Amazon's Identity Crisis — With Todd Bishop

Todd Bishop is the co-founder of Geekwire, a tech news site based in Seattle. Bishop joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how Amazon will navigate its new dedication to efficiency without losing its inventive spirit. Can 'The Everything Store' become 'The Some Things Store?' That's the crucial question to ask about a tech behemoth that's lost 40% of its value over the past year and is struggling to find its footing under CEO Andy Jassy. Stay tuned for the second half where we touch on labor, Microsoft's relationship with OpenAI, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Amazon became Amazon by doing it all. It's a bookstore, first-party marketplace, third-party marketplace, does web services, hardware, voice computing. It's a grocer. It's a movie studio. You get the picture. But look, as the good times rolled, Amazon's focus just loosened a bit. And then all of a sudden, a company known for its frugality was starting to spend out of control and spread its resources just a bit too thin. The company's now engaged in the largest layoff for any tech company over the past year and the largest in its history. And along with that comes a push toward focus. For Amazon right now, the big question really is, what does it focus on? And what is it really? It's a bit of an identity crisis.

• 2:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it's accompanied by this one major question. How can the company keep inventing in leaner times? If it can figure that out, it'll probably be okay. If it can't... Who knows what will happen to this company? Todd Bishop is the co-founder of Geekwire. It's a fantastic tech news site that I've read a ton as I've gotten to know Amazon better. And he's here to discuss this and more. So stay tuned as we go deep into Amazon's era of self-reflection and self-identification. I think you're going to love hearing from Todd. Here is our conversation.

• 2:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hey, Todd. Welcome to the show.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Hi, Alex. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 2:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great to have you. I have to say I'm a big fan of your work and Geekwire. I've been reading it for years. You're the like the ultimate Seattle tech website. And your coverage on Amazon and Microsoft is like really so insightful. And, and I think being there on location is super important because you can feel these cultures. And you guys really do that. So it's great to have you on.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, it's been fun. We've been doing it for 20 years or so in various incarnations. So it's been fascinating to see sort of the fading of Microsoft and the resurgence of Microsoft. And then the rise of Amazon right in our backyard here.

• 3:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right. So let's talk about Amazon. I mean, 18,000 layoffs that are ongoing right now. Where are those layoffs happening?

• 3:25Speaker 02

  They're in a variety of places, but primarily we're seeing it in areas like their people and experiences team, their devices team. And by the way, people and experiences is the Amazon euphemism for human resources. So we're seeing it in a few different places, but consumer devices and human resources are the, the main areas where we're seeing those cuts.

• 3:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  When you say consumer means retail?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. Stores.

• 3:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I read a lot of coverage about this, yours and also Brad Stone's coverage of what's going on and where Amazon's cutting. Because I think we can really see where they're going when we look at where they're going to focus. And one of the things that Brad mentioned is that Amazon is losing a shocking amount of money in retail. Do you, is that something that you see in your reporting? And if that's true, why is that happening? And how does that change Amazon?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a really important point. I mean, for many years, e-commerce has been the core of this company. And increasingly, we're seeing the percentage of Amazon's overall revenue that comes from e-commerce decline as a proportion of its total business. And it's been a rocky couple of years. Of course, they saw the surge in the pandemic in overall sales. But they really overbuilt and the capacity that they created, not only in their data centers, but also just in general in their business to fulfill the demand that they saw in the pandemic, was not needed, clearly. And they've seen that go away now that we've emerged into whatever our new reality is.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  And I think it is a real question of what this company is and to the point of the struggles in the core e-commerce business. I think there are lots of questions about where this company is headed. And to your point and to Brad's point in his reporting, I think you can see in things

• 5:21Speaker 02

  like different areas of the business that are still being invested in where the company is headed.

• 5:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  So where is it headed?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Good question. I think clearly you're still seeing Amazon focus on areas like robotics. I think it's interesting that even with all the discussion of the devices and service services cutbacks, you're still seeing them, you know, push forward with some of their home robots. You're also, in some ways, seeing the company double down on Amazon Web Services, on advertising. And so those are just some of the areas that we're seeing them still continue to invest in.

• 6:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's talk a little bit about the character of what Amazon actually is. Because there are these memes out there that the Amazon retail business is sort of a break even business and the company really makes money on ads and on web services. Is that really true?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Well, it's certainly true as it relates to Amazon Web Services. I mean, Amazon Web Services is a juggernaut in its own right, and some of the people I've talked to have wondered, John Rossman is a former Amazon executive who put this forward, wondered if it's time to spin off Amazon Web Services and make it a business in its own right. And obviously, that's a perennial question at Amazon. But I think now is an interesting time to ask it. Would they create more value for shareholders if they were able to do that for shareholders of essentially two companies? And I think the answer would be yes. I think that gets into, oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 7:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  But the meme is that web services help subsidize retail. We just talked about how retail is losing money. So is that true? And do you lose your ability to deliver in retail if you separate those two entities?

