Amazon.com Nears 10-Year Anniversary 181
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."
Does Amazon have a birthday wishlist? (Score:4, Funny)
Buy it a present.... (Score:3, Funny)
or if you never actually owned a patent, send Jeff a list of obvious ideas that he should patent.
Re:Does Amazon have a birthday wishlist? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does Amazon have a birthday wishlist? (Score:2)
Re:Does Amazon have a birthday wishlist? (Score:2)
Re:Does Amazon have a birthday wishlist? (Score:2)
Patent absurdity (Score:4, Funny)
Will be interesting to see outcome of his patents (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
That's the problem with the patent game (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
That's exactly what happens, although usually with a bit more negotiating than the Cold War.
When I worked at [large builds-everything company], I heard stories of the yearly "Lawyer's Meeting", where we would meet with [other builds-everything company] and the lawyers would actually sit down and negotiate "lawsuit
Re: (Score:2)
Re:That's the problem with the patent game (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
That's not quite the point (Score:2)
Then Amazon would have been afraid to sue B&N for fear of a retaliatory suit.
Re:That's not quite the point (Score:2)
Or, maybe it's just a lawyer welfare system.
Nope,that's how patents are used by big pharma too (Score:3, Interesting)
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 t
A Teen at the Wheel (Score:2)
We have a large number of patents owned by a company that is just hitting ten and will soon be a teen. The analogy of a teen driving the internet will soon be in order.
Modern business theories teach that you must either dominate the market or die. Making a profit at what you do is not sufficient, you must either have complete control of the market or perish.
If Amazon hires people from modern American business schools, I think it is mor
yawn.. (Score:5, Funny)
Wake me up when I can buy banjo cases made out of wild boar baby back ribs.
Re:yawn.. (Score:1)
EBay (Score:3, Funny)
No, for that you need EBay.
Re:yawn.. (Score:2)
I don't know
But that might just be an unfair stereotype.
Re:yawn.. (Score:2)
Re:yawn.. (Score:2, Funny)
Great name for a rock band.
One fine day... (Score:3, Funny)
...my birthday will be a slashdot story :D
My birthday is already geekish enough... (Score:2)
Otherwise known as the "Epoch"
Commoditization (Score:5, Insightful)
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! [whattofix.com]
Who can take that over (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Who can take that over (Score:2)
amazon vs half customer service (Score:2)
It took me close to 2 months to get my money back from half.com, and in the end I did some detective work and called the seller up... Turns out it was an innocent mistake on their part and they refunded my cash - they hadn't even heard from half.com about my problem.
Amazon had it sorted in about 2 hours.
The plural of anecdote isn't data - but i've made my choice.
Re:Who can take that over (Score:2)
Still, I will never use Paypal, but I do buy things from Amazon on a somewhat regular basis, and have never had an issue, and have heard of fewer people who have had problems. I agree with the parent poster.
Amazon *is* the commodity (Score:2)
Look out, would-be celebrants (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Look out, would-be celebrants (Score:2)
But that would infringe on my patent on anniversaries.
Nice Flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Nice Flamebait (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Nice Flamebait (Score:2, Insightful)
what does Amazon's patents have anything to do with their 10 year anniversary?
Nothing at all. It has to do with the "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" part. If anything, it goes to show that even with a group of relatively vocal opponents, Amazon has had no trouble becoming the giant that it is right now. Also, patent discussions are commonplace on Slashdot, which has an apporiate audi
Re:Nice Flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
If you must know, I'm +2 whereas you're still default at 1.
How impressive. I wish I could achieve that same badge of honour. Oh wait, I have it -- I just uncheck that "karma bonus" button at the bottom. Something about not having to boost my karma, I guess. But for your sake, here's a demonstration. Can I be part of your club now?
If you believe this moderation mumbo-jumbo actually works ... then my posts are consistently more insightful than yours.
Clearly. Because anyone who is, say, unfairly mo
Re:Nice Flamebait (Score:2)
Name one other characteristic of Amazon that is of MORE interest to the slashdot crowd?
You can bet Amazon's PR firm is working over-time hyping their 10th anniversary. A little anti-hype is appropriate.
