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Jeff Bezos Named Time Person of the Year
doomy writes "A pretty stunning story hit Associated Press's wire today. Apparently Jeff "king of cybercommerce" Bezos of Amazon.com fame would be named the Time Magazines's person of the year. The same wire states that Amazon was loosing millions of dollars while this award was given." I've stopped shopping at Amazon personally. Until they drop their lame patent stuff, I figure they don't want my business.
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(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
"But they're suing over a blah blah blah," you're gonna say. Yes, they are. But who are they suing? Barnes & Noble.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the saying goes, and I agree. I don't like Barnes & Noble, and here's why:
- They tried to buy Ingram Book Company, a wholesale book retailer. This would mean that thousands of independent book stores (the kind I like) would be dependent on B&N (their competitor) for books.
- The American Booksellers Association and two dozen independent booksellers have filed suit against B&N, contending that B&N "engaged in a pattern and practice of soliciting, inducing, and receiving secret, discriminatory, and illegal terms from publishers and distributors."
- B&N open up huge stores in strip malls, which are institutions I cannot support. Amazon.com doesn't do this.
"Yes," you're gonna say, "but if Amazon wins, then they can sue anyone over this with precedent."But why would they? B&N is a direct competitor and tried to buy out Amazon.com's main supplier. Amazon would have filed suit against B&N for *anything*. Yes, this is a stupid lawsuit, and it's a stupid patent, and all the rest. Fix the sickness, not the symptoms: reform the Patent Office.
I guess what really bugs me is that everyone's getting themselves worked up into a frenzy over this and not something more important. Patent lawsuits don't kill people, nor do they give people cancer. This is corporate warfare and it doesn't involve individuals.
What's a better topic for us to get riled about? Shit, kids, take your pick:
- US Companies selling defective products overseas
- Mobil Oil involved in Indonesian massacres
- 4,000 babies die every day due to being bottle-fed, thanks to companies like Nestle
But no, we have our panties in a twist because big, bad Amazon.com is suing someone over a stupid patent.I'm willing to boycott them and *all* big companies if an independent company is there to provide the same services with minimal price impact.
So, instead of flaming me and calling me a lackey shill and anal consort of The Man, how about offering solutions? Fatbrain sells most books that I want (ie, all the books I've bought in the past month or so). That's good. Where's a socially-responsible place I can buy CDs from?
See, shopping at Whitey & The Man Bookstore in lieu of Amazon isn't good, it just provides yet another stupid company with incentive to continue their stupid tactics. If you're going to boycott Amazon.com for patent issues, you shouldn't jump in the lap of another fucked up company.
If you really want to fuck over Amazon, use their webpage to pick out books (based on user reviews, etc.), then buy the books at SociallyResponsibleBookstore.com. You get the community and the karma. Woo hoo.
So... what non-stupid online CD stores are there?
[BTW, I haven't read *any* comments offering alternatives to Amazon. You're never going to get a boycott to work if you don't offer alternatives.]
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
"So what if he's losing money."
Well, basically, it's all a matter of when. If I started Amazon.com back in 1980 before almost anyone had anything "online" I'd obviously not make a profit. But should investors back me through 2 decades of negative profit, even if I could start paying off in 2002? It's an economic decision, and perhpas their money could have been spent more prouctively somewhere else. So it might be that Amazon is simply being held afloat because investors WANT to hold it afloat, not necessarily for any rational reason, not because its a good bussiness, but because they hope it will be someday. Essentailly, by unwriting their below markt book prices, they are artificially subsidizing a bussiness that could have never survived on its own in a real market. That may be a fair gamble, but keep in mind that the money COULD have gone into other things that might be more productive NOW, and when Amazon's time really did come, they could have invested in it then. What's going on isn't about making wise economic decisions now, it's about trying to second guess the future to make money. Just keep that in mind before anyone starts trumpeting this guy's acheivement. All he's done is coninced investors that he's a good bet- he hasn't proven that he is yet. I could start Videomania.com and sell video games at super reduced prices and be very popular, but that wouldn't make me worth artificaly supporting.
Man (or Woman, or Thing) of the Year is generally given to the most influential person of the past year, positive or negative. Now, Bezos may be a hyper freak, but he has built up Amazon from the ground up into the Internet's first real Super Store, and proved to most of the brick-and-mortar types that e-commerce could really work. E-commerce, and hence Amazon and Bezos, have really revolutionized the way people think of doing business.
And so what if he's losing money... So was AOHell all those years, and now they're raking in the money hand over fist. As Garry Trudeau once said, "If you're not losing a lot of money, you're not being aggressive enough."
On a personal note, I know it's not what a lot of people here want to hear, but I almost won't shop at any place but Amazon. I've had really bad experiences with Barnes & Noble in the past, and while I haven't given Borders.com much of a try yet, they don't have the selection and variety of Amazon. So far I've been completely satisfied with Amazon's prices and customer service.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
Clearly, Time meant to give the nod to Larry Wall, without whose efforts Amazon would still be working on their first C++ prototype. Not that Amazon has given a thing back to the Perl community...
I have informed them of their accidental error; I'm sure they'll correct it shortly. :)
--
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
I sent them a nice email telling them that I will not use Amazon until they give up this silly patent stuff. Here is their response.
Thank you for writing to Amazon.com.
The patent system is designed to encourage innovation, and we spent thousands of hours developing our 1-Click® shopping feature. This feature securely stores billing and shipping information so that returning customers need only click their mouse once, without re-entering or re-confirming that information, to purchase selected items conveniently.
In recognition of the innovative and unique nature of the 1-Click® technology, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Patent No. 5,960,411 to Amazon.com on September 28, 1999.
