock have made its founder, Jeff Bezos, the world's third richest person, according to Forbes. Mr Bezos owns 18% of Amazon's shares, which rose 2% in trading on Thursday. Forbes estimated his fortune to be $65.3 billion (49.5 billion British Pound). Amazon's revenue beat analysts' expectations, climbing 31% from last year to $30.4 billion in the second quarter. Profit for the e-commerce giant was $857 million, compared with $92 million in 2015. According to Forbes estimates, Mr Bezos's fortune is only surpassed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, worth $78 billion (59 billion British Pound), and the $73.1 billion (55 billion British Pound) fortune of Zara founder Amancio Ortega. Amazon had developed a reputation for announcing little or no profit each quarter, but appeared to hit a turning point last year and has seen improving earnings since. Amazon shares have spiked 50% since February. BBC's report includes some bullet points about Bezos. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1964. He studied at Princeton University and worked on Wall Street. In 1994, he launched Amazon as an online book retailer. A lifelong Star Trek fan, Bezos launched Blue Origin spaceflight and aerospace firm in 2000, and more than a decade later, he purchased The Washington Post newspaper in 2013.
When you're worth that much why not just cash out, what's the point of earning more. I can't understand why anyone would be doing anything other than coke and hookers after 1b
his Wife is the third richest person...
Apparently all rich people are abusive. Look at almost any Amazon web page. The pages try to distract visitors with other things to buy when they are trying to discover more about the product they picked.
There seems to be NO quality control. Amazon often advertises low prices with extremely high shipping cost.
Would you fly into space with someone who accepts such craziness?
Trump 2017-2025, to be exact.
how does that feel mr trump to not just have so tiny tiny fingers, but to be also poorer than jeff bezos??
So who is the richest person in the third-world?
Someone commented about how much Elon Musk is worshipped on this site, so I took a moment (a few days ago) to look up some stats.
Look at the bullet points for Jeff Bezos:
In 1994, he launched Amazon as an online book retailer. A lifelong Star Trek fan, Bezos launched Blue Origin spaceflight and aerospace firm in 2000, and more than a decade later, he purchased The Washington Post newspaper in 2013.
Now look at the bullet points for Peter Thiel:
Thiel co-founded PayPal [...]. He also co-founded Palantir, of which he is chairman. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, the popular social-networking site [...] Thiel serves as president of Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund with $700 million in assets under management; a managing partner in Founders Fund, a venture capital fund with $2 billion in assets under management; co-founder and investment committee chair of Mithril Capital Management; and co-founder and chairman of Valar Ventures.
Looking at Peter Thiel's wikipedia page, he gives relatively small sums to charity: a hundred thousand here, a half mil there. He started a small AI company and throws money at anti-aging research. Example: Thiel pledged $500,000 to the new Seasteading Institute.
Now look at the bullet points for Elon Musk:
He is the founder, CEO and CTO of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors; co-founder and chairman of SolarCity, co-chairman of OpenAI; co-founder of Zip2; and co-founder of PayPal. As of June 2016, he has an estimated net worth of US$12.7 billion, making him the 83rd wealthiest person in the world.[20]
Musk has stated that the goals of SolarCity, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX revolve around his vision to change the world and humanity. His goals include reducing global warming through sustainable energy production and consumption, and reducing the "risk of human extinction" by "making life multiplanetary" by setting up a human colony on Mars.
He has envisioned a high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop, and has proposed a VTOL supersonic jet aircraft with electric fan propulsion, known as the Musk electric jet.
And then we have the recent Slashdot story about amazon, and it turns out that Amazon is a cruel, soul-devouring workplace.
No comment, just thought I'd point that out.
Bullet points are interesting.
This doesn't include several members such as the British Royal Family and the Rothschild.
According to a Washington Post article from yesterday, he is also the most physically and sexually attractive of all of the "10 richest people" of the last 50 years.
This idea of pushing drone tech to its inevitable unavoidable overlord conclusion... it's pretty much mad scientist type shit, really. Human beings with mortgages, ha! Let their screams be muted by robotic whirring sounds.
He didn't accumulate that mass of wealth by being a good and decent human being. Look at the way his company treats its rank and file employees. I don't care how much money he has, Jeff Bezos has absolutely nothing redeeming about him
What's scary is this election cycle. There are a lot of billionares tossing around Trump. Trump is worth a couple billion dollars, and he's still being tossed around. Think of what those billionares could do to an ordinary Joe Schmoe.
The fucker still won't port Amazon Prime Video to Apple TV even though there is already an iOS app for both the iPhone and iPad. He's just a dick in my book until this is fixed. You can give him your two cent at jeff@amazon.com
When Amazon was just starting out, I thought, "Why would someone want to buy books online? It's so much better to go to a book store, you can see the books, thumb through them, see what you're getting before you put any money down, etc."
When YouTube launched I thought, "Who the hell wants to watch stupid cat videos?"
When Twitter launched I thought, "140 characters? That'll never take off..."
I'm reeeeeeally bad at predicting things, obviously... (o:
Love sees no species.
Great people talk about ideas.
Average people talk about things.
Small people talk about other people.
The evolution of slashdot
$65B mostly based on owning a stock with P/E of 300.
If you put a more normal 15X multiple on such a stock, his wealth shrinks to a paltry ~$3.2B or so.
Not too shabby, but Amazon of course faces some real issues if they had to operate with a reasonable multiple on their stock. They couldn't pay their employees in stock, for example without shareholders worrying of dilution.
Seems to me there must be a sum of money upon which you could live comfortably for the rest of your life. Around 8 or 10 million, you could probably make more on interest and investment income than most Americans do, and why go for more after that? But I suppose that's why he's a billionaire and I'm not. I'm pretty happy just doing what I'm doing. I wonder if he is. As Sarah Silverman says, all the penises in the world won't fill the hole in your heart.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Why not British pounds? It's a plural.
Larry Ellison, whose biggest goal is to have more money than god, decides to raise the price of all Oracle products. Rumors of Mr. Ellison grumbling "gotta catch up with Bezos" through the hallways of Oracle have been spreading.
/snark