Continuations

No matter whether you think Amazon HQ2 in New York was a good or a bad idea, it is worth considering how terrible the execution of the whole affair has been. It all started with the way Amazon conducted the search for the new location. Making a bunch of cities compete in a secret bidding contest may strike some people as brilliant but was always a terrible idea. Didn’t anyone at Amazon think: “Hey we are one of the world’s most valuable companies, run by the world’s richest person and so aski...

Fred’s blog post today is about how new and powerful HTML5 apps are emerging, giving the new Kindle Cloud Reader as an example. The Cloud Reader is also an example of something else: if you tax a system too much people will find ways to work around it. This is highly relevant to anyone running or starting a marketplace. You can’t be greedy! (Sorry, Gordon). I had written a while back – in the context of eBook pricing – how Apple’s take rate of 30% was significantly too high. The Kindle Cloud ...

The Wired cover story on “The Web is Dead? A Debate” has in fact caused an intense debate of the question, taking place – of course – on the web. It may be seen as somewhat ironic that on just the following day we get two pieces of news from Google that would point in the other direction: a demo of the future of browser games and a Chrome OS tablet together with Verizon (aside: sure didn’t take long after their joint pronouncement on net neutrality). Much has been made of the potential shift ...

I was away last week and so am late to the party when it comes to commenting on the fight between Amazon and book publishers. Here are a couple of observations. First, I was surprised it took so long for this fight to start. It is a great example of what I call “fighting over the digital pie." What was most fascinating about it is that none of the publishers even made a mention of how much authors would receive. At present, this is all about trying to support the existing cost structure of pu...

Each has more than 100 Million credit cards on file to enable 1-click purchases of content, apps, and virtual goods. When I compare doing anything involving payment on other platforms the experience is cumbersome to the point of being useless. My 10-year old son had no trouble hijacking my Kindle, finding the store and getting a book for himself. And that’s on the Kindle! On his iPod touch he blew through the app budget we had set for the month within the first two days of having it. It will ...

I am sorry to see Amazon buy Zappos. Not because I have bought a lot of shoes at Zappos (still liked this as a title for the post though), but here are three reasons: First, I felt that Zappos could be a real competitor to Amazon for online retail. And I love competition. It is great not just for customers but also for suppliers. Second, Zappos was an IPO-able company based on size and apparently profitability. It takes IPOs to build confidence in the financial markets. IPOs beget IPOs. Now w...

This has been a big week in cloud computing. Most importantly, Amazon removed the “Beta” label from EC2 and is now offering an SLA for EC2. This is essential for businesses that want to move core systems onto EC2. As I have stated before, though, EC2 is not really a cloud platform in and of itself, rather a highly advanced server provisioning infrastructure. Amazon also took several steps towards moving closer to a true cloud platform. In particular, they have added support for load balancing...

I am often asked about what has changed in Venture Capital and how that has impacted startups. Inevitably I answer that the right place to start when looking for impact on startups is Amazon. My line is: “Amazon has done more for startups than all early stage investors combined.” Why? Because founders can now generally get a service up and running on AWS with a close to zero upfront investment. And of course once you have something fundraising gets a lot easier and you probably have to sell a...

I love reading books on my traditional Kindle. I find the eInk display to be easy on my eyes and make extensive use of highlighting. It’s great not to feel tempted to fire up an app or check email while reading which lets me make good progress even on hefty books. But across our family we now have three Kindles with broken screens. At first I suspected that the kids were mistreating the Kindles when they were reading on them. But they insisted that they had done nothing of the sort. Of course...

This past weekend I finally tackled two projects that I had on my to do list for quite a while. Had I known how easy they would turn out to be I would have worked on them much sooner. The first was setting up the 212 area code number I had bought for Susan a while back. As a longtime New York resident she really didn’t like that we got a 646 number when we moved back from the suburbs. As it turns out you can buy unused 212 numbers. All I wanted to do then is to forward that number to our 646 ...