We're pleased that the court recognized the innovation underlying our 1-Click® feature by granting a preliminary injunction barring barnesandnoble.com from using it while our suit is pending.
I hope you'll understand that we are unable to discuss this case any further as we are currently in litigation. Thank you for taking the time to share your views with us.
Best regards,
Erik J. Macki
Happy Holidays from Amazon.com
Earth's Biggest Selection
http://www.amazon.com
==============================
When without loss of blood he reduced Czechoslovakia to a German puppet state, forced a drastic revision of Europe's defensive alliances, and won a free hand for himself in Eastern Europe by getting a "hands-off" promise from powerful Britain (and later France), Adolf Hitler without doubt became 1938's Man of the Year.
-Time Magazine, Jan 2, 1939.
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
This is still off-topic, but I feel compelled to try and clear this up some...Hitler got MOTY because they thought he was a great leader, not just because he was influential. This sounds ridiculous, but consider the situation.
First off, one of the problems throughout the war was that virtually no one actually read his book, Mein Kampf--and you'd know why if you ever tried (I did back in HS German...entirely aside from the content, it's a terribly written book: dry, boring, and rambling). Second, he did have an (apparently) good effect on Germany. The trains ran on time, crime dropped to negligible amounts, the ludicrous amounts of inflation were throttled way back, etc.
Add to this the fact that people didn't want to believe anything different (remember appeasement?) because the world was very tired of war, and it's easy to see how a magazine could give the award to Hitler. Really, even after the Final Solution was in place, and the knowledge of the horrors of concentration camps was "public," people still didn't really believe it. It wasn't until very late in the war that photographs were leaked, and they literally stunned the world. AFAIK, most American GI's liberating the camps didn't believe what he was doing until they saw it.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
In other words, this nomination is a mixed blessing, at best.
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
you have to admit, this is incredibly accurate of time. ok, so amazon has not made a single dollar since they were formed. so what? their stock is doing quite well, and that's the real story of the year economically -- stock doing exceptionally well in the tech and dot-com area with companies that have yet to turn a profit. look at redhat, akimai, VA Linux... none of them have done well yet, though their stocks are doing very, very well.
secondly, this whole absurdity in the lawsuit over the one-click-shopping patent is indeed also a milestone in american history. in a world where arbitrary patents can be given out (cf. the two guys who have a patent on using a laser pointer to amuse a cat), this is utterly symbolic of how absurd the whole mess has become. a small GIF formatted graphic using the word 'Go' in a sans serif font... what a load of horsepucky.
so, the next time you say, "oh, what a crock", think about what amazon is all about, and then take a look at the larger economic and tech world this past year, and you'll see that they are indeed leaders in that arena.
jose nazario jose@biocserver.cwru.edu
CmdrTaco has stopped shopping at Amazon personally, yet still promotes buying books there in the books section.. Hmmm :)
Time magazine selects a guy who creates a online business man of the year.. simply because it was "e-commerce"?! Tell me, if another company had gone IPO this year and been valued more than amazon.com would they have been a contender? No. Case in point: VA Research IPO. Of course, they're not the hip and trendy "e-commerce".. oh well then, right? Hrmph. I was so looking forward to finding out who man of the century would be... but maybe that anticipation was misplaced - Time magazine is just cashing in on the hype and popularity. Whoever's the most popular in the polls is gonna be the winner, which will be completely independent of who had the most influence on modern day living.
My vote for who should have been man of the year: The head of NASA. Trying to keep people interested in space exploration, trying to push the envelope by making more out of less. Dealing with politicians more concerned about tax breaks for their district than the exploration of the final frontier. God, it's enough to make me cry. Hell, the entire NASA team should have gotten an award - "company of the decade" or something.
While I generally don't hold "Time Magazine" in very high regard (being barely a step up from the tabloid), this sort of award reinforces my distaste for pop-news, particularly when it has anything to do with technology.
Now, of course Time magazine's strategy is to capitalize from this tech hype, so Bezos is an easy choice. Enough people will buy the magazine just because they envy the new computer-billionaires.
Let us consider Bezos' accomplishments:
1) Generating a huge, moneylosing web site to sell various products over the internet.
2) Convincing thousands of investors to hand over billions of dollars to support it.
3) Generating more baseless 'net-hype than anyone before him.
4) Deciding to do battle against competitors with stupid and obvious patents, rather than with thoughtful, innovative business strategies and by providing more value to their customers.
He's never created any value whatsoever for his stockholders, but he's certainly gotten them to convince others to invest - sounds like a big ponzi scheme to me.
When it's all said and done, it looks like their best engineered, most innovatively created, and best marketed product is..... their stock.
For this, I would suggest bestowing the first "Huckster of the year" award upon Bezos.
And if you think about these sites, they are strong evidence, that Amazon will never be very proitable - the competition on the net is just too strong (on-topic again!).
things. take. time.
I read an article about Bezos a few months ago, in I think the New York Times Magazine.
This man managed to turn a little website sitting on a SPARCstation 5 into a multi-national empire in just a matter of 2 or 3 years. Amazon.com was the pioneer for online merchandising (I refuse to use the word e-commerce), and despite for a couple of minor issues (i.e. the '1-click' patent issue, but we won't go down that path here) Amazon remains the gold standard for an e-commerce site.
Amazon.com showed the unwashed masses that they won't get burned by buying things online. In addition, their prices are slightly better than the national book mega-store chains (Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc).
Frankly, I say he deserves the title of "Man of the Year" since 1999 certainly is the explosion of "e-commerce." Sure, there have been minor hiccups in the system (like the whole patent issue). However, things like the automobile, phones, and computers (gasp!) had issues when they were first emerging, and today we take them for granted.