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There are 35 Millions Amazon Product Listings.Make yours stand out with
Artificial Intelligence.


AMAZON

The founder of Amazon.com. >>  From the award-winning producers of “The Facebook
Dilemma”. >> Richest guy in the world. >>  FRONTLINE investigates Amazon. >> Is
Amazon taking over the world a good thing? >> Questioning those who run the
company... >> What would you say to someone who feels as though humans are
increasingly being treated like robots? >> That’s not the experience that I had
in setting it up. >>  And those no longer there. >> Most people would assume
there’s a pretty high safety standard on Amazon. >> And that assumption would be
incorrect. >> The tools are not what I call battle tested. >> Some people asking
if Amazon is a monopoly. >> The question for the democracy is, are we okay with
one company essentially winning capitalism? >> How do you and Jeff think about
the call to break you guys up? >> Simply because the company’s been successful
doesn’t mean it’s somehow too big. >> Now on FRONTLINE... >> Domination was very
much the idea. >>   “Amazon Empire”. >> Jeff Bezos has already conquered the
retail frontier. Now he's got a plan to colonize the planets. >> Bezos is laying
out his plans for colonizing space. >> Bezos is known for going big, and now
he's literally shooting for the moon. >>  In May of 2019, Jeff Bezos, the
richest person on the planet, unveiled his latest invention. >> This is Blue
Moon. It's time to go back to the moon, this time to stay. >> Jeff has said over
and over again that the most important work he's doing is work in space. What
he's built in Amazon is really important and really interesting, and it's, it's
revolutionized commerce. But it's only revolutionized commerce. >>   Bezos's
plan is to chart a new course for the future of humanity. >> Manufactured worlds
rotated to create artificial gravity with centrifugal force. These are very
large structures, miles on end. And they hold a million people or more each. >> 
It's an idea he's had since he was a teenager. >> This is me in high school. And
I want to highlight this quote: "The earth is finite, and if the world economy
and population is to keep expanding, space is the only way to go." I still
believe that. >> The way Jeff Bezos sees is it is that consumerism is an example
of how today's society lives better than our parents did and our grandparents.
And he wants, you know, future generations to continue to have an increasingly
better lifestyle. >> These are beautiful. People are going to want to live here.
>>  Bezos unveiled his extra-terrestrial plans at a time of growing concern
about the empire he's built here on earth. >> Amazon is the great disrupter,
from books to retail to grocery stores. >>  For more than 25 years, Jeff Bezos
has been disrupting and transforming almost every aspect of our modern lives. >>
Once you start connecting the dots, you see that Amazon is building all of the
invisible infrastructure for our futures. >> Amazon announced a healthcare
partnership... >> Amazon is helping the C.I.A. build a secure cloud... >> How
much of the internet do you run? >> That's a good question, um, it's a lot,
though. >>   But in recent years, Amazon-- and Bezos-- have come under scrutiny
for their aggressive tactics and expanding power. (Bezos laughing) >> Everything
that is admirable about Amazon is also something that we should fear about it.
>>   For the past year, we've been investigating how Jeff Bezos built his
empire-- and at what cost. >> And so think about this. Big things start small. ♪
♪ >>  Jeff Bezos's empire has its roots not in Silicon Valley, but on Wall
Street. That's where the young Princeton graduate went to work in the early
1990s, at a secretive hedge fund called D.E. Shaw. >> David Shaw was the one who
revolutionized Wall Street by introducing data. And I think Jeff really embraced
that, that idea that, "Hey, if you have data, ultimately, you win." >> One of
the things that David Shaw asked Jeff Bezos to do was to go and investigate new
businesses, and in particular this new thing in the early '90s called the World
Wide Web. (dial-up modem connecting) >> We all know that a communications
revolution is underway in this country. >> What is the internet? >> It's sort of
the mother of all networks. >> It's information highways. >> It's kind of like
your remote control to the world. >>  Bezos was quick to see the untapped
potential of the new digital landscape and was determined to get in on it. >> I
came across this startling statistic that web usage was growing at 2,300% a
year. So, I decided I would try and find a business plan that made sense in the
context of that growth, and I picked books as the first best product to sell
online. ♪ ♪ Because books are incredibly unusual in one respect, and that is
that there are more items in the book category than there are items in any other
category by far. So, when you have that many items, you can literally build a
store online that couldn't exist any other way. >>   The store he was imagining
didn't exist, so he decided to build it himself. ♪ ♪ >> The reaction to Jeff's
idea to start selling books on the internet was pretty incredulous, you know,
from a lot of the people close to him. His mom tried to convince him to just do
it at night or over the weekends. She didn't want to see him give up his job. >>
Jeff called, and he told me that he and MacKenzie were quitting their jobs, and
they were moving to Seattle and starting a company. I said, "Great, well, what
are you going to do?" He said, "We're going to sell books." I said, "Nice." He
said, "On the internet." I said, "Oh. Jeff, why will anybody buy anything from
you?" And he said, "Well, we're going to have more books than anybody else." >> 
One of the first names Bezos considered for his new website was Relentless.com.
>> Why "Relentless?" >> Relentless meant, "We move on no matter what." He
ultimately, obviously, decided that "Relentless" wasn't quite the right fit.
Amazon.com, earth's largest river, was. Amazon means gigantic. >> In terms of
relentlessness, stopping at nothing, that's, is that an apt description of Jeff?
>> No. It's not that Jeff stops at nothing, it's that when Jeff sets his mind on
a goal that he thinks he can achieve, he won't stop until he's proven wrong or
until he achieves it. ♪ ♪ >> Jeff and MacKenzie had rented a house in Bellevue.
And then we moved to a small, second-floor office in the south part of Seattle.
>>   Shel Kaphan was Amazon employee number one, one of nine former Amazon
insiders who agreed to talk on camera. >> What the company is now was nowhere in
my wildest imagination. Nowhere, so, the fact that it could have the-the kind of
position in the world that it has now, I had no clue.


AMAZON PRODUCT

In July 1995, Amazon.com went live. >> It was an incredible novelty, it was tiny
and obscure, and it's very hard to imagine, but the entire universe that Amazon
now dominates did not exist. >> Amazon.com, this virtual shop claims to be the
world's largest bookstore. >> It didn't take long for Bezos's vision to prove
prescient. >> What makes us different is vast selection, convenience-- we
deliver right to the desktop. If our catalog were printed on paper, it would be
the size of seven New York City phonebooks. ♪ ♪ >> The company quickly outgrew
the garage and soon had more than 50 employees. In 1996, James Marcus applied to
be number 55. >> There was a very palpable excitement in the air at this place,
and of course at this point Jeff Bezos was the first person to interview every
prospective employee. So I was ushered into his office. He wanted to see how
fast you were on your feet. He also always wanted to know your S.A.T. scores. >>
He wanted to know your S.A.T. scores? >> Every time, yes. >> How old were you at
the time? >> I was 36 or 37. >> This is the original sign that I made for
Amazon.com. Blue spray paint on white poster board. >> Jeff wasn't a figure out
of folklore at that point, he was not the-the wealthiest man in the world. >>
Here's my computer, Amazon.com up on the screen. "Hello, Jeff Bezos." >> He was
a small, nondescript, sandy-haired man sitting at a desk with quite a large and
eruptive laugh. (laughing in multiple scenes) >> But he wasn't threatening, he
was a normal guy to a sort of amazing extent. >> HAL 9000 hat, very important.
Hal and I share a birthday, we're both born on January 12. >> It belied, you
know, an enormous, Napoleonic ambition. >> One of the people I really like,
Thomas Edison, here's a model of his original light bulb. He's famous for
saying, "One percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration." (laughs) It turns
out ideas are the easy part, execution is everything. >> Domination was on
Jeff's mind from the beginning. One of his sort of second-in-command people said
to me, "You have to understand that Jeff wants to sell many more things than
books. And Jeff's idea is that in the near-distant future, you could buy a kayak
from Amazon. And if, and after you brought the kayak, you could figure out good
places to kayak and buy travel services from Amazon." So, those ambitions were
very clear, and this was very early on. But he was clearly thinking in those
terms from the get-go. >> How did that ring to you at the time? >> A little bit
exciting and a little bit nutty. >> Amazon.com, very good website. You should
really try it.  >> If you signed on to work at a-a kind of futuristic bookstore,
and the guy who owned it was suddenly talking about selling, you know, every
object in the universe, you just weren't sure how seriously to take it.  >> 
Though his public image was often unserious... >> That was awesome! >>   Inside
the company, Bezos was a hard-charging manager relentlessly focused on the
principle that would make Amazon one of the most trusted brands in the world:
the customer always comes first. >> This culture of customer obsession...
Obsessive focus on customer... Obsesses over our customers... Totally obsessing
over the customer experience. >> We used to call it customer ecstasy. It means
building, delivering, focusing on your customer. And we did it, you know, in the
very, very early days at every stage. >>  Jennifer Cast was there in the early
days and is one of six top Amazon executives the company put forward to speak to
us. >> Customer obsession was our North Star. And so, you know, it was a place
where we knew we were a part of something that was new, the internet. There was
an excitement that we were doing something that hadn't been done before. It was
exhilarating. We were all aligned around building for customers. >> Hey, you
guys. >> Hey. >> I've heard there was an empty chair that would often be put at
meetings. >> Yeah. >> Who was in the empty chair? >> Yeah, so that empty chair
was there to remind us all to understand the customer, have empathy for the
customer, understand the details of the customer experience. The customer isn't
there, we have to bring forward the voice of the customer. (phone ringing) >>
Thank you for calling Amazon.com. >>  And Bezos quickly learned that in this new
online world, he could understand exactly how customers were behaving. >> All
orders do need to be placed online. >> It was made clear from the beginning that
data collection was also one of Amazon's businesses. All customer behavior that
flowed through the site was recorded and tracked. And that itself was a valuable
commodity. >> Have you visited our website? >> We could track how a customer
navigated through the site. So we could see what you looked at, we could also
see what you paused at, we could see what you put in your basket but didn't
order, we could see what you put in your basket and did order. So that's when we
started realizing, "Man, this is rich. This is rich, rich, rich." And so we've
used it for everything. >> What do you do with that information? >> That's the
data that allows us to predict, or try to predict, what books that you would
like that you haven't discovered yet. >>  Bezos treated the site as a
laboratory, where he studied customer behavior along with his chief scientist
Andreas Weigend. >> I was shocked to see how predictable people are. If you take
the time of the day into account, if you take maybe when they were last on the
site, how long they were on the site last time, how long they're on the site
today, you know what they're falling for. >> Whoever owns, collects, the data,
if you have access to it and rights to data, then you are king. It's all about
the data. Everything. >> One of the most fascinating kind of tools we have at
our disposal is the ability to do active experiments. It's, you know, it's kind
of this huge laboratory. >> We did not think about it as exploiting, we thought
about helping people make better decisions. >> I was starting to feel that that
was less respectful toward the consumer, who was, after all, supposed to be our
god, the person whose ecstasy was our very reason for being. And it was closer
to getting a cow into a milking stall and extracting as many pails as possible
during each visit. And that felt a little more unsavory. But that was the
business of Amazon. >> Amazon has added 880,000 new customers... >>  While Bezos
was using these insights to bring more and more customers into Amazon... >> The
number of customers who use the website has increased fourfold... >> NARRATOR:
There was one thing he hadn't done yet. >> The company's never made a profit. >>
That's right. >> Now, why... how does that... why... how does that...? >> It
seems like a new math, doesn't it? >> It does. >>   Bezos would spend years
losing money trying to beat his competition, and he convinced investors to go
along with it. >> One of Jeff Bezos' greatest accomplishments has been his
ability to get Wall Street to accept the fact the first 20-some years, Amazon
wasn't going to be very profitable. And that's okay because they're building
infrastructure that will create huge opportunities for them to gain scale and
gain customers and gain business. >>  He spelled it out in a letter to
shareholders after the company first went public: "It's all about the long
term," he wrote, rather than short-term profits or Wall Street reactions. >> He
essentially says, "We are going to forego profits in order to take market share.