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Yes. So if you took the state of each business today, you're right. We do a chart occasionally that's looking at Amazon without AWS and what it would be like. And for many years, in the prior decade, Amazon Web Services was subsidizing the retail. And then during the pandemic, you saw the retail part of the business come into its own and become profitable. And in recent quarters, you've seen the old trend emerge where Amazon Web Services is essentially subsidizing a portion of the Amazon business. This gets to the day one mentality in my mind.

• 8:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sounds like a good name for a book. Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, you could call it a book. And I've got some observations on how Amazon uses the phrase day one and how it's twisted inside the company. But maybe we can get into that in a second. Yeah. But I think if you

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Re-energized this company by saying to all the people on the store side, on the e-commerce side, hey, it's do or die. You have to become profitable. I think it would be a very interesting dynamic. And it gets to a little bit of what Andy Jassy was saying in his recent memo about focusing and making sure that the bets that they're making are contributing not only to the long-term growth of the company, but to the at least near-term profitability or or strength of the business. And I think that's where Amazon is right now. Now, I don't think they're actually going to spin off AWS. I think that's a sacred cow for in many ways for Andy Jassy, especially

• 9:01Speaker 02

  having led that business for many years himself. But I think it speaks to the need for Amazon to really take a step back and ask itself first, what is it? Right? Funny, if you look at it, the description of Amazon at the bottom of its press release, Amazon describes not what it does, but what it is. It's Earth's most customer-centric company. Okay, what do you do? Right. For many years, they sold books and then they sold Kindles and devices. And for a long time, they did everything, you know, up until, you know, a few months ago. And I think this moment in the

• 9:45Speaker 02

  company's history is a time when they needed to step back and ask themselves what they actually do, not only what they are, but what what they do as a result.

• 9:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I see what you're getting at with with day one there. So yeah, let's talk about that in a moment. But I just have one more question before we do. Yeah. So you're saying that Amazon's retail business is unprofitable, even with advertising?

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Well, no, not that. That is not true. And you know what, Alex, I actually would need to go back and look at the specific spreadsheets. And I can call it up as we're talking here. And actually, as I was saying that, I want to make sure that I'm accurate in what I'm saying. I don't know the answer to that question without looking at the numbers, which, you know, I typically do in my prep for earnings, which is a couple of weeks away.

• 10:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, all right. Because I think with that advertising that that changes stuff. But I think your question of what does what does Amazon?

• 10:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do what is it is a really good question, right? And the day one mentality, let's just talk about that. So I wrote, obviously, for those familiar, I have a book. It's called Always Day One. It's about all the tech giants, but really focuses a lot on Amazon. And my perspective is that the company's day one mentality is to build what the market needs without any regard for its legacy product. So if the market needs a third party marketplace and that might cannibalize its first party marketplace, it builds it. If the market needs voice computing and it's not really what it does, then it finds a way to build it. Same thing with Amazon Web Service. It's never really too beholden to its legacy business. But that I think we're starting to get to is getting complicated because now that legacy

• 11:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  business is not as strong as it used to be. So I guess the question is, does it actually need to be as strong? Like, does Amazon need to have retail at the core? And if it doesn't have retail, why don't you try to answer the question for them? What is Amazon?

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's, that's a great question.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  To me, if you look at the company's history, I think it's really instructive to think long term here, as Amazon would say.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  They are an e-commerce company at their core. And, and I think if, not that I'm in any position to give advice on this, but if I were looking at the business and thinking about it, that's where I would start. I would go back to that and ask whether things like Project Kuiper or Project Kuiper is Amazon's satellite internet venture that's going to attempt to rival SpaceX Starlink. So essentially they're taking on Elon Musk. And it's kind of a weird fit inside the company, especially given that you've got Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's actual space venture headquartered just about 20 miles south of us here. And I think that to me is, is one of the prime examples of

• 12:37Speaker 02

  What is this company? Why are you doing that? And, and I think the answer is if you're doing it in service of internet connections to get people to buy more stuff, then great. I think that makes a lot of sense as a company. But I think you start to have to ask, is that something that Amazon should be doing on its own?

• 12:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting, but I would say the success, this is the argument to keep doing it, right? Think about the day one thing, the success of Amazon has always been to build outside of that core focus. But if they'd stopped at where they were in the beginning, they would just be a bookstore or potentially this first party marketplace. Their determination to go out and build voice computing with the Echo hardware with the Kindle, Amazon Web Services, that's what's made Amazon into the powerhouse that it is today, not its presence in retail. In fact, it's cutting in retail. So doesn't that show you that outside of doubling down on, what, what good does doubling down on retail do for them? It seems to me it's almost like they should do the opposite.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  You know, this is, this is why they're making the, the millions and the billions and, and I'm covering what they're doing.

• 13:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  I, I, absolutely, I can see that argument. I think the most important thing for them to do is to step back and, and look at who they are and what they should do as a result. And the past five, six years, under the latter half of Jeff Bezos's tenure as CEO, and then under the first couple of years as Andy Jassy's, as with Andy Jassy as CEO, I think they were just, they were just doing everything. It wasn't just the everything store, it was the everything company. And this, I think, is the moment when they need to redefine who they are and what they're doing. And, and I think you are seeing them go through that process, although not perhaps to the level that might be justified.

