Interview with Jeff Bezos of Amazon

slakdrgn writes "Wired has an interview with Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon.com) with some interesting information on how he approaches the market, why they stopped doing TV advertising three years ago and hints at what might be coming in the future."

20 million products

[Anonymous Coward]

The interview states that Amazon sells 20 million different articles. What I'd like to know, is this the number of articles in their catalogue or is this the number they really sell? Because when I search for something usually only the first two pages of results are available from Amazon while the bulk of results aren't available from them!

Re:now the really interesting story is..

[jmcmunn]

I'll risk the bad karma in agreeing with the parent. Slashdot is very slanted in most of its news. Anything new from Apple, Wired, or any piece of hardware running Linux is big news. Oh, and any flaw in an MS product is big news.

It's not quite as bad as Fox News yet though, so I can't complain too much. When I start seeing Bush/Cheney ads instead of Thinkgeek ads at the top of my page, I'm outta here.

Re:20 million products

[ikea5]

Amazon's becoming too difficult for people like my grandma to buy things.

Want to buy this coffee maker? You can get it from Amazon directly for X amount plus free shipping if your total purchase is over Z amount with other qulified items(look for yellow truck symbol!!), otherwise the standard shipping is X for this one item plus X for each item from our kitchenware store. Or if you prefer, you can also purchase it from one of our associsated stores, the shipping is X if you buy it from A store(ships free for $100+ order!!), X from B store(different set of shipping price base on weight and some magical fomulas), or you can choose in-store pick up from C and D store(price may be higher or lower). Not confused enough? You can also buy it from one of our 100s Amazon sellers(New or Almost New or Used or Collectible!!), and no, the price does not count towards the free shipping, yes you can use a gift code, but only if it's not a promo code(count the digits!), oh and be sure to check out the seller's reputation, see all those stars? more is better!! and it's coverd under Amazon's A-Z warranty(link leds to a two page fine print)...

Re:Amazon's growth...

[paulbd]

I was the 2nd programmer at amazon.com, back before it was even called amazon.com. When we started, I desperately wanted to offer a browsing technique that would model "dialing down" a search in a huge library - being able to browse the "gardening" section, then realize you were interested in "flower gardening", then "flower gardening, pacific northwest" and then focusing on "history of flower gardening, pacific northwest".

I was therefore very upset to find that there was no way to do this. The Library of Congress could not or would not provide us with their complete category lists, and the company that distributes Books in Print provides the LoC classification data in a format that has been garbaged to the point that you can longer reconstruct heirarchies.

I struggled on with the idea for a while, but we just had to give up. Its been a long term regret of mine.

Re:Why you should never by used books through Amaz

[popo]

Bookfinder:

1) is slow
2) has a terrible ui
3) doesn't sort results well
4) doesn't find the best prices
5) has no seller ratings
6) has no reader reviews

All in all I'm not sure who would ever use this service. On every level it seems second rate.

Half.com [half.com] (owned by eBay) is a much, much better service and includes reader reviews, and seller ratings.

Re:now the really interesting story is..

[Moofie]

Hmm...so an online media outlet has an editorial slant? WOW. Stop the presses.

It's silly to think you're going to get unbiased, evenhanded info from ANY single source.