That our strategy is to lose money, which enables us then to put other companies
out of business who can't afford to lose money." >>  That strategy wouldn't sit
well with critics like Stacy Mitchell, who advocates for small businesses. >> In
essence, at the very beginning, he's signaling to shareholders, "I have a
strategy to monopolize the market, and that's going to reward you, but it's
going to be far down the road, and will you come along with me?" And they said
yes. >>  Investors also recognized Bezos' essential advantage over physical
stores, which had to charge their customers sales tax, unlike online businesses.
>> So, not collecting sales tax gave Amazon a big leg up over bricks and mortar
retailers. And that was central to their early strategy of gaining market share
as quickly as they can. >> What booksellers were saying to me is that, "This is
driving my customers to Amazon. They'll come into the store, they'll browse,
they find what they want, but then they'll go buy it on Amazon, because they can
save that sales tax." >> So it was a very irksome, early, big issue for the book
vendors, first of all, they were kind of the canaries in the mine, so to speak,
and then lots of other retailers. ♪ ♪ >> Amazon has added thousands of warehouse
workers and three million square feet of space. >>  Amazon's sales-tax advantage
would be central to its success as it expanded beyond books, into other
products. >> And we have a fantastic selection of things you can look at.
Electronics and then of course toys. Yeah, thank you, here is, we've got have
the friendly Pokémon. This is more than ten times the selection that you will
find in a typical, physical world software store. >>  But Bezos was still a long
way from his goal of Amazon being the place where you could buy everything
online. (drills whirring) And he saw a way to achieve it. >> Amazon could soon
become the Walmart of the internet. >> NARRATOR: There were thousands of
businesses eager to sell online. Bezos offered them a way to do it. >> Amazon is
transforming itself from an online bookstore to an online mall. >>  He
transformed Amazon into a retail platform where anyone could sell their goods to
his customers and invited thousands of other businesses to be a part of it. >>
It's the easiest place for anybody, small or large, who wants to set up shop
online to sell online, because they can access our 12 million-plus customers.
Anybody, all comers. >> We're talking about hundreds of thousands of companies
with literally tens of millions of products. >>  Name-brand stores started
selling on Bezos's platform, and so did tens of thousands of small
entrepreneurs. >> Everyone knew Amazon.com. The only people that knew
SuperDuperHoops.com were the ones that were searching to buy a basketball hoop
and saw our name on an advertisement. To us it was really a no-brainer. We knew
that we would, you know, increase our sales. First year we did 100,000, next
year we did a million, we did two million, four million, we were doubling every
year in the early days. >> NARRATOR: It was great for the companies-- and even
greater for Jeff Bezos. >> Amazon has become the most recognizable name in
e-commerce. >>  Not only would he take a cut of everything other businesses
sold, he'd also keep his own store on the platform, competing against everyone
else in the marketplace he owned and controlled. >> He owns the Main Street. He
has the Main Street real estate. Not just one building on the corner, the entire
Main Street. ♪ ♪ >>  How Amazon would wield its power over the online
marketplace would eventually become a question for government regulators, but
early on, there were indications. The first to see them were book publishers. >>
Amazon took over a large market share of the publishing industry very, very
fast. They were very quickly in a position to demand concessions. You know, I
think that was a moment where publishers started to realize, "Oh, wait a minute,
like, we... they're our partner, but they now have the beginnings of a boot on
our windpipe." >>   Inside the company, they had launched a strategy that some
called "the Gazelle Project," because they'd heard Bezos wanted them to pursue
publishers the way a cheetah pursues a sickly gazelle. >> Well, you don't go
after the strongest. It's like the cheetah. The cheetah looks for the weak,
looks for the sick, looks for the small, that's what you go for. So don't start
with, you know, number one publisher. Start with number seven publisher and then
number six publisher, and by the time you get to number three, two, and one, the
noise has gone, gotten back to them. They're going to know this is coming, and
chances are you may be able to settle that without a full-on war. >> We were
just this little mom and pop publishing company, publishing poetry books and
translated fiction. >>   In the early 2000s, the number of books Dennis Johnson
was selling on Amazon had been rising steadily. Then one day, he got a phone
call. >> Our distributor called us up to talk about our Amazon contract. And he
said, "I went out to dinner last night with Amazon, it was like going out to
dinner with the Godfather. They want a kickback." That's the word he used,
kickback. And he said they wanted four percent more of our sales. >> Was that
unusual? >> It was... in our experience, it was totally unprecedented, yes. >> 
Randy Miller ran the European book team and says he saw nothing wrong with
Amazon's tough tactics to challenge publishers on prices and profit margins. >>
In order to bring them into line, we would actually take them out of automated
merchandising, take their prices up to list price; we would put references on
the product page, their product page, saying, "You want it cheaper, you want
this book for, on this topic for a way cheaper price? Click here." And we'd send
them to whoever we thought their worst competitor was. That was how Amazon
forced their vendors to-to comply. (stammering): But that's an old Walmart
trick, I mean, it wasn't like Amazon created that. And it made, it made a
difference. And, you know, Jeff kind of got excited about it. >>   When Dennis
Johnson still refused to give in to Amazon's terms, he says the buy button on
all Melville House books suddenly disappeared, making it impossible for
customers to purchase them on Amazon. >> I mean, this is the company that
referred to little publishers like me as wounded gazelles, I believe? That's how
they think, that's how he thought from the beginning. And we eventually had to
pay what at the time I called a bribe. And our attitude toward Amazon was, you
know, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." And then carry on as best as
you can. >> Jeff Bezos may say that Amazon comes along and has given publishers
like yourself access to a huge distribution channel for your books. Has Amazon
been good for your business? >> Well, absolutely they have. Any bookseller that
sells our books is good for our business. So, I'm not complaining that Amazon is
selling our books. I'm just complaining of the way that their tactics are
hurting the industry I love. >>   In addition to granting interviews, Amazon
responded to written questions. Regarding Dennis Johnson's characterizations, it
told us, "Amazon disagrees with this account." >> Were you uncomfortable with
that sort of ruthlessness ever? >> Well, no, 'cause I was in retail-- I mean,
people think that's ruthless. You know, I looked, and some people at Amazon,
"Wow, that's kind of mean," and I'm like, "Oh, a retailer and a supplier having
a disagreement? Stop the presses!" It happens all the time. I mean, you know,
look, you've got a finite margin, and somebody's going to have to give. And-and
a lot of times Amazon wasn't the one giving. >> Kindle is a purpose-built
reading device. >>  The tension between Amazon and book publishers would ramp up
even further with the unveiling of the Kindle, which helped the industry
transition to the digital age, but gave Amazon more power to set prices lower.
>> And new releases are only $9.99. >>   Around that time, Barry Lynn, an
advocate for broad antitrust enforcement, was growing increasingly concerned by
what he was hearing from publishers. >> If the door was open, the publisher
would say, "Hey, you know, Amazon, they're just a terrific customer, they're our
biggest customer. They buy the most books, they sell the most books. We love
them." Then you close the door, and they say, "Amazon is destroying our business
model, they're destroying our business, they have way too much power, we must do
something about them." >>   Lynn wanted publishers to speak up publicly and
thought federal antitrust regulators might investigate whether Amazon was a
monopoly, illegally abusing its market dominance in anticompetitive ways. >> And
they'd say, "No way, I'm not going to talk about Amazon in public. I'm not
talking about them on Capitol Hill. They will take retribution against me." >>
To which you responded? >> "Well, that's why we have to do something about it."
>>  Jennifer Cast ran Amazon's books division in its formative years. >> We've
had a difficult time in some ways getting publishers to talk to us on camera
about Amazon. In part, it seems the reason is that they're afraid. How do you
react to that, that publishers find it uncomfortable to talk about Amazon
publicly? >> I don't know, I mean, I-I haven't seen that. >> Yeah. >> I haven't
been in your shoes. I'm sure they have... I mean, if you're saying that
they-they don't talk negatively about us, I mean, I know they have a lot of good
things to say about us. Um, you know, I-I don't know why they wouldn't speak
their minds. We certainly value speaking our minds. >> There is this well-known
anecdote about cheetahs and gazelles, this Gazelle Program. Do you know about
that? >> I don't. >> We've talked to former Amazonians about it, where Jeff had
said, "We should basically try to negotiate with book publishers and try to get
better terms and treat the smaller publishers as a cheetah would go after a
wounded gazelle." >> I didn't hear the cheetah and gazelle example, but what we
were looking for was people that were willing to move away from the old model of
bricks and mortar to a new model, which was, you know, a-a virtual store that
had many different types of opportunities to present their books to customers.
