Bezos Resigns As Amazon CEO
Amazon billionaire founder Jeff Bezos has announced that he will step down from company's CEO role this year. He will remain on the executive and will be replaced as by Andy Jassy, the present chief of Amazon's cloud-computing business Amazon Web Services (AWS) and one of the companies first employees.
Bezos intends to focus his attention on his other intersts, not least the Blue Origin rocket building and space exploration copmany which he also founded and overseeing the Washington Post newspaper, of which he is the sole owner.
Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and has previously joked about founding Amazon so it could fund his childhood dream of flying into outer space.
In a message to Amazon employees Bezos wrote “This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, “What’s the internet?” Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while.”
Today, Amazon employs 1.3 million people, serve hundreds of millions of customers and businesses, and are widely recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world. Amazon currently stands is one of the world's most valuable firms, with a gross valuation of about $1.6 trillion. Last year, the company reported $386bn in sales, up 38 per cent from the previous year. Amazon's profits almost doubled in 2020, increasing to $21.3bn.
Bezos described the role of Amazon CEO as a "deep responsibility" he is. however, is likely to continue to be extremely influential within the company as executive chair and founder.
Industry CEOs congratulated Bezos and Jassy on upcoming transition. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai offered "best wishes" to Bezos on his future projects, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described Jassy's promotion as "well-deserved".
The leadership change comes at a critical time for Amazon. While profits continue to surge, it faces pressure from workers who have complained of mistreatment during the pandemic, and increasing political scrutiny of the size and power of its business, not least its market leading position in cloud computing.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Amazon has been one of the ecommerce firms to benefit as people steer clear of high streets shopping malls and instead purchase items online. This comes at the time when Amazon and other big tech firms are facing increasing scrutiny from regulators worldwide about anticompetitive practices and market dominance. In October last year, the US House Judiciary Committee's Antitrust Subcommittee released the findings of its 16-month-long investigation into the issues posed by the technology giants in the global digital economy.
The Subcommittee concluded that big tech firms like Amazon, Google and Facebook are effectively monopolies that need to be broken up to restore competition and improve innovation in the industry.
The Subcommittee report recommends a number of policy measures to radically change the way tech firms operate. It urged lawmakers to consider empowering the agencies responsible for controlling market concentration and to introduce new antitrust rules to block attempts by companies to buy start-ups.
Bezos' announcement does not necessarily portend any significant change to Amazon’s business. Investors didn’t seem fazed by the news, either. Amazon's share price was up about 1.5 percent following the announcement.
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