Jeff Bezos, the man who changed the market

Imaginen un bloque de mármol de Carrara de una tonelada suspendido en el aire a gran altura. Imaginen que, libre de sujeciones, cae sobre el centro de un lago… e imaginen las “ondas” que genera hacia las orillas. Este ha sido el shock en el mundo de la tecnología (y fuera) al saberse el pasado martes que Jeff Bezos (Nuevo México, EE UU, 57 años) dejará este verano de ser el consejero delegado de Amazon, aunque seguirá como presidente ejecutivo. No había rumores en la firma de Seattle. No sonaban esas aguas.

The man who in two long decades has built a giant with a bag value of 1.7 billion dollars (1.4 billion euros), forever changed electronic commerce, developed the most sophisticated logistics system that has known the storyof humanity, kneaded for their pockets 188.000 million dollars (156.000 million euros;Only Elon Musk, founder of Tesla) exceeds, expanded the cloud computing business towards the sky;The man who in the technological imaginary shares a table at the Valhalla with Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Tim Cook (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft) or Musk itself, retreated and contemplated the vibrations of the water from the shore from the shore.

All foreshadowed a "quiet" day.All analysis houses predicted a succession of records in the presentation of their quarterly accounts.That's how it went.The New York Times described the "Blockbuster [Success] financial" numbers.Sales reached the milestone of 125.600 million dollars (104.000 million euros) between October and December, while the benefits (7.200 million dollars;5.900 million euros) were more than double the previous year.And for the first time the company exceeded 100.000 million (83.000 million euros) revenue in a single quarter.The annuals?They shot up to 386.000 million (320.000 million euros).38% more.But Bezos decided to resign."Amazon is what it is because of the invention," he said.“If you do it well, after a few years that novelty becomes common.People yawn.That yawn is the great compliment that an inventor can receive.When you analyze our financial results, what you really see are the long -term accumulated benefits of the invention ”.But Bezos decided to resign.

His substitute is his shadow since the 2000s.Andy Jassy, 53, trained at the Harvard Business School, friend of Bezos, an executive who entered the company in 1997 and who has made the cloud business grow, Amazon Web Services (AWS), unimaginablely.Last year this division generated 45.000 million dollars (37.000 million euros), un 30% más que el ejercicio anterior."You want to reinvent when you are healthy, you want to reinvent all the time," Jassy said in December, during a company meeting."You have to be relentless and tenacious about the truth.You have to know what works and what does not ".And he gave as an example Amazon's decision to cannibalize his own DVD rental business to boost streaming.In addition Jassy - after retirement at the beginning of the year of Jeff Wilke, responsible for the immense consumer market - was the great option.To put a fissure.Exploitation expenses fired 42%, due to the increase in shipping costs.But Bezos decided to resign.

Spatial bet

There is more than technology and numbers.The social exhibition that has had its divorce with the writer Mackenzie Scott has increased the desire for not being the first "wave" that moves the water by dropping the marble.And focus on what you are passionate about: space.The one that exists between the stars.Has allocated 1.000 million dollars (829 million euros) annually to Blue Origin, a company, created in 2000, who wants to carry people and goods out there at a low price.And, also, the one between the words.In 2013 he acquired The Washington Post, and has saved him from his decline.

In the garden of the Amazon delights there seems to be no original sin.But it exists.It has several open investigations for alleged monopoly position in Europe and the United States.David Cicilline, president of the Antimonopoolio Subcommittee of the Judicial Commission of the American Representatives Chamber, warned: "These [technological] companies, as they exist today, enjoy a monopolistic power".And he added: “Some need to fracture, they all need to be adequately regulated and be responsible for their management.This has to end ".

Bezos's resignation also tries to lower the tension.However, the feeling of damage is deep.Is the company a risk?Can we have Prime Amazon but not democracy?Yanis Varoufakis, former Minister of Greek and economist finance, reflects: "There was a time in which we used to worry about monopolistic companies being an affront for the competitiveness of markets and, indirectly, a threat to democracy".In his opinion, “with signatures like Amazon those fears seem shy and out of place.Amazon and the rest of the great technology are not only a monopoly.These platform companies not only have the products we buy and the stores where we acquire them, but also the streets and sidewalks, the banks in which we sit down to rest, the air we breathe and even the words we use or the thoughts that we have.There can be no democracy in such a world ".

The American company - which has declined to give new information for the elaboration of this report and has provided official notes and the testimony of Jeff Bezos before the Judicial Committee of the United States Congress to hilvanar his opinion - defends herself by throwing numbers that justify that her "Power ”is limited.In his appearance on July 29, in front of the committee that investigates the company for alleged monopoly behavior, Bezos said that Amazon controls less than 1% of the 25 billion dollars (20 billion euros) in which the market is valuedretail world and below 4% of the American.The strategy is to argue that they are just one more player within electronic commerce.