It isn't like Amazon is your kid brother and slashdot just made him cry on his 10th birthday.
10 years to create a significant turnaround (Score:1)
In that time, it has turned itself into a profit center and the foremost bookseller not only on the web but even among the traditional bricks and mortar boo
Re: (Score:2)
Oh come on (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Oh come on (Score:2)
Re:Oh come on (Score:2)
Re:Oh come on (Score:1)
Amazon and patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Amazon and patents (Score:2)
Oh sure, Amazon throws the words "database" and "web" and "click" around like they invented them or something, but the fundamental operation of comme
Re:Amazon and patents (Score:2)
Actually, the one-click patent cited in the GNU link was really not so obvious after all.
It was obvious.
It wasn't documented, but it was obvious.
Secret of Success? (Score:5, Insightful)
(I'd say the same thing about Google too.)
Re:Secret of Success? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Secret of Success? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Secret of Success? (Score:2)
Re:Secret of Success? (Score:2)
Re:Secret of Success? (Score:2)
Re:Secret of Success? (Score:2)
No... (Score:2)
Separate accounts at Amazon. That way you can each shop for each other, and not know what the other has gotten. You can even make use of a little feature they added maybe 5 or 6 years ago called wish lists. Just make sure that after you check out you don't hit that link that says share a discounted deal
Re:No... (Score:2)
Re:Secret of Success? (Score:2)
I'm not sure I entirely agree. I use Amazon regularly and my reasons are
Re:Secret of Success? (Score:4, Informative)
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? (Score:2)
Well, according to ForeSeeResults.com, their recent survey [internetretailer.com] of customer and browser experience satisfaction had one company [netflix.com] doing better than Amazon.
Obligatory disclaimer: I manage the web QA group for Netflix, so I have both a vested interest and a certain amount of pride in people discovering this particular fact.
Re:Secret of Success? (Score:2)
Certainly. When I face hard decisions in designing major web applications, I ask myself, "What does Amazon do?" (although sometimes it's "What does Google do", "What does IMDb do", or even "What does eBay do").
As is often the case with great applications, Amazon is easy to use, yet the power is there if you want it. I like to think that
What a cinderella story (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What a cinderella story (Score:1)
Amazon.com's success. (Score:5, Insightful)
They have a steady dependable business model of selling almost everything.
Amazon.com just works.
Note: I'm just a happy customer.
It's no secret... (Score:3, Insightful)
My wife really loathes having to use a computer. She will seldom use one if she doesn't have to. She'd rather do things by hand 99% of the time.
But she quite happily logs on and goes to Amazon to buy books. So they must be doing a lot of things right.
Re:Amazon.com's success. (Score:2)
One click posting? (Score:1)
Seriously though, hats off to Amazon- like it or not, it wasn't easy to start a company 10 years ago on the net and have it still be in business....
I will say that I won't shop there because I am suspicious of any compnay that has a "buyer's club" that offers discounts, shipping or otherwise....
They do have some nice "Photography" books... Honest mom, it isn't porn, its erotica.... and stay out of the basement!"
Amazon versus Yahoo board posters (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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.
Re:Amazon versus Yahoo board posters (Score:2)
As for shared offspring, that'll be difficult, as those bits have been surgically removed. Sorry.
Jeff is/was frugal to a fault. He once spilled a larg bottle of pricey yuppy vitamins in the bathroom sink, and gathered up the soggy mess, dried it out and used them. Speaks well of his money-management skills at Amazon.
Re:Amazon versus Yahoo board posters (Score:2)
Long term investing (Score:2)
I'm curious. Did you get scared off? Need the money? Cash out at an earlier date when you thought it hit a high?
It's just that you sound like you were a fairly sensible invester who didn't believe in the hype that Amazon was going down, so it sounds distinctly odd that you dropped their stock.
