This chapter explores the financial setbacks faced by Amazon's devices team, highlighting a substantial $25 billion loss from 2017 to 2021. It examines the company's strategic choice to prioritize market share in voice technology, using the Gillette model, and discusses the implications of their extensive Alexa device penetration into homes.
40% of everything sold online in the United States is through Amazon. Its web services division owns almost a third of the worldwide cloud infrastructure.
Amazon is a goliath.
Dana Mattioli is an investigative journalist at the Wall Street Journal and the author of “The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power.” Mary Long caught up with Mattioli for a conversation about:
- Amazon’s early days and how it withstood years of sustained losses.
- How Amazon makes Wall Street look genteel.
- The lengths that the company went to get information from competitors.
Companies discussed: AMZN, TGT, EBAY
Host: Mary Long
Guest: Dana Mattioli
Producer: Ricky Mulvey
Engineers: Dez Jones, Austin Morgan
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