• 14:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then why do you think they're cutting in retail in that case? I mean, it seems to me like the retail was about as core to the bare bones as it possibly could be. Maybe the spending.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Yes, and to be clear, I think it's important to to recognize that cutting in retail is not necessarily abandoning retail. It's simply saying that they hired too many people. And I think this gets back to the issue of all of the growth that they saw in the pandemic and the fact that they anticipated the that that growth continuing and becoming the new reality, as many tech companies did. By the way, I did call up the chart and yes, indeed. Now, this is Amazon without AWS, and I can share this with you afterward, Alex. But they're down, losing, if not for AWS, in the third calendar quarter of 2022.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Just as an example, they would have lost about $2.8 billion in operating income. So that that speaks to the fact that the core retail business is not profitable at that point.

• 15:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Okay, so there you go. So that's that's the issue. And of course, they're going to blame the pandemic. And of course, the need to scale up during the pandemic was there. In fact, a lot of people would say without Amazon, we've had a we've had a really rough, even more rough pandemic. Because it did fill the need that all the brick and mortar stores couldn't serve for a large part of it. But I question whether that's actually the real the case here. And we're going to start getting into some of Amazon's culture. I love talking about Amazon's culture. And one of the core values of the company has always been frugality. And here's again from from Brad Stone's story. And then we're going to start getting into yours. But he says, over the last few years, especially the final years of Bezos's tenure as the chief executive officer, frugality seemed to go out the window.

• 16:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Amazon spent big on everything from new offices in Seattle and Arlington, Virginia, to Hollywood productions, a $1 billion tab for that new Lord of the Rings, and acquisitions, 8.5 billion for MGM, that no one thought was worth that much. The company also went on a wild spree spree of hiring employees and constructing warehouses, both to satisfy pandemic demand, but also to support a new one day delivery promise to Prime members. I mean, going from two to one, was that really necessary? So obviously it's the pandemic, but it's the spending and Amazon, of course, has been known for this frugality issue. They, they had door desks, right? Which were desks built out of old doors. What happened to frugality there? And, and is that something that Andy

• 17:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Jassy is going to have to really work to pull back? Because ultimately the costs, right? Or what, what Wall Street's looking at? If you're losing money, your stock is down and Amazon's stock was down like 50% last year.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  I think there's ways to look at the leadership principles and read them selectively and justify different things based on which things you emphasize. And I think in some ways, the day one mentality has been at odds at times in the past with other elements of their leadership principles, including invent and simplify, the simplify portion of invent and simplify, and also frugality, as you say, because when you're looking at everything with fresh eyes and seeing the opportunities anew every day, you're going to spend some money making bets. And we can get into the whole one-way door, two-way

• 18:04Speaker 02

  door conversation about how they approach different opportunities. But I really think that you're seeing now Andy Jassy say, whoa, let's take a step back and let's figure out what we actually want to invest in. We can't just throw everything against the wall and hope that something sticks.

• 18:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right. I'm curious what you think about Jassy's ability to do this, to do the cost cutting necessary. And I've been saying that he doesn't really have the ability. He obviously hasn't shown the ability yet because he, the company is still seeing these losses, right? Every time we see an earnings preview, it's worse and worse in terms of where it's going to net out with profit. And my theory is he can't do it because he's coming, of course, he started in retail, but he's coming from Amazon Web Services. When you're in a part of the business that prints money, it's going to be really difficult to do the cost cutting that you would do a second nature if you're from the retail business. So does Jassy as a character, as a person, have what's necessary to do what a retail boss would do?

• 19:08Speaker 02

  I think he does. Yes.

• 19:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hearing a little bit of a but in your voice there.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Well, I think the- Way that he's set up inside the company is working against him. I agree with you, number one, it may not be his first inclination. It may run against his experience and his character, given his experience in Amazon Web Services. That said, I think that he himself has the stomach for it. I think you don't put somebody in that position as CEO, as a board, if they can't go through and make difficult decisions. And he's certainly been making difficult decisions.

• 19:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I'm not just talking about layoffs. It could just be like finding places. If you're in the retail business, you're really good at finding any fat to cut, but you don't have to in Amazon Web Services. But continue.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. The single threaded leader approach that Amazon uses where they give one executive autonomy over a certain area and let them run with it. That was great for Amazon's heyday, for the boom of this company. And it's one of the reasons why they grew so quickly, not only in terms of employees, but in terms of their overall business. I think that works against somebody like Andy Jassy, against this executive team, the S team, as they call it, when they're trying to make tough decisions and make the kinds of cuts and strategic choices that we're talking about.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  And frankly, we saw it in the way these layoffs were rolled out. It was leaked first to the New York Times. And in my conversations after that initial New York Times story with Amazon people,

• 20:54Speaker 02

  they were clear that the 10,000 number that came out was not a target. And in fact, I got steered away from that. The point was, hey, if you run with that, it's probably not going to be right because Amazon did not know at that point how many people they were going to lay off. And that was because they have such a system of distributed autonomy where these leaders are going out and looking at their business, their individual businesses within the larger company and deciding what's right for them. And I'm sure there's mandates to some extent in terms of the overall cost structure that they need to hit within their own profit and loss statements inside the business.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  But That autonomy makes it very difficult when you're trying to do something from a centralized place in terms of guiding this company. And I think Andy Jassy is in a tough spot in that way.