However, it is difficult to believe that the loneliness of an indivisible number represents.Because they are also The Washington Post, Blue Origin, AWS, Amazon Go (Food), Amazon Fresh (Fresh Articles), Ring (Surveillance Services), Amazon Prime (Entertainment), Amazon Explore (a proposal similar to Zoom),Whole Foods (luxury food) and digital products such as Kindle, Fire TV, Alexa or Echo.Small shops know that it is impossible to compete against their logistics system.This is the phrase with which the book of its success starts.It is no longer the "store of everything" - which slum of Bezos -: "It is the company of everything".Nothing seems alien to him.Analysts of the Cowen Bolsa Casa expect, for example, that their advertisement business increases from 26.100 million dollars this year at 85.200 million in 2026.Of 21.700 to 70.800 million euros.And during the worst of the pandemic he helped distribute medical supplies, which earned him the praise of an unconditional enemy (especially for the position of the post) as was Donald Trump.Celso Otero, an expert from the stock market firm Income 4, values as "one of its most powerful virtues the distribution power, being able to deliver on the same day".Not a state arrives there.

Amazon is sometimes mirror and sometimes a window.Reflects the world in which we already live and crosses what could be.Proposes questions from an abyssal significance.What does it mean to work in the 21st century?Could you replace a good part of its 1.200.000 Operators for machines?Tom Bray knows very well the firm's mechanics.He was vice president of the company.He was a pioneer of the Internet and is a "teacher" of engineering.The Amazon elite.But it was also the main executive who signed a letter urging the company to face the climate emergency or the only manager who complained about the working conditions of the employees of the stores in full COVID-19 (last October, last October, last October (last October, more than 20.000 company workers in the United States, according to The Guardian, were infected).After five years and five months at the firm, he resigned last May 1.Does not transmit resentment, only analysis."Amazon has been very effective in detecting opportunities in multiple business sectors and successfully expanding," says Bray.“However, it raises serious monopoly concerns because companies can subsidize each other, creating unfair competition.Although it is not a problem that is limited to Amazon.The products and services offered by Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon herself, should come from one hundred firms, not five ".

Pulse with Brussels

But the pressure increases.The European Commission has two investigations open.The first accuses of taking advantage of the data of the millions of retailers who sell on their platform.The other question of how to choose the winner of the Buy Box, the acquisition box that allows to include products from a retailer directly to the purchase cart.Entering there can multiply 500% sales in a day.Meanwhile, in Washington, democratic distrust is growing."Let me finish," Bezos said in his Julio appearance, "saying that Amazon should be scrutinized.All large institutions should be scrutinted, whether companies, government agencies or NGOs.Our responsibility is to ensure that we spend that scrutiny successfully ”.

Few doubt that they will cross the bridge.Are the dice loaded and the players pull their fingers?"There is no more penetrated place for the money of the great American technological corporations than Washington and Brussels," criticizes Renata Ávila, lawyer, technological activist and part of the legal team that defends Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks.“It is very easy to meet the rules if you dictates them, you make them to measure and build them so that there can be no one except you.That is the problem we have.Democratically chosen leaders but neutralized by the influence of lobbies or atomized because the rules leave them with their hands tied, ”he adds.

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This is the Amazon of the 21st century: the one that puts everything at a click blow.The one that puts everything upside down?Maybe he misses other times.Until 2016 it had minimal benefits, recalls José García Montalvo, Professor of Economics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), even with loss quarters."Its history has been the continuous search for a business that had a high profitability that did not give it books or e -commerce in general".

New Folders

Everything changed with the diversification he undertook in 2018 and the growth of AWS.For García Montalvo “it is possible that with the current size it has become a dinosaur operating in the area of decreasing yields at the e-commerce business.That is why it pursues new formulas, let's think of the Prime Subscription [150 million members], or other divisions, which grow as advertising ”.Its algorithm is of unimaginable precision years ago."The problem," he details, "is that the profitability of electronic commerce is so low and the new algorithms of such powerful competitors, that monetization does not produce great benefits despite generating huge income".

Maybe Bezos (cinema lover) think of the movie of the movie wishing to love, of Wong Kar-Wai: “He remembers that past time as if looking through a glass covered with dust, the past is something that canSee, but not play.And everything looks is blurred and confusing ".The present is a crystalline glass.The wealth of Bezos (has 10.6% of the firm) talks so much with its pockets that a 105 bonus of employees could give to its million employees.000 dollars (87.100 euros) and be equally rich as before pandemic.Although Casper Gelderblom, a member of the progressive international, points out that "the real problem is not bezos, it is the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few at the expense of the majority".

In addition, on September 30, 2020 Amazon had a box of 35.500 million (29.400 million euros).They are the borders of a "company-state".Amazonland.Renata Ávila Acuña the expression "brutalism-technological".The ignition of a social revolt against digital colossi?Angus s.Deaton, Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015, predicts: "I do not foresee anything like that, but I am sure there will be changes of one type or another".

