A stable and precise landing of the New Shepard booster during its fourth mission on June 19 , 2016 .
years of “ runway ” building the division , which started almost by accident .
The company ’ s various engineers — application , network and data center — “ were spending way too much time coordinating ,” Bezos said . They got together and developed a bunch of systems to help manage the massive labyrinth of logistics and planning behind shipping billions of products around the world every year . With “ just a little extra work ” the engineers took what they were building for Amazon and created Amazon Web Services , which has seen clients , including the CIA , come knocking .
“ If we had been out there bragging about that business we would have attracted attention from incumbents much sooner than what happened ,” Bezos said . “ There is no reason in business to boast about your accomplishments . People figure them out .”
Another accomplishment is the rumored 65 million people who pay $ 99 a year to be part of Amazon Prime , a membership program that provides free shipping , streaming music and video ( to watch the television shows Amazon is creating ) and other services . Bezos won ’ t confirm the number of Prime customers . “ We don ’ t reveal that .” he said plainly . “ You do want people to know that the offerings are successful and that lots of people are using them . But you don ’ t have to quantify that for consumers or enterprises .”
NEW IDEAS FOR AN OLD PAPER
After riding the online shopping wave to his reported net worth of $ 67.3 Billion — wealth that is equal to Bill Gates , Warren Buffett and the other wealthiest men in the world — Bezos invested in an industry that has been crippled by the internet .
In 2013 , he bought the Washington Post for $ 250 million . “ I bought it because it ’ s important ,” Bezos said . “ I would never buy a financially upside down salty snack food company . That doesn ’ t make any sense to me .” Bezos has a plan to change the revenue model for the Post and turn it into “ a selfsustaining , profitable enterprise .”
It was just that for about 120 of the paper ’ s nearly 140 years . The newspaper ( and every other newspaper in the world ) would sell ads to make “ a relatively large amount of money ” per reader . But that revenue model died when the firehose of free information started pouring out of the internet in the 1990s .
“ Our approach is actually very , very simple ,” Bezos said . “ We need to go to a model where we make a relatively small amount of money per reader on a very large number of readers .” And he ’ ll do that by turning the Post from a “ very good local paper ” to a very good international publication with readers all over the globe .
“ That ’ s a gift the internet brings ,” he said . Getting people all over the world to read the paper in the old days of printing presses would cost a fortune . But sending it out over the internet to millions more readers is cheap and easy .
But no one ’ s going to click on the Washington Post if it isn ’ t worth reading . “ You can ’ t turn around a restaurant with business techniques if the food isn ’ t delicious . And we have delicious content . The Post is just riveting ,” he said . “ They are killing it .”
When he first bought the paper , there was much hand-wringing that he would try to interfere or influence the editorial direction of the Post , a notion he flatly rejects . First he says , he wouldn ’ t know how tell the newsroom what to do , likening the idea to telling a brain surgeon how to operate . And secondly , he said , he wouldn ’ t have time . “ I have no desire to meddle . I have no desire to opine on everything . I ’ m so busy , honestly .”
As for whether Bezos has his eye on buying any other investments in or around Washington DC , he won ’ t say .
EYES ON THE SKIES
Having conquered online shopping , Amazon is busy trying to revolutionize how it delivers packages to its customers by testing drones in the quiet English countryside . The vision for Prime Air is to use small drones that fly under 400 ft . to deliver packages up to five pounds , a weight limit that covers much of Amazon products ( 86 %). The drones will be able to get
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