• 21:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  How do you think he's going to handle that? So wait, by the way, I want you to answer that question. But before you do, just to give us a little bit of a deeper explanation of this single threaded leader thing, because in most companies, you're going to have someone that's in charge of a division or whatever it is, they make the decisions. So are they like not accountable to a CEO? How is that different? And then how does, how can a CEO in that case then wrangle the other leaders under him to cut in the way that he needs?

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So as I understand it, Amazon takes that divisional structure a step further and divides those divisions and those products and efforts and teams up even more with single autonomous leaders over very specific areas with a mandate to build successful businesses, to grow successful businesses, and ultimately, long-term contribute to the company's profitability. So that, while it did fuel their growth, is coming back in some ways to haunt them, I think, here.

• 22:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Much easier to run that when you never have to cut.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sorry.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Exactly. And to answer your question, I think it's just Amazon taking that deeper than many companies do and creating more autonomy within the organization, for better or worse, than a lot of other companies do.

• 23:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think Amazon, this is a hypothetical, but let's roll with it, would have been better putting Jeff Wilkie, who was the CEO of Worldwide Consumer and came from that retail side of the business, was all about automation, putting him in front, in charge of the company instead of Jassy? I mean, Jassy, of course, trusted Bezos, lieutenant, worked under him as his technical advisor, the first one, you know, and then built this amazingly successful business, AWS. But the second he was named CEO, or right beforehand, Wilkie left the company. And maybe the type of person that the company needs right now is someone like a Jeff Wilkie.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  I love that question. I have not thought about that in a while. It's been a while since Jeff Wilkie was there. I've talked with Jeff Wilkie about his new pursuits in trying to reinvent American manufacturing, but he's always very gracefully declined my efforts to get him to armchair quarterback Amazon.

• 24:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Of course, I, here's, here's what I think. I, I think it would have been interesting to see some sort of power sharing arrangement between Wilkie and Jassy if that could have been possible. Rather than going either or, I would have taken both because in Jassy, you have somebody with experience in media, experience in obviously the cloud and in Wilkie, you have a real operations and manufacturing expert. And of course, I, I think the implication from the outside at least is that because Jassy was in line and perhaps chosen,

• 24:52Speaker 02

  and I can't remember the exact timing of all the departures and appointments, but clearly Wilkie would have wanted that CEO job at Amazon.

• 25:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  No doubt.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Overall CEO and, and yeah, and, and who knows if, you never know. There, of course, there are other reasons that things can happen, but I think the assumption is that he left because he didn't get it. And I think Dave Clark butted heads with Jassy from what I understand and from what we've all read. And I think-

• 25:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Who was running retail, Dave Clark, who was running retail, who's now the co-CEO of Flexport.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Exactly. So Clark effectively succeeded Jeff Wilkie in the consumer role.

• 25:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  And he was then reporting to Jassy and I don't know, I just, I wonder if things would be a little bit different at that company right now if somehow Wilkie and Jassy were, were doing it together.

• 25:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  The argument for Wilkie would be that the core error that they've made, when you talked about the losses, you read them out a couple of minutes ago. The, the errors that they've made have been on the operations and the infrastructure and the retail side. Well, no.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's the thing that's put them in this bind.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  And would it have happened under Wilkie? Well, they would have had the pandemic to deal with and you'd have to scale up for that. But likely not if that area was not in a state of flux the way that it is today.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, but and not being someone who's built out billions of dollars of infrastructure. I don't know the realities of the timing of that, but I can only imagine that given some of the lead times on things like distribution facilities, fulfillment centers, that to some extent you end up getting stuck with a decision that you made six, nine months earlier. So it can be difficult. To your point, would Wilkie have seen that sooner? Perhaps, given his experience in operations and fulfillment? Maybe, maybe.

• 26:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think Bezos will come back? I mean, that's kind of a fun prediction that people are talking about.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  That would be fascinating.

• 27:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  You think he's done? I mean, how much is his net worth cut in this bit of calling?

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Now, that would be, I would love it as a story to cover.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  I think the chances are slim.

• 27:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  I think Jeff Bezos has moved on and frankly, this is my guess, but I have a hunch. The fact that he has, that he doesn't have to deal with this day to day, that he's not writing the memo, retroactively telling employees who already know that 18% or 18,000 of them are being, being cut, that they're doing layoffs. I think, I think Jeff Bezos probably is grateful that he's not in that day to day.