>> I want to talk a little bit about how we think about innovation at
Amazon.com. >>   Amazon would begin to accumulate even more power in 2005, when
Bezos quietly rolled out a revolutionary new program: Amazon Prime. >> Now they
have something called the Prime shipping program. >> Amazon Prime-- we only
launched this a week ago-- you pay $79 a year, and you get two-day shipping for
free. >>   It was a risky bet, and it paid off. >> The lynchpin, or the glue, if
you will, and probably the seminal moment in Amazon's business history, was the
introduction of what has become the most successful membership program in
history, and that's Prime. >> Many of you in this audience will already be
Amazon Prime members, bless you. This is very much appreciated. >> It changes
the way you shop. >>  Eventually more than 150 million people would sign up for
the free shipping-- a tremendous expense for Amazon. But to Bezos, it was worth
it. >> The Prime program at Amazon is one of the most important drivers of
Amazon's growth. When you go on and look to buy a product, and it's available in
two days, delivered to your door anywhere in the country, that Amazon Prime
program becomes a mechanism that keeps bringing you back as a customer to keep
buying and keep searching for new products on Amazon. >>  Two-day delivery
anywhere in the country was a big promise for a company that, at the time, had
less than ten warehouses. So Bezos went on a building spree. ♪ ♪ Across the
country Amazon warehouses began to spring up, filled with millions of products
being sold on Bezos's platform. He'd call them fulfillment centers, and they'd
create hundreds of thousands of jobs in places hard hit by the Great Recession.
>> Ten percent of Pennsylvania residents unemployed... >> Job market is in
complete disarray. >>  Like Allentown, Pennsylvania. >> At that time, it was
tremendous news that an employer was coming and actually opening a facility and
hiring people, versus, you know, gutting half the staff. >>  Spencer Soper was a
business reporter for the "Allentown Morning Call" when Amazon opened in the
area in 2010. He began hearing stories about working in the warehouse. >> People
are basically in this big, sprawling warehouse that's stocked with goods in very
random fashion. And they have scanners that tell them which things to get. And
people are walking maybe ten, 15 miles a day. So people just kind of
crisscrossing this big warehouse all day long. >>  As workers told him about the
punishing pace to meet the daily quota of packages, and the intense heat, Soper
and his colleagues started to investigate further. >> People really felt like
Amazon was playing fast and loose with their, with their health. >  Soper
discovered there had been numerous complaints to authorities at the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration, OSHA. >> They actually had a complaint from an
emergency-room doctor who called their hotline one day saying, "Listen, you
might want to check out this Amazon place. I've had, like, people parading
through my emergency room to be treated for heat stress." There was a security
guard who worked in the facility who sent a complaint to OSHA saying that he saw
pregnant women suffering heat stress in-in the facility. And so there's just,
like, these red flags right and left. >>  After an investigation, OSHA said
Amazon needed to keep the temperatures in the warehouses lower. In a statement
at the time, the company said it installed new industrial air conditioning and
pledged that worker safety was its number-one priority. >> Amazon is shrewd
businesspeople, shrewd businesspeople know when they have leverage. And when
you're the only shop hiring people in town, you can push them a lot harder than
you can when-when they've got alternatives. >>   Over the following years,
Amazon would hire hundreds of thousands of workers and become one of the largest
jobs creators in the country. At the fulfillment centers, Bezos experimented
with new techniques and technologies to boost productivity. >> Willingness to
experiment is the key to be able to do new things. So we do, you know, hundreds
of experiments every day in our fulfillment centers to get a little bit better.
Kind of like incremental invention. ♪ ♪ >>  When a company called Kiva perfected
a warehouse robot, Amazon bought the whole company. >> Amazon has acquired Kiva
Systems. They make shipping robots. >>   It helped transform the work
environment in Amazon's warehouses. >> When I first showed up at Amazon in 1999,
I led our Global Operations team. >> Jeff Wilke created the Amazon fulfillment
center system and is one of two C.E.O.s under Jeff Bezos. >> As we've added
200,000 robots, in that same time frame since 2012 we've added 300,000 people in
our fulfillment centers. So what happens is the robots change the work, so they
allow us... people don't have to walk as far, which is a complaint that we've
heard in the past. They make the job safer, they make them higher quality,
because we present a smaller set of options to-to employees. And that's all good
for customers, and it's good for employees too. >> NARRATOR: But at the same
time, complaints have persisted. >> People who've worked in warehouses for
decades say, "This is different. This is not the same." We're here today because
we want to make sure that these workers know about their rights in the
workplace, especially around heat. >>  Sheheryar Kaoosji is an advocate for
warehouse workers in the San Bernardino, California, area-- an Amazon hub, with
ten fulfillment centers and over 15,000 employees. >> Because of the way that
Amazon operates, because of the way that they set their rates for productivity,
it's a lot harder work physically but also psychologically. >> NARRATOR: We sat
down with a group in San Bernardino who'd recently worked at Amazon. >> When
they first got here, I thought it was exciting. Like, for me, I was thinking
maybe I could find a-a place where, you know, I'm going to set roots of a good
job, you know, move up in-in the place. But after being there for a while, I was
like, "There's no way." >> It's like, "Okay, this is where I can probably make a
career." But once you worked there for a certain amount of time, it's just like,
it's just not realistic, how they expect you to work. >>  Like dozens of workers
we've spoken to around the country, they say they've struggled to keep up with
the rate Amazon expected them to pick and pack items. >> How realistic are the
rates that they're giving you? I mean, what's... >> Not realistic at all. >>
Not-not realistic? >> No. There's absolutely no way to make rate, you know, you
got to find little ways to-to cheat it, because once you hit rate, by the end of
the week, they raised it, they bump it up again. Because they start seeing,
"Hey, people can hit those rates, can hit those numbers, hey, let's push them a
little harder."  >> You have security cameras right behind you at all times,
that are looking at you 24-seven. And if you don't meet standards or the rates,
you're out the door, you're just disposable. >> Every worker has a scanner at
all times that basically track exactly where you're at. >> And they have a
little blue line at the bottom of the screen, and it has, like, how many seconds
that you have to have it done by the time it hits zero, and it puts you into
panic mode. >> And pretty much you can't talk to people, you can't be in the
same aisle as them, you just constantly have to sit there scanning like a robot
all day long. If they catch you not scanning, you get a write-up. >> And what
they're doing is they're producing this mass of data that they are using to be
able to analyze the entire workforce. >> We're not treated as human beings,
we're not even treated as robots. We're treated as part of the data stream. >>
It's the incentive at any warehouse, on any assembly line, to get the most out
of any worker. >> Yes. >> To make rates, to-to be as efficient as possible, to
be as productive as possible. So, I don't see exactly what's different about
Amazon as opposed to any other warehouse. >> Amazon is the cutting edge. Other
warehouses are starting to adopt these technologies, other companies are
definitely interested in doing what Amazon is doing. Data collection could
become basically the standard for all workers, and that there's... you're never
good enough, you're never able to keep up. Amazon told us work rates are not
based on individual employee's performance, and that the scanning devices
workers use are not for tracking people but inventory-- a common practice in the
warehouse industry. >> We've talked to workers around the country, both current
and former workers. They've described the pace of work as being really grueling.
In the early thinking about rates and how far you could push human beings in
terms of their productivity, what was the thinking about that? >> Well,
obviously if the rates are too high, you're not going to have people showing up
for work. So, we have 600,000 people at the company, most of them are in the
fulfillment centers, and they-they come to work every day, they stay for years.
These are considered great jobs in the hundreds of communities where we have
fulfillment centers all over the world, and in the U.S. we have, almost every
state has an operation in it, and people come to work because these are great
jobs. They're safe, we pay double the minimum wage, the national minimum wage,
we have terrific benefits. The benefits for the folks that work on the floor are
the same benefits that my family has access to-- our family leave is like 20
weeks. So, the rates are set so that we can accomplish what we need to, which is
get orders to customers in a-a reasonable time and in a high-quality way, and
that creates a workplace that people want to come back to, and they do. >> 
Amazon wouldn't tell us how long fulfillment-center workers stay on the job or
how often they're injured. But workers we spoke to say the rates are higher than
other warehouses-- and that the company rebuffs attempts to unionize. >> We do
not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers, our shareholders,
or most importantly, our associates. >>  This is a clip from a video the company
says it used in the past to teach managers about employees' rights and labor
laws. >> The most obvious signs would include use of words associated with
unions or union-led movements like "living wage" or "steward." >> Early on,
Amazon took a position to basically be anti-union. Why was that decision made?
>> I don't think we made the decision to be anti-union. We just feel that all of
the things that-that unions would-would want to-to get us to do, we've already
done. >> What-what about setting rate, though? Do you not see that there's a
little bit more leverage in the hands of management in this scenario than there
would be in a unionized environment? >> I don't know, it's hard to speculate on
that, but-but I do think that we have the obligation to set rates that are,
again, going to encourage people to seek these jobs and deliver for customers,
you know, what we've promised. >> What would you say to someone, though, who's,
who's worked in-in your fulfillment centers that feels as though there's been...
that-that humans are increasingly being treated like robots? 'Cause it's
something that we've actually heard, and I don't sense it's hyperbole. >> Well,
that's not the experience that-that I had in setting it up or that I've seen.
It's, it's certainly true that-that these jobs are not for everybody, and
there-there may be people that don't want to do this kind of work. >> Amazon
executives also stress the company has become an industry leader in training its
workforce for career advancement. >> We just announced a pledge recently to
spend $700 million to upskill, which is basically creating career opportunities
for people, 100,000 of our employees. We pay 95% of tuition to go to-to college
to get a skill that isn't about Amazon, that's about creating options for the
employees, and I would expect those people to take advantage of that, work for
us for a couple of years and then go do something that they would much rather
do, and that's okay. >> There will be people that will hear what y'all are
saying, and they'll say, "Well, you signed up for physical labor, a job is a
job, there were benefits, and they are now investing $700 million to do
retraining for other types of jobs. What's the real grievance? What is there to
complain about?" >> I actually used to think that way for a while whenever I,
when I first started, whoever I heard complaints from, I was like, "Well, it was
in the job description, and you signed up for it." The part they don't talk
about is the safety rules that you have to ignore to make rate. It's not just
you go in, okay, and you-you do your job, and that's it. >> So, you're in,
you're in a weird bind. >> It's incredibly hard to meet rate while following all
the safety procedures. >> A complaint that we've heard from workers in terms of
the sort of automation of their work as humans, some of them telling us that,
yes, there are high safety standards in these fulfillment centers, but that in
order to make rate, they're having to cheat the standard a little bit. >> Well,
I would say that's not okay. So I, from the moment that I arrived 20 years ago,
I made it very clear to our operations teams that we will not compromise the
safety of our employees to do anything else. So, we have, we have a culture that
if-if we are asking people to do something that is, that they have to do too
fast to be safe, they can raise their hand and say, "This isn't right," and-and
we'll fix it.   For years, Amazon has put a happy face on its business and its
workforce.   >> Even in Amazon's commercials, the people are almost like shadows
and silhouettes. It's all about boxes, and there's just like happy boxes singing
and bumbling their way to your door, like, oh, no, no.  They don't want you to
even think about how they do this. They just want you to be wowed and, "Oh,
how'd this, how'd this get here?" >> ♪ I'll give a little bit of my love to you.
