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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I think I made my first Amazon purchase over 15 years ago after receiving a gift card for my birthday. I used the gift card to purchase three used books from a third party seller, and at that time, the cost of shipping was higher than all three books combined. Wild times.
This book strikes the perfect balance of not being alarmist while providing a healthy critique of Amazon. Each chapter was interesting on its own and challenged some of my preconceptions while confirming other suspicions. My favorite chapter dealt with the selection of HQ2, bring that it is Northern Virginia. I highly recommend this book.
Do I want to chuck my Alexa in the trash? Yes. Will I? TBD.
Side note: It was so cool to read about Lina Khan’s law school Comment catapulting her career like that! Look her up. Goes to show that not all Comments are futile law school rants into an abyss.
This book strikes the perfect balance of not being alarmist while providing a healthy critique of Amazon. Each chapter was interesting on its own and challenged some of my preconceptions while confirming other suspicions. My favorite chapter dealt with the selection of HQ2, bring that it is Northern Virginia. I highly recommend this book.
Do I want to chuck my Alexa in the trash? Yes. Will I? TBD.
Side note: It was so cool to read about Lina Khan’s law school Comment catapulting her career like that! Look her up. Goes to show that not all Comments are futile law school rants into an abyss.
Disappointing.
The book is pretty robotic, basically a chapter per major new business line, and after a while they start to rhyme a lot, and much of the detail just seem extraneous and neither that interesting nor that informative. Not that there isn't interesting/informative stuff in there, which is why I kept reading, it was just a bit buried in random other stuff.
It also feels pretty colored by the views of whoever his sources are on various topics. To a certain extent that's inevitable, but here it feels worse than usual. Decisions are just described as "typical capricious Jeff" and not much evidence is presented that they are in fact capricious, e.g. he reiterates stuff about inconsistency re: Blue Origin for changing tacks after like 10 years since they set out to build the effort in a certain mold, and due to an obvious change in fact set (SpaceX), and while that might have felt jarring to the person that had been working there for a while, there's no particular evidence presented that it was inconsistent or in fact anything other than necessary.
I don't want to overly defend Jeff as flawless, he obviously isn't, but I couldn't tell the difference e.g. between him genuinely being capricious and the author's source being upset about a change of direction.
And I don't think I learned much about what has made Amazon so successful that isn't already super well known.
The book is pretty robotic, basically a chapter per major new business line, and after a while they start to rhyme a lot, and much of the detail just seem extraneous and neither that interesting nor that informative. Not that there isn't interesting/informative stuff in there, which is why I kept reading, it was just a bit buried in random other stuff.
It also feels pretty colored by the views of whoever his sources are on various topics. To a certain extent that's inevitable, but here it feels worse than usual. Decisions are just described as "typical capricious Jeff" and not much evidence is presented that they are in fact capricious, e.g. he reiterates stuff about inconsistency re: Blue Origin for changing tacks after like 10 years since they set out to build the effort in a certain mold, and due to an obvious change in fact set (SpaceX), and while that might have felt jarring to the person that had been working there for a while, there's no particular evidence presented that it was inconsistent or in fact anything other than necessary.
I don't want to overly defend Jeff as flawless, he obviously isn't, but I couldn't tell the difference e.g. between him genuinely being capricious and the author's source being upset about a change of direction.
And I don't think I learned much about what has made Amazon so successful that isn't already super well known.
A nice follow up to The Everything Store, I particularly like the author’s conclusion. Whether you like Amazon or not, it’s a one way door that not only changed consumer expectations in the US.
It was such a good book.
Really well researched.
Some really shocking bits. More than in [b:The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon|17660462|The Everything Store Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon|Brad Stone|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1365394361l/17660462._SY75_.jpg|24650037].
I thought this book was very informative on Amazon. Learned a lot, and very interesting read.
4.2/5
Really well researched.
Some really shocking bits. More than in [b:The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon|17660462|The Everything Store Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon|Brad Stone|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1365394361l/17660462._SY75_.jpg|24650037].
I thought this book was very informative on Amazon. Learned a lot, and very interesting read.
4.2/5
I might be a Musk fanboy, but I put Bezos squarly in camp Zuckerberg, and he might be more dangerous in the long run.
informative
slow-paced
I read this simultaneously with "The Everything Store" by the same author. "Amazon Unbound" is also very good and has the benefit of being up-to-date as of my reading. The period covered - from 2013-2020 - is important and more relevant to the contemporary Amazon as its earlier (now mythological) early days. For good reason, the book focuses almost as much on Bezos' other business ventures (the Washington Post and Blue Origin) as on Amazon. These are important stories, but not as interesting to me. And of course, Stone covers developments in Bezos's personal life. These things don't interest me as much as Amazon's arc from figment of Jeff's imagination to one of the two or three most important companies in the world. I'd like to see Stone take a shot at an analytical wrap-up of how and why the events chronicled in both of his books ended up being so much more consequential than any number of other interesting tech company histories.