• 27:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  He seems like he's having fun on his Instagram, so.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  And in other places.

• 27:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. I want to ask you a question again about, about Amazon Web Services and then get into a little bit about the, we're going to circle back a little bit more to what Amazon is after this.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  AWS, in my.

• 28:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Understanding is a division, part of the company that needs certainty, right? Because its customers are buying cloud. Of course, the cool thing about cloud is it's flexible. But as you figure out how much to budget for cloud, you really need to understand where you are as a business, where you're going. We're in this like really uncertain moment. The VIX, which is the indicator for volatility is, it's actually come down a little bit recently, but it's been going haywire. And it's really tough to say, okay, next quarter, we need this much storage or this much compute from AWS. And so it probably has executive spending less just because they don't know. We don't know exactly what the Fed's plan is. We don't know exactly, we're in this like very weird place in the economy.

• 28:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  How, how bad do you think the lack of certainty is hurting AWS's ability to function and thrive? If at all?

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think it's, and we'll see how it shook out in the fourth quarter here in a couple of weeks. But I, I do think that it's causing them to take short-term losses. And when I say losses, I don't mean actual red ink, not, they're obviously very still, they're still very profitable. But I think it's causing them to make short-term decisions to cut their, cut the costs of their customers and cut into their own profitability in the interest of the long-term relationship. They're, they're saying, okay, to, to a lot of these companies and Brian Olsavsky,

• 29:41Speaker 02

  the Amazon CFO has acknowledged this, that right now AWS's game is to bend on a lot of these contract negotiations and acknowledge the financial uncertainty that many of AWS's customers are facing right now. And say, no problem, we got you. We're going to make sure that we optimize your cloud spend, that what you are spending is actually worth it to your business and hope that in the long run, as a result, that customer will stay loyal to AWS.

• 30:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Fascinating. So it could be a, a short-term hit on that profitability, which they're using to subsidize the other businesses. Wow.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Yes. So that is an issue. That's going to be worth watching in the quarterly report.

• 30:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay. Let's talk a little bit, you know, it's kind of unfair. In the beginning, I was like, tell me exactly where Amazon's going. Of course, it's hard for us to predict, but you do in your story about the layoffs, talk about this principle of invent and simplify. And I feel like it's worth sitting on this idea for a moment and talking about whether it will persist inside Amazon and how it will. So let me first give my understanding of what I think invent and simplify is. And then, because I think it's really central to the whole day one premise, right? Which is to build whatever the market needs.

• 30:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  And from my perspective, the way that Amazon works is everything, every process, everything that can be automated is simplified in there. So the money and the people power needed to operate that company are maximized in a way that's efficient and not going to supporting existing activities. Then there is the invent. I almost think they have it backwards. To me, it would be simplify first and then invent. And that's where you get this day one mentality of building where the market needs. Now, Jassy actually, and you seized upon this in your story, Jassy actually said that they have to rethink the way that the company is doing it. I'll just

• 31:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  read it from, this is a quote from your story of Jassy. He says, "We sometimes overlook the importance of the critical invention, problem solving and simplification that go into figuring out what matters most to customers in business, adjusting where we spend our resources and time, and finding a way to do more for customers at a lower cost, passing the savings to customers in the process." So it's kind of interesting because it's like Jassy positioning invent and simplify as effectively cut your costs. So talk a little bit about how that might be shifting after these layoffs. And does, does that mean that the invent part becomes less important?

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Great question. And just to frame that a little bit more before I try to answer that, I think invent and simplify is interpreted, as Jassy acknowledged in his memo, inside the company as relating to products and services. They want to go out and invent new things for customers and simplify them, make them easier for customers. And what he's saying now is, they need to simplify this company. That's, that's the shift.

• 32:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  And he's saying it's always been important and he's always been thinking along those lines, but I don't think people in the company thought about it that way until this point.

• 32:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, maybe they did and then just got away from it because the company doubled in size over the past four years. I remember being, being in Seattle in 2017, 2018, and that simplify part, as they were going through automation programs like Hands Off the Wheel, was, was front and center. But it's, it's very easy, maybe when you double your company's size in a matter of a couple of years, to completely lose sight of what that simplify part of it means. Cause you can't really invent unless you simplify, because it just takes all the resources that you would use for inventing otherwise.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. To your question, I think if it's simply cutting and pruning without this new sense of what Amazon is and what it does, then I think the invention is hard. But if it's first focusing on the areas where they think they can have the greatest impact and where they can really double down and create new innovation, and then deciding, okay, what's left? Let's get rid of that. Then I think it works. And then I think you have an environment, a culture that is still focused on invention. And I think pruning the tree is, is a good example. Look first at the branch that's the strongest and, and get rid of the, the suckers all around it.

• 34:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. But the question is, if Amazon does this and focuses too much on the simplify, not the invent, which is the potential risk with the way that Jassy is focusing folks, it can lose that inventive side. And that's kind of where I started, you know, in our conversation, talking about how.