Amazon protects itself from the hostility of semantics.“All great organizations attract the attention of regulators and we appreciate that scrutiny.But large companies are not dominant by definition, and the presumption that success can only be the result of anti -competitive behavior is simply wrong, ”he tells in a blog post.And the firm sends a blond notebook - through email - with impolutas figures.Last year, more than 2 invested in Europe.200 million euros in logistics, tools, services, programs and workers to support their sales partners.There are more than 150.000 European businesses that sell through their stores, which generate tens of billions of euros in annual income and have created hundreds of thousands of jobs (5.000 in Spain, last year).This is your "editorial".

The company has launched the dice on the mat.They turn.They look for a double.Will it come out?Several studies published in the 2000s discovered that firms with great benefits rarely remain more than a decade in their leadership position.Innovation never stops and are soon replaced by others. ¿Conseguirá construir Amazon un modelo que resista la competencia? “Amazon va a tener riesgos laborales”, prevé Jay Baer, fundador de la consultora Convince & Convert.“Because to continue maintaining its growth, it needs to attract and retain so many people who is a problem in itself.And the truth is that the conditions in their warehouses are everything less optimal ".Despite looks found, such as the technologist Enrique Dans: "Those I have visited are very good and people are not exploited," he defends.

The "company of everything" has opened, especially in the United States, its facilities in rural areas, outside the large cities or in the "oxide belt" (losing cities of globalization).And for many young people to have a "good job" today means having "that" type of employment.Have the boys assumed that those are their vital boundaries?In December, a Bloomberg article entitled "Amazon has transformed a middle -class warehouse into an‘ Mcjob "offered its narrative.“Amazon's goal is to persuade possible candidates that there is no better place to work.Reality is less optimistic.Many employees of the [American] stores suffer to pay their bills, and more than 4.000 employees have to resort to food coupons in nine states ”.Changes come.About 6.000 Bessemer (Alabama) operators want to syndicate (Bamazon Union).It would be the first time in the company's history."For now, we will not comment," says Chelsea Connor, its communication manager.But it is a postponed revolution for 26 years.

Mayata Ávila referred to that with "brutalism-technological".Raise your hand.Recover the magnitude of man.The line, for example, of privacy look at light is translucent.Data management is a ship that makes water and the captain is the first to abandon it.Richard Stallman, a legend (created the GNU operating system in 1983 and developed free software) comments.“I suspect that Amazon has taken advantage of the pandemic because people buy more remotely.Selling more, in itself, is not bad, but buying online with current methods is a mistake because it demands to identify you and then the store snows you.The monitoring of people's activities is a threat to freedom ".

The earthquake.The crack-up.Fracture.The title that gave f.Scott Fitzgerald at a volume of trials that mapped the twenties of the last century;It reads: "On the authentic dark night of the soul they are always three in the morning".Amazon should commission the book.Because many propose to divide the company and separate AWS. “Romper Amazon o Facebook [como se hizo con AT&T en los años ochenta] es más que nada una amenaza de disuasión nuclear, y resulta improbable que ocurra pronto”, augura Thomas Husson, analista principal de la consultora Forrester.Just apply the new European regulation would take two years.And Amazon will have an impact on SMEs, in the Spanish case, the 3% digital rate approved by the Government on January 16.Goodbye to the crack.For his part, Giles Alston, partner of Oxford Analytica, justifies: “Perhaps the main reason not to fracture it is the importance of AWS.There is intense competition in the cloud storage sector (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, HP Enterprise, Alibaba) and all have played a crucial role during the pandemic allowing Zoom or Netflix to grow quickly and meet the demand of their customers ”.

Technological War

It also seems unlikely that the Biden administration wants to weaken Amazon in front of the Chinese boom in Alibaba.In the opinion of Jacques-Aurélien Marcireau, manager of the Edmond Fund of Rothschild Fund Big Data, “no great technological is worried, since there is still space to influence the final writing of the proposal of the antimonopoly laws”.

That phrase summarizes what analysts call the "market feeling".An oxymoron.Amazon's problem lies in its side effects.Carl Benedikt Frey is a researcher at the University of Oxford and author of the technology trap, an essential book to understand the labor disruption that some companies can cause.“The rapid expansion of technology giants is likely to be good news for productivity, less in the short term.For example, you have allowed consumers to access many of the goods they need while they are in their homes, ”he says.“The concern is that the COVID-19 solidifies the position in the market of some of the large companies, which also increases its political influence.This could create entry barriers for smaller signatures, drowning the type of competition and innovation that leads to long -term growth, ”he adds.

Amazonlandia is still an direction, driven by the infinite possibilities of technology, power and extreme wealth, but society depends on society.Rewriting Charles Dickens: it can be the best company in the world, it can be the worst company in the world.Responsibility is a package that society must accept or reject.It doesn't matter if Bezos is the CEO or not.