WASHINGTON: Jeff Bezos leaves an enduring legacy after changing Amazon from a humble online bookseller to one of the world’s most powerful organizations as he prepares to go into a new career stage. On Monday (July 5), Bezos, 57, was poised to give over the reins of Amazon to Andy Jassy and focus on his private space exploration company, philanthropy, and other initiatives. However, he will continue to play a major role as executive chair of the technological and e-commerce behemoth he created 27 years ago.
The change comes following Amazon’s recent success, which has garnered attention to its inventions.
However, the company has been chastised for business methods that have harmed competitors and raised questions about the treatment of a staff of over a million people.
“In book selling, the retail market, cloud computing, and home delivery, Bezos has been a transformational leader,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation.
“He was a forerunner who pioneered many of the modern conveniences that we now take for granted, such as ordering something from an internet store and having it delivered to your home the next day. Many of the advancements in the e-commerce industry can be attributed to this guy.”
READ: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to resign; quarterly sales crosses $100 billion for the first time
Bezos frequently describes his early days at Amazon, which began in his garage with him packing orders and driving boxes to the post office.
Amazon is now worth more than US$1.7 trillion on the stock market. It expects to earn $386 billion in 2020 from e-commerce, cloud computing, groceries, artificial intelligence, streaming media, and other businesses. “AN INSTINCT” Bezos “had an instinct for the right thing” in identifying the next market, according to Roger Kay, analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates. Bezos, according to Kay, shifted seamlessly from books to other items to an online marketplace, and constructed the company’s cloud infrastructure, which became the extremely profitable Amazon Web Services. According to Kay, Amazon survived its competitors by foregoing revenues in its early years and “reinvesting everything into expanding.” “Now that you look at it, it was all reasonable,” Kay remarked. “You could argue that Bezos was one of the greatest business strategists of his generation.” Commentary: Through Amazon, Jeff Bezos transformed the world. He’ll be a difficult act to follow. Bezos “wasn’t the first or the only one,” according to Bob O’Donnell of Technalysis Research, but he “took the notion (of e-commerce) and tried to perfect it.” According to O’Donnell, Amazon was able to outperform competitors because Bezos “understood the necessity to construct infrastructure,” which included a massive network of warehouses, trucks, planes, and other operations for the company. “A lot of other companies were unwilling to invest in the time-consuming behind-the-scenes labor.” Even after a divorce deal that awarded half of his interest to his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, Bezos has become one of the world’s wealthiest people, with a net worth of close to US$200 billion. Bezos will take a break from day-to-day Amazon administration to focus on other projects, such as his space company Blue Origin, which will launch him into space later this month. He owns the Washington Post newspaper and has spent time and resources to efforts to combat climate change, but he has come under fire recently for allegedly paying no income tax for some years. READ: Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, will be the first person to fly into space with Blue Origin. QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF AMAZON His resignation raises concerns about Amazon’s future, as the company faces a barrage of regulatory scrutiny and activist opposition. US lawmakers are discussing a bill that would make it easier to split up Amazon, amid fears that a small number of Big Tech companies have become too dominant, stifling competition and harming consumers. With its speedy delivery of goods and foodstuffs, Amazon was well-positioned during the coronavirus pandemic, and it increased its US workforce to over 800,000. While the corporation brags about its $15 minimum salary and other benefits, opponents claim it treats employees like robots because of its obsessive focus on efficiency and worker surveillance. Amazon employees, according to the Teamsters union, “face dehumanizing, dangerous, and low-pay positions, with high turnover and little voice at work.” READ: Jeff Bezos chooses an 82-year-old female aerospace pioneer to accompany him into space After a grueling battle over a unionization vote in Alabama, which ultimately failed, Bezos appeared to respond to worker concerns earlier this year when he called for a “better vision” for employees. In his parting letter as CEO, he set a new objective for the organization to be “Earth’s best employer and Earth’s safest place to work.” However, Amazon is likely to confront hurdles in the future that will make maintaining its current trajectory difficult. “The backlash against this industry will almost certainly result in more government control of technology firms,” West said. According to Kay, Amazon may become a “victim of its own success” and be compelled to split into two or more companies. “Each of those companies would prosper in their own market,” he continued, “and I can easily imagine the sum of the parts being greater than the whole, so it might not hurt shareholders.”/n
