But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
Percentage margins are not one of the things we are seeking to optimize. It’s the absolute dollar free cash flow per share that you want to maximize, and if you can do that by lowering margins, we would do that. So if you could take the free cash flow, that’s something that investors can spend. Investors can’t spend percentage margins.
And I still buy books at B&N, Borders and Elliot Bay ... I probably shouldn't admit this. But I don't care. I love great bookstores.
I'm not prepared to make any multi-decade commitments.
People who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds.
We're working to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go and so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system. Accomplishing this mission will take time, and we're working on it methodically.
But there's still so much you can do with technology to improve the customer experience. And that's the sense in which I believe it's still Day One, and that it's early in the day. If anything, the rate of change is accelerating.
I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.
The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create.
I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It's really a different product category.
Our alliance with Toysrus.com has proven to be a great win for customers, and we've looked forward to taking the next step by introducing the new Babiesrus.com teamed with Amazon.com store since we forged the alliance last August.
Infrastructure web services had to happen.
I'm not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert.
I think that, ah, I'm a very goofy sort of person in many ways.
For many people, extended reading sessions on an LCD display cause eyestrain.
I'm skeptical that the novel will be "reinvented." If you start thinking about a medical textbook or something, then, yes, I think that's ripe for reinvention. You can imagine animations of a beating heart. But I think the novel will thrive in its current form. That doesn't mean that there won't be new narrative inventions as well. But I don't think they'll displace the novel.
People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet - how much utility they get out of e-mail, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online.
Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade leverage Amazon's existing 'Search Inside the Book' technology to give customers unusual flexibility in how they buy and read books, .. In collaboration with our publishing partners, we're working hard to make the world's books instantly accessible anytime and anywhere.
I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.
Feel free to cover Amazon any way you want. Feel free to cover Jeff Bezos any way you want.
No, communication is terrible!