♪ >> They wanted people to just think, "Whoa, magic!" ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: And magic
was a big part of Bezos' marketing strategy, with an emphasis on the company's
miraculous level of innovation and growth. >> We started Amazon Prime in 2005,
but then something very extraordinary happened. This. In 2011, the slope of that
graph changed-- a lot. >>   As Amazon grew, he wanted his top executives to
think about the kind of company it was becoming. He wrote a memo titled,
"Amazon.love." A copy of it was obtained by Brad Stone. >> The memo is another
example of Jeff being very prescient about the future. It's Jeff grappling with
the idea that not all big companies are loved. That there is something that we
get uncomfortable with when we talk about very big companies. "Rudeness is not
cool. Defeating tiny guys is not cool. Risk taking is cool. Winning is cool.
Polite is cool. Defeating bigger, unsympathetic guys is cool. Inventing is cool.
Explorers are cool. Conquerors are not cool." >> Some businesses, you can tell
when you go in and have meetings with them, they have a conqueror mentality. And
there's a big difference between being a conqueror and being an explorer. And I
think in, you know, this very inventive space that we're in, it pays to explore.
♪ ♪ >>  But to some watching Amazon's growth, the company was falling short of
that ideal, and taking steps to make sure nothing got in its way. ♪ ♪ In 2013,
Amazon was moving to create its own delivery system and made a key decision:
rather than hire its own drivers, it built a network of independent businesses
to deliver packages. >> They weren't just going to dabble here and dabble there.
They were going to go and create a system that would rival FedEx or UPS. >> 
 ProPublica reporter Patricia Callahan, in conjunction with Buzzfeed, has
investigated the system Amazon set up. >> They figured out a way to get around
regulation. The cargo vans they choose are big enough to stuff with hundreds of
Amazon packages, but they're small enough that they're not regulated by the
federal government. >> An 84-year-old woman struck and killed by an Amazon
delivery truck. >> A woman hit and killed in a parking lot. >> N ProPublica and
Buzzfeed found that drivers are under intense pressure to deliver packages. >>
After striking him, the van maneuvered around Salinas and his dog. >>  And they
documented more than 60 crashes, including 13 deaths, since 2015. >> An infant
critically injured in a car crash has died. >> When it came time to figure out
who's responsible, Amazon would always say, "It's a contractor, it's not our
responsibility." >> Now you've been able to find 13 deaths. And that's over the
course of several years. Is that statistically significant given all of the
packages that they deliver in any day or any given year? >> I don't pretend to
claim that there's only 13 deaths and that I found every single one. I just
found enough to show that this is happening around the country. With UPS,
there's a record. There's a federal record you can look at how many serious
injury and fatal accidents they have. With Amazon, that doesn't exist. No one
knows the safety records of all of Amazon’s contractors. >>  Amazon disputed the
ProPublica report. It would not release any data on crashes involving its driver
network but told us it had a "better than average" safety record and that
nothing is more important to them than safety. >> Any accident is one accident
too many, so just as we were focused on safety in the fulfillment centers and
product safety, we are... we set very high standards with all of those partners
for safe performance. We have training videos for the third parties that work
with us to help them understand what we expect in terms of the drive, we have
mapping software that we use to help them find the right routes. Every one of
our drivers is required, including the third parties, are required to have
comprehensive insurance, including liability insurance, so that if there is an
accident that the person who's injured is covered. >> Amazon wants to get Prime
members their packages even faster... >> NARRATOR: In the last year, Amazon
announced a change to the way it handles Prime deliveries. Instead of delivering
packages in two days, they promised to do it in one. >> Free next-day delivery
all across the U.S.... >> It's impossible for me to imagine a world 20 years
from now where a customer comes up to me and says, "Jeff, I love Amazon. I just
wish your prices were a little higher." Or, "I love Amazon. I just wish you
delivered a little more slowly." >>   At the same time the delivery network was
being set up, Amazon was also rapidly expanding its product offerings, inviting
more sellers onto the site. (computer plays tune) Including those from China. >>
It basically makes it to where it's super-easy for these companies, who are
maybe not as careful with adhering to the law, where they're able to just start
a business up on Amazon, import some stuff, sell it, cause some problems, and
then disappear. >>  Rachel Greer worked in product safety at Amazon, and worried
that the site was being flooded with untested and potentially unsafe products.
>> Are there proper warnings? Has it been safety-tested for durability? If a
child chews on it, will the paint come off? Is that paint leaded? >> Most people
would assume that there's a pretty high safety standard on Amazon. >> And that
assumption would be incorrect. >>   She says that's because Amazon, like other
tech companies, takes the position that it's not legally responsible if its
customers are harmed by products sold by third parties on the site. >> If
someone buys something that causes harm at Walmart or at Target, a consumer can
sue Walmart or Target. >> Right, 'cause no one's forcing you, when you come into
Walmart, to enter the doors of Walmart. They aren't making you sign away your
rights. >> But when do you sign that when you go on Amazon.com? >> When you make
your account. When you accept the terms and conditions. >>  People have been
challenging Amazon's terms and conditions in court. Some have even been
successful. >> Ultimately, who's on the hook when a customer buys a dangerous
product on Amazon? Who takes ultimate responsibility for that? >> Well, in the
rare case where that, where something like that happens, if it's a third-party
seller, the sale is by a third-party seller, and it is the seller's
responsibility to, to sell a legitimate product to a customer, and then, when
Amazon is the retailer, and we sell a product to the, to a customer, then it's
our obligation to make sure that we understand the manufacturer and the supply
chain for that product and its, and its safety. >> But when the other sellers
are selling in your store, you're not responsible for it ultimately, if they're
selling your customer a defective or dangerous product? >> I think the way
things work in the U.S. is that the seller of record is the person who is
setting the price and who is purchasing the product, and for things not sold by
Amazon-- and it says on the detail page, it'll tell you who the seller is-- it's
the seller's responsibility for those things, and for us, it's very clear. It
says Amazon.com whenever we sell it. >> Do you audit your sellers in terms of
whether they're actually providing safe products to your customers? >> We do...
You know, some of our sales... So about, almost 60% of our sales are by third
parties, and those sales, some of them come directly from the third party, so
we're not involved at all. >> But you take a cut. I mean, it's on your
infrastructure, it goes through Amazon.com, so, I mean... >> Well, it's on our
infrastructure in terms of the website and payments, but we're not... >> And
fees that, you know, you're taking a cut of the sale, right? >> Sure, sure, and
we're providing, you know, traffic that, that... You know, it's kind of the way
they think about marketing is why they would pay that fee, but... It's harder
to, before an experience, inspect that, that product. >> A South Carolina woman
who bought a hair dryer on Amazon said this happened. >> Fire is coming out of
the hair dryer. >>  Amazon's approach has had consequences. >> A hoverboard
caused a fire that destroyed their home. >>   Dangerous products were flagged by
authorities in Washington State. >> ...found dozens of school supplies that had
high levels of toxic metals. >>  And a recent report found thousands of banned,
unsafe, or mislabeled products. >> I'm having a hard time understanding
something, which is that, that... You know, Amazon's entire brand is about the
customer, right? >> Yes. >> That it's... >> Oh, I reminded them of this over and
over again. >> You reminded them of what? >> I said that no customer wants to
buy an unsafe product. No customer wants selection that harms their child. No
customer wants to buy something that burns down their house because it looks
cool and it's the latest, coolest thing. >> Sitting here today, are you able to
basically say that the products that you sell on Amazon.com are safe? >> What I
can say is, we work really hard to make sure that they're safe. We have... We've
spent $400 million in the last year on systems that seek out things that are not
safe, and, you know, there are millions of sellers and hundreds of millions of
products, and our job is to, as fast as we can, weed out the ones that don't
belong on our site. We're going to have to be vigilant as a retailer and as a
technology company, and we are definitely dedicated to, to protecting the safety
of our customers. >> We heard that concern for the customer over and over in our
interviews with Amazon executives. >> Customer trust in a company like Amazon,
it's sort of foundational. >> Customer obsession is the first leadership
principle, and it, it's not a corporate slogan. >> We try to stay really focused
on customers. >> Very focused on, on delivering results for our customers. >>
Providing a great customer experience that customers want. >> Delivering that,
that customer delight. >>   This commitment to the customer, and to keeping
prices low, had another benefit: it helped them avoid running afoul of
regulators who enforce the nation's antitrust laws. >> It's important to
understand sort of that there's two fundamental philosophies of antitrust, of
anti-monopoly law. You know, there's the traditional philosophy, in which you,
you want to break up all potential concentrations of power that you can. But for
the last 30 years, there's been this change in how we do antitrust. And this is
the idea that the only purpose of antitrust should be to drive prices lower, to
serve the interest of the consumer. >>  Lynn had been urging regulators to take
a more traditional approach and examine whether the company was gaining market
power in exploitative ways: stifling fair competition, but keeping prices low
for consumers. >> We live in a society of consumers, though, and seemingly there
is some net benefit to all of us when prices are low. So, what's wrong with that
view of things? >> It's obviously good for people to... for all people if we can
drive down prices, if we have lower-priced drugs, if we have books that anybody
could buy. That's a good thing. It's a good thing for society, and it's a good
thing for us as consumers. But we're not only consumers, we're also citizens.
We're also producers. We're also people who think and who make things and who
grow things, and we want to have access to open markets. >>  Once again, the
tension was most pronounced with book publishers. Amazon was selling around 40%
of all new books in America and two-thirds of all electronic books, thanks to
the success of the Kindle. Then, one of the world's largest publishers,
Hachette, decided to push back. Franklin Foer was one of its authors. >>
Hachette and Amazon set out to renegotiate their e-book contract. And Hachette
said, "No, we don't accept the terms of your contract." And Amazon basically
said, "To hell with you, Hachette. We're going to stop delivering your books. If
somebody searches for a Hachette title, we're going to redirect them to another
publisher." >> Amazon's battle with Hachette and the authors that Hachette
publishes is heating up. >>  As Bezos's virtual blockade dragged on for months.