• 34:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Part of the DNA that's made Amazon what it is today is that invent side. Do you think there's a risk that now, especially the market is demanding it? And Amazon, it really has never been one to listen to the market in terms of these things, but the market is demanding it and they're listening clearly. So do you think there's a risk of them over indexing on the simplify and forgetting to invent?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Potentially, yes, yes. And I guess this is just where I think Jassy has to to drill that message home. It's both, they need to do both.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  There certainly is a risk, yes. And I think that is, again, something that they need to just define. They need to really lay out their priorities internally, and I'm sure that's happening. I don't mean to imply that it's not, but I think there is a way to do both. And I think it happens by first focusing on the invention and then deciding from there what you can let go.

• 35:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  So what's your prediction for how this this goes? Because the company is in such an interesting space. I mean, it really feels like yesterday that Amazon was the most dominant company in the world. You had to break it up. One year, its stock drops 50%. There's obviously chaos in terms of the overextension that it's done in the retail area. Where, how does the company get through this this point in time?

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Well, I, how do they get through it?

• 35:59Speaker 02

  I think they, well, let me say this. From a journalist's perspective, this was not only the most interesting company to cover over the past decade, but here in their hometown.

• 36:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  This was the most fun company to cover. And I, and I don't mean they were easy to cover or that they were easy to crack. But I would say every month, every two months, maybe sometimes every other week, they would do something and you'd just be like, what in the hell? What is that? The treasure truck, the Amazon treasure truck.

• 36:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, say what that is.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  Yes, this was a daily deals vehicle, literally, that started here in Seattle. They drove it around. I've still got one of my, I don't know, $25 Fire HD tablets that I got off the treasure truck down at the corner of Market and 24th here in Ballard in Seattle. And it was just this whole idea of.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  You know, just anything. Just yesterday, we've, we, my colleague Kurt Schlosser broke the news that the Amazon Fresh pickup, the grocery pickup site that they opened here several years ago as an experiment, right before they acquired Whole Foods, you know, that, that's being shut down. I mean, Amazon Books started right out here at the University Village Shopping Center in Seattle. So I bring it up more because we got to see just how much stuff this company was throwing against the wall. And I think it is going to be tougher for them in this new environment because rather than laying out their chips,

• 37:43Speaker 02

  if I could use another metaphor across the table, they're going to have to stack them on very specific places because they aren't applying the resources across the breadth of the table like they were before. And I, I think there's a risk there. Obviously, they, they are going to have to make those decisions wisely and strategically. And there's a chance that maybe they aren't going to find that fourth pillar of their business in the things that they bet on.

• 38:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. What is the mood of the Amazon employees that you speak with and the people you hang out with in Seattle? By the way, you're making me miss Seattle. I spent a number of, well, one awesome summer there and then a couple of trips up in the next couple of summers. It's a great town when it's warm out. So beautiful.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 38:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Shout out, shout out to West Seattle. I mean, holy cow.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 38:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  That place was awesome.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Al, Al Kai Beach in August.

• 38:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, man.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Doesn't get any better than that.

• 38:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know this is sort of a bit of a tangent, but I was once on a run and it was like Fleet Week or whatever. What's it called? The Fleet Week in Seattle?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Seafair.

• 38:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Seafair.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Seafair.

• 38:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  I come around the bend on West, by the way, for folks listening, West Seattle is sort of across the, the water from Seattle proper. And you can look and see the skyline with the Space Needle and all that. And I come around the bend and out comes this view of, of Seattle skyline. And then boosh, like five F16s or whatever it is, fly right across. And I was just like, all right, here we are. It's such a beautiful place. And, and the food's great, too. The Top Pot Donuts.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Beautiful place.

• 39:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thai Toms in the U District. You know what I'm talking about? You've been there?

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. Absolutely. It's a beautiful place in the summer.

• 39:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  It's a beautiful place in the summer.

• 39:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  I haven't, I've done maybe once in the, I'm not talking about the winner, but anyway, sorry. Continue. Go ahead. Yeah.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's the mood?

• 39:28Speaker 02

  You lost me there. Oh, the mood. Yeah. A little bit. It depends on the level. Among managers and leaders that I've talked to, it's a little bit harried. Just like, there's a lot going on right now. And I think the communications issues that we've talked about. If you, if you're able to talk to some of the Amazon folks privately, that's been rough.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  The, the fact that these employees knew that cuts were coming, but didn't know who was being laid off.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Which areas of the business were going to be the biggest focus? Now, Jesse alluded to it a little bit previously in an earlier memo, but there's been a big axe hanging over the heads of these people. And it's rough.

• 40:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  To work like that. Yeah.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Yes. So I do want to get across, especially because of the, the theme of your book.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  I think there's been a perversion of day one inside Amazon.

• 40:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm glad you're saying this. Yeah. Go ahead.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Yes. So

• 40:31Speaker 02

  in my mind, and if you listen to the way Jeff Bezos presented it originally and continued to talk about it. In simple terms, day one is about starting every day with a beginner's mind. Looking at things as if you were starting out and you had a green field in front of you.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  And it's in that way, an inspiring message.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Increasingly, almost subconsciously, Amazon leaders that I've talked to, product leaders, use it as an excuse instead.

