TRAILER Foundering: The Amazon Story - podcast episode cover

TRAILER Foundering: The Amazon Story

Feb 17, 20223 min
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Episode description

This season of Foundering reexamines a foundational story of the internet age: the rise of Amazon and its ingenious founder Jeff Bezos. Over the last 20 years, Amazon has changed the way we shop, what we watch on TV, how we interact with our devices and how businesses consume computing resources. But is Amazon now too powerful—and unaccountable? And how did Bezos, once widely admired, turn into a controversial figure of unfathomable wealth, whose personal pursuits are avidly covered by the tabloids? Following his best-selling book “Amazon Unbound,” Brad Stone continues his exploration of Amazon and its founder, presenting an unvarnished picture of a company that spans the globe and touches nearly every aspect of our lives—for better or worse.

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Transcript

Speaker 1

We have been employees of Amazon for like a week, but they had still not told us anything. They said, no, we have to tell you in a closed room. So we all got in the room together. They closed the door, locked the door, put paper over the window in the door. It was very hush hush, and then they said, imagine something the size of a coke can and people will be able to talk to it. And we thought, the technology isn't there yet, it doesn't exist yet. Jeff Bezos

wants to be seen as an inventor. We love to invent, We loved to pioneer. We even like going down alleys that turn out to be blind allies. He wants Amazon to be seen as an innovator. Talk to us about that fulfillment center. I don't see too many humans. Help us understand the amount of robots you have versus the amount of people you employ. A tech giant that drives social and technological change. I was like, Okay, this is amazing.

This is clearly an important moment technology. I was funnish, Right, how the hell did they do that? And by all accounts, Bezos got everything he wished for this. There's like no comparison, said Jeff Bezos is actually the richest person in modern histories, and in terms of just ship billions being accumulated that there's really nothing in history to compare. But as Amazon grew and Beazos became wealthier and wealthier, something began to change.

Amazon was ranked one of the twelve worst companies to work for, but many Amazon staffers say the demand for greater speed is the leading factor harming warehouse workers. Bezos became a target. They saw him as a villain, a ruthless capitalist. The pressure grew stronger and stronger. Protesters marched down thirty fourth Street intent to vent their anger at Amazon, and then Bezos made another surprising move. Jeff Bezos is stepping down. The announcement sent shock waves to the business

and tech commune. And Hi, I'm your host, brad Stone. This season on Foundering will take you inside Amazon's quest for world domination. Amazon is no question one of the most spectacular business stories of our times, and Bezos is a visionary. But he never could have foreseen how dramatically Amazon and his personal wealth would change him and in the process, alter our modern society. Check us out Foundering, a podcast from Bloomberg Technology. Listen wherever you get your podcasts

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