>> A bitter, seven-month standoff... >>   Thousands of authors, including
bestsellers like Douglas Preston, were caught in the middle. >> Some authors
were losing 50% to 90% of their sales from Amazon. It was absolutely devastating
to first-time authors. It actually destroyed their careers. >> Did you see your
sales plummet? >> I did, yes. I saw my sales plummet tremendously. >>  In
frustration, Preston penned an open letter on behalf of all authors. It was
published in "The New York Times" with more than 900 signatures. >> We authors
have loved Amazon. We have enthusiastically supported it, and this is how they
treat us? This is not right. >> Amazon has been accused of doing everything from
raising prices to deliberately delaying shipments. >> Is this what happens when
Jeff Bezos decides to flex his muscles? >>  While Hachette and Amazon were at an
impasse, Douglas Preston, Franklin Foer, and other authors went to Washington,
and asked the Obama administration to open an investigation. >> I went to the
Justice Department and I went to the Federal Trade Commission with the Authors
Guild, and we tried to explain to them why this power was so dangerous. We
pointed it out of all the ways in which Amazon was bullying the publishing
industry. >> The Department of Justice listened to us. And their answer was
essentially this: "Amazon is one of the most popular companies in the country.
(camera clicks) They have brought tremendous services to consumers, and they've
brought lower prices." And that we hadn't given them any kind of reason to open
an antitrust investigation. >>  Eventually, Hachette and Amazon would settle
their dispute, with Amazon allowing Hachette to set its own prices for e-books,
but offering it incentives to keep them low. >> It's great to be here at Amazon.
(crowd cheering) >> NARRATOR: Amazon would thrive during the Obama years, and
eventually account for nearly 40% of all online commerce in the country. >> Last
year, during the busiest day of the Christmas rush, customers around the world
ordered more than 300 items from Amazon every second. >>  But the complaints
about its tactics would continue, with retailers of all kinds concerned that
Amazon had become the online-shopping gatekeeper. >> You've got to be on Amazon.
You have to be there, because that's where everyone is. That... 100 million
Prime subscribers. They are the de facto e-commerce channel in the United
States, period, end of list. >> Amazon executives have told us that there are
many other options out there. There is Walmart, there is Alibaba. As a seller,
you've got options. >> I've heard that response from Amazon executives before,
and we did that, we were listed, we listed all of our products on every other
online marketplace. But it's a testament to just how good Amazon is. All of the
others that were non-Amazon combined did about ten percent of what we were doing
on Amazon. >>  Businesses big and small have been accumulating complaints about
Amazon's hold on them. >> On Amazon, the customer belongs to Amazon-- it doesn't
belong to the third-party seller. You're basically renting the Amazon customer.
>>  James Thomson used to recruit brands to come onto Amazon and now advises
them on how to do business with the company. >> I represent brands today that
face a number of challenges with Amazon. >>   Among those challenges, businesses
say that Amazon has access to their valuable data, which gives it an unfair
advantage. They also complain about increasingly higher fees to stay on the
platform, and pressure to use Amazon's warehouses and shipping services. We
spoke to numerous name-brand companies, but none would share its grievances on
camera. >> My account was suspended. >> Some small businesspeople have been
talking about their experiences-- good and bad-- online. >> When you're selling
on Amazon, you're playing in someone else's playground. >> Who gets placed
where, whether or not your product shows up in the search results... >> They
suspended my account without warning. >> These are all things that are governed
by Amazon's rules. And if there's a dispute within that arena, if you feel you
are mistreated, you know, the judge and jury is Amazon. >> They don't care,
they'll just kill your account like that or suspend it... >> There are all sorts
of crazy stories about why people get their accounts shut down on Amazon. And it
could take a week, it could take months, it could be never before you're back
online again. Amazon has the upper hand and the ability to basically take your
business away from you at any given moment. >> Selling on Amazon, take one. >> 
Amazon said third-party sellers account for more than half of everything sold on
the site. >> I sell mini-longboard skateboards. >> I sell mineral water. This is
what I do. >> And it's committed to its sellers' success-- proactively
contacting them when their accounts are at risk of suspension and offering an
appeals process to resolve disputes. >> You already have great products. Scale
up... >> But in the eyes of some businesses, Amazon has essentially become like
the railroads at the turn of the last century that controlled the flow of
commerce across the country. >> Start selling today. >> Do you see yourself as
being kind of like the rails for e-commerce, that sellers bring their goods to
market on your rails, through your marketplace? >> I don't think of it that way,
and here's why: the, the vast majority of stuff that's... Well, all of the stuff
that's sold is manufactured, right? So it's manufactured, meaning there are
brands and factories that produce stuff and then sell it. We're one percent of
the retail sales in the world, about. >> Well, you are the biggest marketplace
online, right? >> No, so, again, I, I don't... The idea that there's an online,
distinct for brands to sell their stuff and distinct from physical, just doesn't
make sense to me, and we're far from the largest retailer. So, I, I describe
this as retail, and we're competing against Walmart and Target and Costco and
Carrefour and Alibaba and Tmall and all kinds of folks who are, are now selling
both physical stores and online. >>   In addition to pointing to other large
retailers, inside the company employees have been schooled in how to talk about
its size and power. >> When I worked at Amazon, we had training specifically on
the use of terms like "monopoly." We were not allowed to use a term like "market
share." Amazon has what's known as "market segment share." What is market
segment? What is market segment share? I don't know, but I know that the lawyers
at Amazon feel those terms are, are much safer than using terms like market
share. >> So market share was something they were really concerned about. >>
Clearly somebody with the necessary legal training or PR training recognized
that Amazon was growing very quickly, and when we were asked to use the term
"market segment" and "market segment share," in essence it's a polite way of
saying, "I'm not going to talk to you about how big we are." >>  Since leaving
Amazon 20 years ago, Shel Kaphan has been watching the company with increasing
concern, and he's speaking about it for the first time. >> I think that the
characterization of Amazon as being a ruthless competitor is true, and under the
flag of customer obsession, they can do a lot of things which might not be good
for people who aren't their customers. >> I know you're not a legal scholar, but
are you basically concerned that Amazon is a monopoly? >> I'm, I'm concerned
that it has that type of power. I think it, you know, whether you technically
can call it a monopoly or not, I don't know. ♪ ♪ >>  That question has continued
to loom over Amazon. >> I think that Amazon is looking out, and the existential
threat that they may face is going to be from government. It's whether or not
policymakers are going to step in and intervene and say, "You have too much
power." >>   For years, Bezos has been ramping up Amazon's profile in
Washington. >> Amazon has been lobbying the F.A.A. to lift... >> Trying to cozy
up to politicians, so that they will give him the biggest tax breaks around...
>> NARRATOR: Spending millions a year on lobbying. >> Amazon lobbied more
government entities than any other tech company. >>   And hiring as its
spokesman the former White House press secretary Jay Carney. >> You've got an
army of lobbyists, many of whom have revolved in and out of government,
including yourself. What are you hoping to get for all that lobbying spend and
all that influence? >> One of the things we discovered is, because of the
visibility of our company, but also the range of businesses that we're in, we
need subject-matter experts on food safety, on transportation, on drones, on
privacy. And also, we can be a resource, an information provider to policymakers
and regulators. It's not lobbying in the traditional sense, in terms of trying
to persuade somebody to do something, it's just answering questions and, and
providing data and information. >>  Bezos himself would also become a presence
in the capital, and eventually buy the largest private residence in town. >>
Jeff Bezos never really showed much interest in politics, but as he's cemented
himself in the city, he's started to acquire this physical presence. He bought a
mansion, then developed it into a place that is explicitly designed to be
social. >> It has a big ballroom, I mean, it is designed to create a real
presence for him in the nation's capital, where he can hobnob with the people
who make decisions. >>   He'd even bought the hometown newspaper... >> Jeff
Bezos sent a thunderbolt through the media world this week... >>  Spending a
quarter of a billion dollars to rescue the struggling "Washington Post." >> I do
believe that democracy dies in darkness. I think that the capital city of the
United States of America needs a paper like "The Washington Post." >> I got to
say, you know, full credit to him, he hasn't intervened in any of the coverage
of the paper. And he's invested in the paper. Every dollar of profit that the
paper makes is plowed back into making it a better paper. >> Bezos allowed the
"Post" to hire, to restock its newsroom, he reversed what had been an atmosphere
of sort of decline. I'd say "The Washington Post" has really flourished under,
under Bezos's ownership. >> Let's cut this digital ribbon. >>   At the time,
critics saw a more cynical motive. >> Perhaps he's buying "The Washington Post"
to buy some sort of protection. >> Precisely. >> This deal could give him more
influence over politics. >> Nobody hangs out in Washington, DC, just to go to
the free museums. You buy a home in Washington, you buy a newspaper in
Washington, because it is the most influential city in the world, and you want
to lay your hands on that power. ♪ ♪ >>  Bezos saw a business opportunity there,
as well. The Obama administration planned to modernize the federal government by
embracing cloud computing. Bezos had been quietly building a revolutionary cloud
computing business. He called it Amazon Web Services. >> It's basically
computing power in the cloud, but really it's Amazon's server farms around the
world that give people access to the kind of technology services they need. >> 
To keep Amazon running, Bezos had developed an unprecedented digital
infrastructure. He realized he could rent parts of it out, not just to
businesses, but also to the government. >> Our infrastructure is built to
satisfy the security standards of the most risk-sensitive organizations. >> He's
already got a huge edge over the other big competitors in it. So he wants to
take that lead and capture the U.S. government. >>  In 2013, he got a major
boost when it was revealed that Amazon Web Services had designed a computing
cloud for the C.I.A. >> Amazon Web Services was awarded a ten-year contract for
$600 million. >> Amazon is helping the C.I.A. build a secure cloud computer
network... >> The C.I.A. contract was probably one of the best things that
happened to Amazon's cloud business. It lifted all doubts about the security of
the cloud and on whether you could trust Amazon with your most precious data. >>
The message to the world is, "If the C.I.A. trusts Amazon with its data, then
maybe other companies and government institutions can, as well." >> And they
did. >> Experience it with Expedia. >> A.W.S. became by far the world's leading
cloud-computing platform. >> On CBS. >> Today, more than a million businesses,
as well as PBS, pay Amazon to store and manage their data. >> NARRATOR: Bezos
had again anticipated the next frontier in technology, and had made himself
indispensable to it. >> What Jeff Bezos is after is really creating a company
that is the infrastructure, that owns the infrastructure for how commerce is
done. And that's an incredibly powerful place to be. ♪ ♪ >> Please welcome chief
executive officer of Amazon Web Services Andy Jassy. >> NARRATOR: Andy Jassy
created and runs A.W.S. He credits the service with making it easier to do
business and sparking innovation throughout the economy. >> Look at what A.W.S.
