It’s time for Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos to take his turn as a senior founder / statesman, like the Wizard of Oz, often unseen but with seemingly omnipotent control, while the head of the arm Amazon Cloud Computing takes the lead.
The change at the top won’t change much about Amazon AMZN,
but it could affect the company’s most crucial choice: whether Amazon Web Services and Amazon.com remain under the same roof.
Although Bezos is often compared to Apple Inc. AAPL,
co-founder Steve Jobs, his departure from the role of CEO is more like the passing of clubs by tech CEO legends like Microsoft Corp. Bill Gates. MSFT,
and Larry Page of Alphabet Inc. GOOG,
GOOGL,
Bezos is stepping down as CEO as the company breaks new records, but will remain the president of the e-commerce giant he founded in the early days of the knitting bubble as.
In the same way that Page handed over the reins to the leader of its most profitable division, Sundar Pichai, first as CEO of Google and then Alphabet, Bezos published Andy Jassy of the company’s main profit generator, Amazon Web Services. Addressing his post-CEO ambitions, Bezos on Tuesday looked more like Gates, who built one of the world’s largest nonprofits.
“I’ve never had more energy, and it’s not about retiring,” Bezos said in an email to employees detailing the Bezos Earth Fund’s nonprofit foundation plans, building rockets at Blue Origin and his Washington Post property. “I’m super passionate about the impact these organizations think I can have.”
At Amazon, chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said Bezos would be involved in what Amazon calls “single-door issues”: big strategic decisions, such as the acquisition of Whole Foods.
“Jeff has always been involved in this, and this is where we will keep time focused,” Olsavsky told analysts at the company’s earnings call.
That really wouldn’t mean a big change externally, and probably internally as well. Such big swings have seemed like the things Bezos has focused on for a long time, leaving the day-to-day management to the lieutenants. In recent years, Bezos has been less the public face of Amazon, amid so much attention on his growing wealth, commercial run into space, and his recent status as a media mogul. He does not participate in quarterly earnings calls with Wall Street, but writes an annual shareholder letter and chairs the annual general meeting of Amazon. More recently, their public appearances have ranged from elite technology conferences, when they were still a thing, to the testimony of Congress in recent antitrust congressional hearings.
“Bezos is not as visible as some CEOs, it will be interesting to see if Andy takes a different touch,” said Ed Anderson, an analyst at Gartner Inc. “Andy has been the visible focal point of AWS. It will be interesting to see if he takes it with Amazon as well. ”
Also read: Future CEO Andy Jassy helped build Amazon’s cloud
Jassy will also have to prove that he is capable of running something more than AWS, which is a key part of Amazon, but which is not within the reach of the entire company.
“They are digital trade, they are a grocery store, they are a truck company, they are dedicated to maritime transport, storage and manufacturing. They have a lot of people in their ecosystem, a lot of workers, they were the biggest employer of the pandemic. There are a lot of things going on, ”said Daniel Newman, senior analyst at Futurum Research.
“Andy was literally prototyping his ability to run Amazon, through his work at AWS,” Neman added.
AWS CEO Andy Jassy speaks during the AWS re: Invent 2019 conference in Las Vegas.
Associated press
One problem Jassy may face when he is in the CEO position later this year is the most important question about AWS: Will he continue to be part of Amazon? Jassy has worked at AWS from the beginning and has been his most vocal advocate, so he seems unlikely to choose to separate him from the company he now runs.
Scott Galloway, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, predicted in a recent book that Amazon could break away from the business, possibly to headline any antitrust action the government could take with Big Tech over the next year. about. On Twitter, Galloway was asked Tuesday about his prediction and said Jassy’s promotion would likely reduce the chances of that happening, highlighting Bezos’ successes.
“I think [a potential AWS spinoff] it’s one of the problems Andy will have to deal with in some way, “said Anderson of Gartner.” This has been one of those things that has grown over time. There are good arguments for doing both. It currently works. as fairly independent organizations ”.
Bezos will surely say his decision in that decision, in the same way that Gates said his opinion in Microsoft’s direction until last year. It may seem unthinkable for investors to imagine Amazon without the visionary Bezos, but he could remain as chief executive for years, even decades, as Gates demonstrated.
Investors should expect Jassy to look more like current Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella than Gates ’immediate successor, Steve Ballmer, who struggled to move Microsoft into the mobile age. As Jassy tries to maneuver Amazon into its next era, Bezos will still be there to make sure it succeeds.