Word: worlds
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bezos had graduated from Princeton University, majoring in electrical engineering and computer science. The field was unplanned: he had chosen Princeton for its legendary physics department. Shortly after arriving, however, he discovered that he wasn't the smartest guy in the world after all. He felt outclassed by the physics jocks and gravitated to comp...
...July 16, 1995, Amazon.com opened its site to the world. Bezos simply told all 300 beta testers to spread the word. During the first 30 days, without any press, Amazon sold books in all 50 states and 45 other countries. "Within the first few days, I knew this was going to be huge," says Bezos. "It was obvious that we were onto something much bigger than we ever dared to hope...
...world goes his way, Bezos could become even richer than his neighbor Bill Gates. Then what? "At some point," he says, giving MacKenzie a hug as the two of them stand around in the kitchen, "we want to figure out how to do philanthropic work that's highly leveraged. It's very easy to give away money ineffectively. But doing it well requires at least as much attention and energy as building a successful company...
...says the trick to solving some of the world's problems is to think, Amazon-like, in the long term. "Say you want to solve world hunger. If you think in terms of a five-year time frame, you get really depressed; it's an intractable problem. But if you say, well, let's see how we could solve this in 100 years--it's a problem because you'll be dead by then, but the solution becomes more tractable...
This is ground zero of the New Economy? At age five, Earth's Biggest Bookstore is now Earth's Biggest Selection, in keeping with Bezos' plan for world domination. Meaning what, exactly? Well, in a sense, Amazon isn't about technology or even commerce. Any moron can open an online store. The trick is showing millions of customers such a good time that they come back every few days for the next 50 years. Amazon is, like every other site on the Web, a content play...