has enabled with regard to change in our society. Look at, Netflix changed the
way that we consume digital content, and Airbnb changed the way that we get
accommodations, and Hola and Grab and Lyft and Uber changed the way that we get
transportation. A.W.S. has enabled, has been a part of enabling all these huge
innovations and changes in consumer experiences that have, have made life better
for people. >> And we're the cloud with the most capabilities, the most
innovation, the most customers. >> The division generated $35 billion in sales
last year. >> Amazon Web Services. >> Yes! >> Build On. >> NARRATOR: The success
of A.W.S. gave Bezos billions to expand Amazon from a company that sells
everything to a company that does everything. A top priority... >> To boldly go
where no man has gone before. >>  ...was to create the sci-fi future he'd fallen
in love with as a child. >> Gentlemen, this computer has an auditory sensor. It
can, in effect, hear sounds. >>A world of artificial intelligence, in which
computers can think and make decisions for humans and about humans. >> Jeff
Bezos is a big fan of "Star Trek." He, he admits that that was on his brain when
he came up with the idea that Amazon should be pursuing a little disk that you
can bark commands into. >> Stop. >> This is his "Beam me up, Scotty" fantasy
realized. >> We started working on this device. And our, our vision was, in the
long term, it would become the Star Trek computer. >> When it first arrived from
Amazon, I didn't know what it was. >>In 2014, Bezos's talking computer, the
Amazon Echo, hit the market. >> Is it for me? >> It's for everyone. >> NARRATOR:
The voice known as Alexa would embed Amazon deeper into the lives of millions of
people. >> Alexa, what do you do? >> I can play music, answer questions, get the
news and weather. >> They call it a personal assistant, and just that term
implies this intimate connection that we then begin to develop with Amazon. >>
Alexa, sing the ABC song. >> ♪ A, B, C, D, E, F... ♪ >> I believe that when we
think about the future and the future with artificial intelligence, given where
we currently are today, Alexa in some ways represents the moment that it becomes
seamlessly interwoven with our lives. >> Alexa, how many teaspoons are in a
tablespoon? >> One tablespoon equals three teaspoons. >> Oh, okay. >> And the
problem is that we forget that it's there. >> Alexa, lights on. >> Okay. >>  But
Alexa is also listening-- and she's learning. >> I'm answering questions and
learning more. >> And that helps Amazon in the race to dominate artificial
intelligence. >> Alexa... >> Every time you ask Alexa something, you're making
the Alexa algorithm better. It's one of the reasons why Amazon, having had a
head start, is able to kind of preserve that head start, because they've got the
most data of anyone. >> Alexa is one more way for Amazon to gather extremely
valuable data. And this data collection is extremely important to this business
model. It's extremely hard to do, and, you know, convincing people to just
deploy something like this in their home is a brilliant trick. >>  Dave Limp is
Amazon's head of devices. >> How is it that you convinced tens of millions of
people to put what is essentially a, a listening device in their homes? >> Well,
I, I would first disagree with the premise. It doesn't, it's not a listening
device. The, the device in its core is... It has a detector on it. We call it
internally a "wake-word engine." And that detector is listening-- not really
listening-- it's detecting one thing and one thing only, which is the word
you've said that you want to get the attention of that Echo. >> Once the device
is awake and the blue light is on, it's recording. And last year, it was
revealed that Amazon employs thousands of people around the world to listen and
transcribe some of those recordings to help train the system. >> Do you think
that you did a good enough job of disclosing that to consumers? That, that there
are humans involved in listening to these recordings? >> We, we try to
articulate what we're doing with our products as clearly as we can. But if I
could go back in time, and I could be more clear, and the team could be more
clear, on how we were using human beings to annotate a small percentage of the
data, I would, for sure. What I would say, though, is that once we realized that
customers didn't clearly understand this, and within a couple of days, we added
an opt-out feature, so that customers could turn off annotation if they, if they
so chose. And then within a month or two later, we allowed people to auto-delete
data, which they also asked for within that, within that time frame. You know,
we're not going to always be perfect, but when we make mistakes, I think the key
is that we correct them very quickly on behalf of customers. >> But even one of
the founders of Amazon Web Services approaches his Alexa devices with caution.
>> When do you turn off your Alexa? >> I turn off my Alexa when I know for a
fact that the conversation that I am going to have, or, or whenever I just want
to have a private moment. I don't want certain conversations to be heard by
humans, conversations that I know for a fact are not things that should not be
shared, then I actually turn off those particular listening devices. >> We have
had an incredible year. The team has invented a lot on behalf of customers, and
I cannot wait to show you what we have. >>So far, Limp and his team have made
Alexa compatible with more than 100,000 products. >> Echo Frames allow you to
get done more around you and be more present in the everyday. >> Now they're
going to know more about you than anyone knows. They're trying to move as
intimately as possible and as quietly as possible into everyday life. >> Echo
Loop is a smart ring, packed with ways to stay on top of your day. >> Amazon
wants to have the entire environment essentially miked. >> Alexa, start my
running playlist. >> They want your walk in the park, they want your run down
the city street. >> Nationwide's teamed up with Amazon to bring you the all-new
Echo Auto. >> They want what you do in your car, they want what you do in your
home. >> Amazon Smart Oven. >> Alexa, bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. (oven
beeps) >> All these intimacies, all this insight is being integrated, analyzed
and integrated. >> Alexa, alarm off. >> That is an extraordinary kind of power
that has never before existed. >> After Alexa, Amazon would go on to spend
nearly a billion dollars to buy Ring... >> Hey, bud, the police are on the way.
>> NARRATOR: A doorbell camera and app that Amazon describes as "the new
neighborhood watch." >> Hey, get away! >> Get out of there! >> NARRATOR: To
promote it, Amazon has enlisted the help of hundreds of local police
departments. >> It's a phenomenal tool to assist detectives. >>  They give them
access to a portal to request footage and have given free cameras to hand out--
and talking points. >> This system is so simple to use... >> You have Amazon in
partnership with police departments, who have basically turned policemen into,
like, Avon salespeople for Amazon Ring. They have given police departments
talking points and marketing materials to encourage the installation of Ring by
community residents. None of this was public knowledge. >> And this is Ring's
first indoor cam. It is... cute, is what I would say. >>  Amazon has continued
to expand the scope of Ring. Last fall, Dave Limp unveiled a version designed to
monitor the inside of people's homes. Within weeks, hackers discovered a way to
terrorize Ring customers. >> Did you see that video? >> I did see that video. >>
What did you think of it? >> I think that that is a industry problem. It's not
just about the, a Ring camera-- it could be about anybody's cameras. It's about
any device in that... And we've already investigated that one to make sure what,
what the root cause was. What we want to be able to do in those cases is, we
want to minimize them. We'd like to detect them. And we also want to build tools
that give them the ability so that doesn't... that, that makes it harder for
those kinds of attacks to happen. There's a lot of bad people in this world. >>
Here's a device that you had described as cute and seems harmless, and I'm just
wondering whether you're being straight with people about the attendant risks to
your customers that you are obsessed with, supposedly. >> Well, it's not
supposedly, we are obsessed with customers. I, I would say that we are trying to
build security features at every level of the stack: operating systems,
authentication, fraud detection. We offer things that customers can turn on that
make it even, make it even harder for those attacks to happen. >> Yo, what's up,
how's your day? >> Who is that? >> What's going on, buddy? What are you
watching? >> There were a series of similar attacks across the country. >>
What's up, homie? I still see you. >> You hungry? >> What's going on, my main
man Shaq? >> : And it's not just hackers. Ring has fired some of its own
employees for spying on customers. >> In George Orwell's "1984," he describes a
dystopia in which, "You had to live, you did live from habit that became
instinct in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard." And I
wonder if you ever think about how easily this could become dystopian to some
degree? >> Well, I don't want to live in that world. So, I do not want to invent
the technology that, or have my teams invent the technology that would create
that world. And so... but I am an optimist. I, I think if you take the, the
absolute view of that, we wouldn't invent anything. >> We're increasingly living
in a world in which your products and your designs are there. Do, can you see
how it could be concerning in some ways that we all can't opt out of that world
at this point? >> Oh, sure, I can see why it could be concerning to some
customers. Our job in building that technology is to build it in such a way that
it, that it takes into account for the scenarios that you just talked about, as
best as we possibly can. You know, the, the reality of it is, that world
happened way before Ring or Alexa. ♪ ♪ >> That's something that Bezos himself
wrestled with 20 years ago. >> I believe that privacy is going to be one of the
prominent issues of the 21st century. The thing is, there are towns now in the
United States that have installed security cameras on every corner, and their
crime rates decreased by 80%, but do you really want cameras on every corner?
There are very strange things that are going to happen over the next 100 years
with respect to technology that are going to challenge us as a society to figure
out how we want to deal with privacy. >> NARRATOR: Decades later, Bezos would be
at the vanguard of expanding the use of that kind of technology. >> Introducing
Amazon Rekognition Video. >> Rekognition allows you to pass an image to us. You
can say, "Do these two faces match?" Which is incredibly useful for applications
in the security space. You can imagine... >> After Amazon rolled out a facial
recognition tool, it marketed it to law enforcement. >> Recognize and track
persons of interest from a collection of tens of millions of faces. >> Police
we've spoken to say it's a valuable tool to identify suspects quickly. >>
...appears to be a match, but I'm gonna make sure I look at them all. >> And
while Amazon has offered guidelines for how it should be used, there are few
laws governing the use of this technology. >> It returns anybody with warrants
that look like her. >>Civil liberties advocates have raised concerns, as have
computer scientists, who worry Amazon has released the software before it's
ready, and that police are essentially field-testing it on the public on behalf
of the company. >> The tools are not what I call battle-tested. And we still do
not understand how well they work in the environments in which they'll be
applied. That's where I see a danger. >> Anima Anandkumar was the principal
scientist for artificial intelligence at Amazon. In her first interview about
her concerns she told us she was particularly alarmed by an M.I.T. study that
found the software prone to mistakes with darker-skinned faces. Amazon has
questioned the study's methodology. >> As a researcher in A.I., I feel it's my
personal responsibility to educate the public of where A.I. truly is today,
right? Because they hear so much of A.I. being hyped up, you know, it's supposed
to be magical, it's supposed to solve all the world's problems. I see the
potential in doing that, but at the same time we need a reality check. We need
to ask, where is A.I. today? What can it truly do well? >> And when it comes to
facial recognition, you don't think it's ready for primetime. >> I don't think
face recognition is ready for primetime in challenging applications like law
enforcement. >>  Anandkumar and other scientists have asked Amazon to stop
selling Rekognition to law enforcement because they say the system's accuracy is
still in question, and there are no clear regulations about how it's used. We
asked Andy Jassy about it. >> I have a different view, and we've spent... We've
had the facial recognition technology out for use for over two-and-a-half years
now. And in those two-and-a-half years, we've never had any reported misuse of
law enforcement using the facial recognition technology and, you know, I think a
lot of societal good is already being done with facial recognition technology.