• 41:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  They use it, they use it to say, this is an MVP. This is a minimum viable product. We're just getting started. I've literally had two or three of them over the past year say, it's just day one. The implication being, please forgive the flaws in this product. We've still got a ways to go. And that is not, in my mind, what Jeff Bezos meant. I don't think that's what day one is about. And I think it's interesting in its own right. But beyond that, I think it's interesting because I think it means that the company's leadership principles are finding their limit in terms of their ability to accurately shape this culture in the vision of its founder.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  And I think that's a risk. I think it's something that Andy Jassy needs to, in an ongoing way, address. And again, I'm sure he is. I don't mean to discount everything that they're doing. But the use of day one as an excuse to me is a giant red flag about this culture.

• 42:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Todd Bishop is with us. He's the co-founder of Geekwire, great news website about the tech scene in Seattle, covers Amazon, Microsoft. We'll get to a little bit of Microsoft's relationship with OpenAI after the break. And I'm also going to ask him a little bit about what's going on in the warehouses. And maybe we can talk a tiny bit more about the leadership principles in case your curiosity has peaked because they are one of the most interesting parts of the Amazon culture. We'll be back right after this on Big Technology Podcast. This episode is brought to you by AppPoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data.

• 42:59Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 43:46Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 44:31Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 44:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here for a very short second half of Big Technology Podcast, just another 15 minutes or so. Thank you so much for listening. If you like the show and want to rate us five stars, we would be thrilled if you would do that on your podcast app of choice, but no pressure. Really appreciate you being here. We're already, what, 40 something minutes in? And you're sticking with us? Appreciate that. That's awesome. Okay, so let's just do a quick wrap on the Amazon part. And then, of course, since you're out there in Seattle, I definitely want to ask you a little bit about Microsoft and OpenAI. First things first, the leadership principles. It's very interesting to hear you talk about how maybe they're sort of reaching the end of their utility. When I was out in Seattle, I found that Amazon employees, so these leadership principles are basically the Ten Commandments or whatever.

• 45:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  I found that people follow them more closely than their religion. If they're in a marriage with another Amazon employee, they use the leadership principles to structure their marriage, they teach them to their kids. When you're hanging out with Amazon employees off the clock, you know, they will like, look at the way that people order on a menu and they'll be like, okay, that was good bias to action, which is one of those, one of those leadership principles. Or if, you know, they don't really like what the table's ordering, they'll do like disagree and commit and then just say, okay, I don't want to eat this, but I'm going to love it. These type of things, it's really weird. It's cult-like in some ways, but very effective. And it does, it does seem kind of comforting to actually have these principles that sort of

• 46:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  structure the way that you operate as a company. I'm curious if that's the right way to describe them and how you think they've faded in some way.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Yes, and I want to be clear, I don't think the leadership principles are, are going to go away in terms of their influence inside Amazon. But I think what you're saying is exactly right. I think that's my impression as well. I think at the beginning, we would hear Amazon executives talk about the leadership principles. And honestly, I would do a little bit of the metaphorical journalistic eye roll.

• 46:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, they sound so silly, but they're actually pretty effective.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Right. And the fact that they're simple, for the most part. The last couple that they added, more verbose than any of the others and a little bit hard to follow about Earth's most customers. No, no, I'm sorry.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Earth's, oh, boy, you caught me off the cuff. They're, they're related to the environment and employees, basically making sure that they're Earth's best employer and also that they're good stewards of the environment. I'll have to call them up here as we're talking. See, clearly I have not been inculcated in the leadership principles as much as I should.

• 47:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Strive to be Earth's best employer is one, and success and scale bring broad responsibility.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right. Broad responsibility, which obviously includes climate, but clearly speaks to impact on customers and, and antitrust. I think that's their sort of antitrust antidote that they, they put into the, the principles.

• 47:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that was before the stock got cut in half. Yeah, but go ahead.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Exactly. No, these, these things are genuine. I mean, the people at the company, for the most part, believe in these things and adhere to them. I just think as a tool to perpetuate the culture, I think Amazon is seeing that there's limits to that. And I think the way that the day one approach and the interpretation of what day one means, the way that's changed in the eyes of some leaders, I think is one example or piece of evidence to that, to that end.

• 48:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let me ask you one question, maybe a couple of questions about the fulfillment centers before we move to Microsoft.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Last year, there was, or 21, it's hard to remember exactly when, there was a push inside Amazon fulfillment centers for the workers to unionize. And they obviously did a pretty good job in my neck of the woods, getting, you know, one East Coast fulfillment center, unionized, but then it completely sputtered. So, how would you say Amazon is treating its frontline workers? And where does the union push stand today?