Remember how they used to lose money? (Score:1, Offtopic)
$7 billion... Are they turning a profit? I suppose so. I'm sure I did my part, after my favorite tech bookstores (Computer Literacy) closed up shops to go on-line and became fathead or fatbrain whatever. Saving a couple bucks is OK, but I know I spent a ton on programming books when I had the chance to flip through them. Now I have only reviewers to trust
10 years (Score:4, Funny)
Great.... (Score:2)
------
(Yes, I know they actually made a profit a couple years ago. It's a joke. Laugh and move along.)
Spammers. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Spammers. (Score:2)
And as for being illegal in the UK - I'd love to know if it was, I'm on a slew of mailshots courtesy of online ticket sales sites for gigs and theatre and I can't get a single damn one of them to stop sending me crap.
5 easy steps (Score:4, Informative)
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."
Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail (Score:2, Insightful)
I boycott shopping at Amazon.com in the same manner that I do for brick and mortar shopping at Walmart. Give the small guys your business and help maintain a strong U.S. economy.
Re:Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail (Score:2)
You can always look for it on the web [justfuckinggoogleit.com], you know.
Re:Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail (Score:3)
In fact, the people doing outsourced and offshored work are paid quite well by their local standards.
So, as usual, this boils down to you thinking that you're somehow better than those nasty swarthy people in other countries.
There are good arguments against outsourcing and offshoring. Not many, but a few. You haven't touched on any of them.
Regulated Bathroom Breaks (Score:2)
Re:Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail (Score:2, Insightful)
I boycott shopping at Amazon.com in the same manner that I do for brick and mortar shopping at Walmart. Give the small guys your business and help maintain a strong U.S. economy.
At what point does one stop shopping at the "small guys" because they've become a "big guy"? Where does small end and big begin?
The problem with this sentiment is twofold:
Re:Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail (Score:2)
Indeed:
Wal-Mart sells low end crap to people who can't afford or don't want better.
...or people who don't think paying $.25 less for a tube of the same brand of toothpaste is Evil.
People that shop at Amazon are probably more affluent than your average Wal-Mart shopper - they have to have credit, a computer, and an internet connection.
The CIA's estimated [cia.gov] that 159 million Americans had Internet access in 2002. That's probably well over 200 million today, and a huge portion of t
Re:Amazon.com is the Walmart of online retail (Score:2)
What's more, people who shop Amazon like to read, perhaps a stronger sign of affluence than the ones you mentioned.
barnesandnoble.com (Score:3, Funny)
Oh no! (Score:3, Funny)
I've patented 10 year anniversaries (Score:1)
A contrarian view (Score:3, Insightful)
As an affiliate I find it rather sloppy that Amazon doesn't have a better integration for its national sites. You have to apply for each site seperately and you get your money seperately. And where Google adwords is advanced with bank transfers Amazon still pays with old fashioned checks. Affiliates are asked to get their product data from an XML database that quite often gives different results on availablity as the Amazon search engine.
All in all my impression is that execution is rather sloppy. It will not be easy but there definitely is room for competitors to improve on what Amazon offers.
I, too, prefer the book information from B&N.. (Score:2, Informative)
Many times, however, I find Amazon an easier process to purchase books except when a book is out of print or from a private seller, I can order it more easily from B&N when I order a couple of other books.
I think the B&N search for a title or author usually does a better job than Amazon - less junk. I'm not enamored with the "search inside" or "related" garbage. I usually pretty much know what I want.
Oh - and in NYC - I can get free overni
How successful? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:How successful? (Score:2)
Of course they'd have made more money just by sticking all the cash they got from shares into a Euro or Sterling bank account and forgetting all that tedious book-selling business...
Has it been that long since... (Score:2)
In other news . . . (Score:2, Redundant)
Amazon's 10th anniversary (Score:3, Interesting)
Invasion of privacy? I think not. (Score:2, Interesting)
"10th", not "10-year" (Score:3, Informative)
I blame people who want to celebrate three-month relationships with an "anniversary", in defiance of the fact that three months isn't really that long, and probably doesn't merit a Hallmark card.
Rant over.
And 10 years to get my order! (Score:2)
Still, mnost of my dealings with Amazon, other than this one, have been ver
When's /.'s 10th ? (Score:2)
Re:Wish List (Score:2)
Re:Jeff who? (Score:2)