Already, you've seen hundreds of missing kids reunited with their parents, and
hundreds of human trafficking victims saved, and all kinds of security and
identity and education uses, so there's a lot of good that's been done with it.
But I also understand that it could be misused. And I think at the end of the
day with any technology, whether you're talking about facial recognition
technology or anything else, the people that use the technology have to be
responsible for it, and if they use it irresponsibly, they have to be held
accountable. >> There's been all sorts of problems with policing in this
country. So why allow police departments to experiment? >> We believe that
governments and the organizations that are charged with keeping our communities
safe have to have access to the most sophisticated, modern technology that
exists. We don't have a large number of police departments that are using our
facial recognition technology, and as I said, we've never received any
complaints of misuse. Let's see if somehow they abuse the technology. They
haven't done that, and to assume that they're gonna do it and therefore you
shouldn't allow them to have access to the most sophisticated technology out
there, doesn't feel like the right balance to me. >> It's been difficult to even
know how many police departments are using the facial recognition technology,
and there's no public auditing to know whether there are complaints about abuse.
How would the public ever know? >> You know, again, I don't think we know the
total number of police departments that are using facial recognition technology.
I mean, there's, you can use any number-- we have 165 services in our technology
infrastructure platform, and you can use them in whatever conjunction, any
combination that you want. We know of some, and the vast majority of those that
are using it are using it according to the guidance that we've prescribed. And
when they're not, we have conversations, and if we find that they're using it in
some irresponsible way, we won't allow them to use the service and the platform.
♪ ♪ >> Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos have said they want governments to hurry up and
regulate how law enforcement can use facial recognition. But in the meantime,
Amazon has forged ahead, and has even discussed its services with Immigration
and Customs Enforcement. >> At Amazon Web Services... >> NARRATOR: And the U.S.
military. >> ...partner community to deliver for our warfighters and defense
leaders for when it matters most. >> NARRATOR: Bezos himself has made it clear
that he sees Amazon playing a critical role in national security, as well as in
commerce. >> We are going to continue to support the D.O.D., and I think we
should. And if big tech companies are gonna turn their back on the U.S.
Department of Defense, this country is gonna be in trouble. >> NARRATOR: As
Amazon has revolutionized one industry after another, Jeff Bezos's reputation
has grown to mythic proportions. >> You've called what Jeff Bezos has built a
miracle. >> Absolute miracle. I wish I could give him a blood test or something
so I could pick it out, but... >> You want to clone him? >> No, I want a
transfusion, actually. >> Amazon is now worth $1 trillion... >> NARRATOR: His
every move moves the markets. >> Amazon Advertising is just on fire. >> Starting
a digital advertising business to rival Facebook and Google. >> Some breaking
news on Whole Foods... >> Holy cow. >> Jim, I heard you gasp just now. >> Holy
cow, this is such a game-changer. >> NARRATOR: Buying the grocery chain Whole
Foods. >> In a record-breaking deal, Amazon is buying Whole Foods for $13.7
billion. >> The day the acquisition was announced, the nation's largest grocery
company lost billions of dollars because Amazon acquired a company one-12th the
size. >> Everybody thinks Bezos is the smartest person in the world and he's
gonna come and crush me. >> When Amazon announced the acquisition of Pill
Pack... >> News of the deal sent shockwaves through an industry... >> The retail
pharmacy sector shed billions of dollars. >> Look at this story-- three titans
of industry... >> When Amazon was mentioned in a press release with Berkshire
Hathaway and JP Morgan saying they were looking at healthcare costs-- no detail
in what that meant... >> Healthcare companies are panicked about Amazon's
forthcoming entry into the healthcare market. >> On the opening bell the next
morning, the healthcare industry's largest players shed billions of dollars. >>
And insurance stocks are down after Amazon announced a healthcare partnership
with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase. >> Bezos basically wants to own the
whole economy, right? >> You think he will. >> I kind of think he will. I kinda
think that in, like, ten years Jeff Bezos owns every single thing there is. >>
So Amazon has these Darth Vader-like abilities to just look at a sector and
begin choking it of oxygen without even touching it. Amazon can begin beating
competitors without even competing. >> You actually think that Amazon is having
a negative effect on competition in the innovation economy right now? >> I think
it's a mixed bag, I think that you could argue, and there's evidence that they
have inspired innovation in certain sectors. But I think there's a lot of small
companies that aren't being formed, because if you go in to try and raise money
for an e-commerce company, it's, "Well, how are we going to compete against
Amazon?" And I say, "Well, the answer can be summarized in one word:
impossible." >> All right, let's move some earth. >> Every single area that he
enters into, he manages to succeed in a fairly major way. >> We've had another
great Prime Day. >> We've never seen anything like a company that is so
integrated into the fabric of existence, so, you know, at a certain point, it
becomes unavoidable. >> Amazon just yesterday said... >> Bezos would even extend
his reach into the heart of popular culture. >> Can you imagine Macy's starting
a media company? We couldn't even imagine that. But Amazon does it, and people
take it seriously. >> Amazon is investing billions in new shows and movies. >>
Oh. Hi. >> Hey. >> NARRATOR: And on beefing up its streaming service, which
streams around four times as many movies as Netflix, Major >> NARRATOR: And on
beefing up its streaming service, which streams four times as many movies as
Netflix, Major League Baseball, and PBS shows like this one.  >> And the Golden
Globe goes to... "Transparent." Amazon Instant Video. >> I want to thank Amazon,
Jeff Bezos. >> To Amazon, my new best... friend.  >> Bezos likes to joke about
how, every time he wins a Golden Globe... >> ...it helps us sell more shoes. And
it does that in a very direct way, because when people... if you look at Prime
members, they, they buy more on Amazon than non-Prime members, and one of the
reasons they do that is, once they've paid their annual fee, they're looking
around to see, "How can I get more value out of the program?" >> They're trying
to use this entertainment to get people into the pipeline. >> Alexa, play "Jack
Ryan" on Fire TV. >> To keep them sitting within this structure that is Amazon,
where it becomes this unthinking habit that's starting to pattern all these
parts of our existence. >> So you're doing the media stuff to encourage people
to use more of Prime. >> Correct. >> Amazon is represented at the Academy
Awards. Amazon is the first streaming service nominated for Best Picture. >>
He's like one of the old studio bosses right now. He really enjoys having this
place in the industry and really seems to relish being at the center of
attention there. >> I also want you to know, Jeff, if you win tonight, you can
expect your Oscar to arrive in two to five business days... >> What you see now
is someone who is so supremely self- confident. A guy who has become a titan. ♪
♪ >> Amazon is about to get bigger. It's looking for another home in North
America. >>  Bezos and Amazon's soaring stature would be on full display in
September 2017, when the company announced a contest to find a location for a
second headquarters. >> ...called HQ2. >>  They promised $5 billion in capital
investments. >> $5 billion... >> ...in local investment... >> And 50,000 jobs.
>> 50,000... >> 50,000 people. >> 50,000 high-paying jobs. >> Cities are
salivating over the opportunity. >> It was unprecedented because the number of
jobs was head-and- shoulders more than had ever been offered in a deal before.
This was a super-high-profile auction by the most popular consumer company in
the, in the country. >>  The company invited cities across North America to
pitch themselves. >> How about, I don't know, here? >> 238 took them up on it.
>> I chose, Miami-- you should, too. >> Can't wait to see you, Amazon. >> I,
Ebenezer Scrooge... >> Some with elaborately produced videos. >> ...I live in
Atlanta. >> Amazon is demonstrating that it has the power to get thousands of
elected officials to remake their workday and bow down before Amazon. >> I'm
Mark Bound, mayor of the city of Danbury. >> And offer it huge tax breaks. >>
Georgia offered $2 billion. >> Maryland offered $5 billion. >> $7 billion from
New Jersey. >> Huge infrastructure promises, huge prime parcels of land. >>
Philadelphia is offering the most land-- 28 million square feet. >> They know
that these places all don't have a prayer. >> So to those who saw it as a kind
of grotesque display of corporate power, to dangle 50,000 jobs and potential
billions of dollars of revenue over metropolitan cities around the country, you
say what? >> Look, I, I think, I used to work for the United States government,
like, we want businesses to invest in the United States. States want businesses
to invest in states, cities, city officials want businesses to invest in cities.
The proposals we got, the cities made the proposals, they wanted us to come, and
they presented to us why they were an attractive option. ♪ ♪ >> In November
2018, Amazon announced there were two winners: Arlington, Virginia, and New York
City. ♪ ♪ >> This is by far the biggest new jobs deal in the history of New York
City, the history of New York State. >> New York City and State had campaigned
hard for it, offering up nearly $3 billion in subsidies and tax breaks. >> I'll
change my name to "Amazon Cuomo" if that's what it takes. >> NARRATOR: In
return, Amazon promised 25,000 jobs, billions of dollars in capital investments,
and a small number of projects earmarked for local community members. >> I
thought it could be a great thing for New York. We are more and more of a tech
center, we wanted to consolidate that reality. Having Amazon here would have
helped immensely. >> Amazon has got to go! >>  But not everyone was enthused
about giving billions in tax breaks to a trillion-dollar corporation. >>
Corporate handout! >> Get out! >> Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the tax break
isn't worth it. (gavel pounding) >> Welcome to today's oversight hearing on the
deal... >> Though the deal had already been finalized, the New York City Council
insisted on a public hearing. It quickly turned contentious. >> Mr. Husman, you
mentioned that there are 5,000 employees that are currently working here in New
York City for Amazon, is that correct? >> Yes. >>  Council members grilled
Amazon executives on their position on unions, and whether the company would
pledge to remain neutral if workers in New York State tried to unionize. >> How
many of those employees are unionized? >> None, sir. >> None. Would you be okay
with agreeing to neutrality so that workers can unionize? >> No, sir, we
respect... >> You wouldn't agree to that. >> Correct, sir, we would not. >> To
go to a city council hearing, as Amazon did, and antagonize the city council--
if they wanted to start a fight, they did a great job. If they wanted to
actually show that they were willing to work with this community and our values,
they did a horrible job. >> You are in a union city. And one of the first
answers to your question today, is-- would you be neutral?-- you said no. That
is not a way to come to our city. >>  It was not the reaction the company
expected when it launched the contest. Two weeks later, Amazon pulled out. >>
Amazon is pulling the plug on its New York plans. >> We decided we didn't have
to be there in that political dynamic. The fact of the matter is, when it turned
out the governor and the mayor supporting something turned out not to be enough
to persuade other critics that it was the right kind of investment for New York
to make, we decided, that's fine, we can go elsewhere. >> He said to us that it
turned out that the governor and the mayor supporting something wasn't enough to
persuade other critics that it was the right kind of investment for New York to
make. So we decided... we decided it's fine, we'll go elsewhere. >> That's an
idiotic statement on its face. That is pure idiocy from a guy who should know a
hell of a lot better. The deal was done, Amazon knew it was done. There was
noise, there was posturing by people in the political world, but the deal was
done, so all we're talking about here is the background noise. In what world are
there no critics? Well, yeah, in an autocratic totalitarian world, maybe they're
not allowed, and maybe that's the world that Jeff Bezos somewhere in his mind
thinks he is entitled to. ♪ ♪ >>  At the time, Bezos was involved in some
personal turmoil. >> Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos and his wife of 25 years
announcing they are splitting. >> The announcement coming amid tabloid reports
that Bezos is now in a relationship with former news anchor Lauren Sanchez. >>
The "National Enquirer" had been pursuing him for months. >> The tabloid claims
it tracked him across five states and over 40,000 miles. >> Bezos saw the
"Enquirer's" report as politically motivated. >> So what would be the motive
here of getting that embarrassing material about Bezos and his alleged affair to
the "National Enquirer"? Who would want to get the dirt in the press? >>
NARRATOR: The magazine's owner, David Pecker, was linked to two powerful men who
disliked how they were covered by Bezos's "Washington Post." The first was
President Trump. >> It's put there for the benefit of "The Washington Post," of
Amazon... >> NARRATOR: The second: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who
the C.I.A. had tied to the murder of one of the "Post's" journalists, Jamal
Khashoggi. >> Former C.I.A. director John Brennan said, "I have no doubt that
Saudi Arabia would want to embarrass Jeff Bezos and hurt him financially."
>>David Pecker demanded that Bezos publicly declare the "Enquirer's" coverage
was not politically motivated or he'd publish intimate photos of him. >>
Breaking news tonight, a stunner from the richest man in the world. >> Rather
than give in, Bezos fought back. >> Jeff Bezos calling out the publisher of the
"National Enquirer," David Pecker. >> Bezos published a personal account
accusing the "National Enquirer" of blackmail, of extortion. >> He turned the
situation around and handled it so brilliantly-- he was very transparent, he was
very courageous, admitted some very embarrassing things about himself, didn't
try to deny it-- and positioned the other individual as the bully, and kicked
the bully in the nuts, and somehow turned this into a net positive. I mean, this
really was the PR strategy and execution of the ages. I've never seen anything
like this. ♪ ♪ >>

Publicly, Bezos has pushed ahead undaunted-- a world-famous celebrity. And even
after a $38 billion divorce settlement, still the richest person on the planet.
(cheers and applause) But the calls to rein in his company are growing louder.
>> Amazon reported $10 billion in profits and paid zero in taxes. >> I will
single out companies like Halliburton or Amazon that pay nothing in taxes in our
need to change that. >> Here's Bezos achieving this American dream and success.
And, and he's now the target of, of all of this criticism. And basically, it
becomes a symbol of all of his problems. >> Amazon is closing 30% of America's
stores and malls and paying... >> You're basically a piñata dangling in front of
any politician with a populist message. Anyone who wants to talk about wealth
inequality, they're pointing their finger at you. >> This is why three people
own more wealth than the bottom half. >> If they want to talk about problems
with capitalism in general, they're pointing their finger at you. >> We need to
enforce our antitrust laws, break up these giant companies. >> And it's coming
from all sides. >> President Trump just sent a chill down the spine of Jeff
Bezos... >> The president again teed off against Amazon on Twitter. >> 
President Trump has made Bezos's ownership of "The Washington Post" a regular
target. >> "Washington Post," Bezos uses that as his lobbyist, okay? >> He kind
of assumed that "The Washington Post" was operated in the sort of way that he
would operate a newspaper. And so he thought that Bezos was dictating coverage
to the "Post," which we should be careful to say is not the case. >>Trump has
also criticized Amazon, and accused the company of evading taxes. Last year, the
company was competing for a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the
Department of Defense. >> This contract would have solidified Bezos's dominance
in cloud computing. This is a hugely important thing. >>  But the company claims
President Trump intervened to scuttle the deal. >> And we're looking at it very
seriously. It's a very big contract. One of the biggest ever given. >> A big win
for Microsoft, beating out Amazon... >> Amazon can protest the outcome,
especially given the unusual, unprecedented comments by President Trump... >>
It's an extraordinary times we live in that one of the world's biggest
corporations, Amazon, is now saying, "The president of the United States has
corrupted our ability to win this contract." >> Is there any evidence of that?
>> The evidence is what the president has publicly said. >> And Amazon's
problems have continued to multiply. The Federal Trade Commission is now
reconsidering its stance on antitrust enforcement and is looking at Amazon-- as
are regulators in the E.U. >> This gatekeeper power and how the platforms are
exercising it is of tremendous concern. >>  In Washington, Democratic
Congressman David Cicilline has launched an antitrust investigation into
allegations of abusive conduct by Amazon and the other tech giants. >> Given
your experience, do you agree with Amazon's statements suggesting that it seeks
to act in the best interest of independent sellers? >> I disagree with that. We
get, I don't know, what I might call bullying with a smile. >> We were able to
get several C.E.Os. to come to a public hearing. That required tremendous
courage because there's a real potential for economic retaliation for their
sharing that. >> We don't have the resources to fight Amazon. We could use some
help. >> In the course of your investigation thus far, and you've had several
public hearings, have you seen any evidence of anti-competitive behavior by
Amazon? >> Um, we have seen evidence of anti-competitive behavior by all of the
large platforms as a result of their market dominance. But it sort of doesn't
fall on the companies to fix this problem. It falls on us. Without objection,
the hearing is adjourned. >>  Cicilline's committee is considering everything
from imposing limits on what businesses a company like Amazon can engage in, to
restricting the collection and use of data. ♪ ♪ The man who helped Jeff Bezos
build Amazon 25 years ago says it may be necessary to go even further. >> On the
one hand, I'm proud of what it became, but it also scares me. And, um, I just
feel like it's important for someone in my situation to, you know, at least say
what they think about what's going on. >> This is sort of in some ways a baby
that you gave birth to, right? And so, I mean, you helped birth Amazon. >> Um,
yeah, very much so. In fact, I used to, um, you know, get up several times
during the night to, just to see if it was working and... and, you know, take
care of it if it wasn't, so... >> And when you look at what Amazon has grown
into today, you see what? >> (chuckles) Well, um... you know, you don't want to
see your offspring, um, become, um, antisocial adults, right? So I think not all
of the effects of the company on the world are for the best and, um... And, you
know, I, I wish it weren't so, and I... you know, and I... but I had something
to do with bringing it into existence, so, it's partly on me. >> And, I mean,
isn't... Isn't this just capitalism? Isn't this just a company doing what a
company does? >> Yes. Yes, it is, um, and I think they're doing what the
business schools teach people to do, and they're doing it aggressively and
skillfully and with great intelligence. And they will continue to do that unless
they're constrained by other forces in society. >> There are proposals out there
to break up Amazon. Is that something you'd promote, the idea of breaking them
up? >> Um, I think that they're now at the scale where that could potentially
make sense. >> How do you and Jeff and others at the senior leadership level
think about the call to break you guys up? >> We don't think about it very, very
deeply. You know, I've been at Amazon now for 22-and-a-half years, and I always
remember one of the first things I heard Jeff Bezos say back when we could fit
the whole company in just one conference room for an all-hands meeting. He said,
"I would not go to bed at night fearing your competitors or fearing any external
issues. I would go to bed at night fearing whether you're doing right by your
customers." And that really is a credo that we live here and it's what we spend
most of our time thinking about. >> Well, I, I understand that we're big, and
that, that we deserve scrutiny, and I think everything that's... that's large in
the economy and in society should deserve scrutiny. The problem is, when you
think about us, we're in a lot of verticals, yes. There's... there's video, and
there's commerce, and there's, you know, there's web services-- there are all
these things. But in every one of them, we have intense competition, and I do
understand why, when you're in a lot of them, it can seem like we're everywhere,
but the global... If we were everywhere, that means we're talking about the
global economy, not just global retail-- it's so vast, we're just, you know,
we're a speck. >> To the public, it may sound strange coming from Amazon, which
is a company with basically a trillion-dollar market cap, your C.E.O. is the
richest man in the world, but Jeff Wilke said to me that you're kind of just a
speck in the scheme of things. Do you see how that could seem strange or
incongruous? >> You know, Amazon as a whole has become, you know, has been
successful, but simply because the company's been successful in a few different
business segments doesn't mean it's somehow too big. ♪ ♪ >>  As Jeff Bezos's
company is coming under ever greater scrutiny-- for everything from how it
wields power to even its impact on the environment-- he's continuing to look
beyond it all. >> We get to preserve this unique gem of a planet which is
completely irreplaceable. There is no plan B. We have to save this planet, and
we shouldn't give up a future for our grandchildren's grandchildren of dynamism
and growth. We can have both. Who is gonna do this work? (rocket rumbling) >> 
He's spending a billion dollars a year of his personal fortune on a space
exploration company he created. >> And it's this generation's job to build that
road to space, so that the future generations can unleash their creativity. >>
For Bezos, it's always been about one thing: his vision for the future. >> I
want you to think about this. This vision sounds very big, and it is. None of
this is easy, all of it is hard, but I want to inspire you, and so think about
this. Big things start small.





AMAZON EMPIRE PROFIT



29 ianuarie 2021



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