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, and in fact, that Staten Island union push is still playing out. We're still seeing different decisions come out on that. To some extent, I think that's still the test of how much unionization we're going to see inside Amazon. The independent Amazon labor union that pushed forward with that, I think, did a remarkable job in many ways against long odds. And clearly, the company was, to say that they did not embrace the union would be an overstatement, or would be an understatement. I mean, this company clearly does not want unions in its midst. And they're obviously trying to do whatever

• 49:40Speaker 02

  they can within the bounds of the law, and potentially otherwise, to keep unions from happening. And I think a lot of this will depend on how things play out at the NLRB, in the courts, and whether employees at other fulfillment centers see a relatively, not easy, but at least straightforward path to unionizing themselves.

• 50:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, can you break that out in a little bit more detail? So, the Staten Island fulfillment center voted to unionize, and is it, is that, what's the state of that right now? And why haven't? I mean, I imagine that that would be just the beginning, but it seems like everything fizzled.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Right. So this is still before the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board. And in fact, there was just a decision that came out earlier this week where I'm looking at a New York Times story on it right now, in fact, where a federal labor official turned down Amazon's attempt to overturn the union victory. So this is though, still just one, one obstacle that the union faced. They've overcome it now and now they're essentially going to have to proceed with contract negotiations with the company. So it was a victory for the union and I think that's progress for them. And it's also interesting, you've got frankly, another Seattle corporate titan that is facing

• 51:06Speaker 02

  something similar in Starbucks in terms of the Starbucks push. And what's interesting there is I think you've seen those employees get a little bit more of a ground swell across the nation than you've seen the Amazon unions do. I will just mention one other obstacle that unions face, and that is Amazon drivers. People might not know this, but even though they're driving around making deliveries in Amazon vans and Amazon uniforms.

• 51:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  They don't work for Amazon.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Returning every, they don't work for Amazon. They work for thousands now of independent delivery service partner companies. And boy, that is, talk about a structure that makes it difficult to unionize. I mean, it could be possible, but I think it's highly unlikely. And of course, that's beyond Amazon's employee base, but it's key to its infrastructure and to its operations. And I just think it makes it really hard.

• 52:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  By the way, Microsoft did just allow a union, Microsoft, right? Speaking of Seattle corporate titans or Seattle area corporate titans, Microsoft allowed a union in one of its gaming subsidiaries and seems to be much more open. It's, you're smiling.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  Well, that's very strategic.

• 52:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Public relation. Yeah, what's, yeah. Tell us the real story behind that.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Well, that's, that's, I mean, the key, the key audience for that whole push is the FTC. And obviously that didn't work. So Microsoft is attempting to acquire.

• 52:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Oh, well, not all. I mean,

• 52:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  largely.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  It's, I think Activision is a major motivator.

• 52:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, right.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. Absolutely.

• 52:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because that acquisition, they're trying to do this acquisition, it's sort of stuck in the mud right now, and the FTC is trying to block it. That is very interesting. So you think that this is just sort of like a, hey, look, we're, we're a good company.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  It's, it's not just that. I think that's a major part of it.

• 53:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  And, you know, I've talked with Brad Smith, the Microsoft president, about this, and he acknowledges that that is a component.

• 53:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 53:10Speaker 02

  One reason Microsoft is focusing on this issue, they've made a broad pledge to, if not embrace unions, then at least just allow them to proceed without, you know, undue opposition. Very different approach from Amazon. Oh, and that's another interesting dynamic.

• 53:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Microsoft, and I don't know that they would acknowledge this, but I think it's clear. Many times, Microsoft will do things on the policy level that are specifically a poke in the eye at Amazon. And so in this union push, and less, less so to Starbucks, Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, is on the Starbucks board. But in this union pledge that Microsoft made, I think there was a clear undertone, undercurrent of making it clear that Microsoft was on the, you know, the good side, was on the light side

• 54:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  of this issue, whereas Amazon, in their view, might not have been.

• 54:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, they have to be on the light side now that they're going to have this superpower AI underneath their umbrella. So why don't we end with this?

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Nice transition.

• 54:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Microsoft is trying to acquire a large stake, 49% of OpenAI. I'm curious how you think that that will impact their products. A lot of people are focused on search. We've talked a lot about search. Feel free to address that if you want. The thing that really strikes me is the weird places that they're trying to put it. Now, I think it's weird. Maybe it's pretty important and smart. But from your story about this, you write that Microsoft reportedly, reportedly looks to integrate OpenAI technologies into more of its products, including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Like, what's going to happen? I'm doing a PowerPoint and then some, you know, ultra supercharged Clippy tells me, hey, this actually is terrible. Why don't I get my friend Dolly to draw something for you that is actually presentable? What is this gonna actually look like?

• 54:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  That would be cool.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Potentially, and I should and I should acknowledge there's been some great reporting on this recently from the information from Bloomberg. I've talked with Mary Jo Foley, who's now at the research firm Directions on Microsoft about this. So I'm in part sort of conveying things that I've read and heard from them. Yep, you're seeing this, you're seeing some AI in PowerPoint already. I mean, this is in a basic level. It's a PowerPoint designer. When you throw a bunch of images into a slide and say, hey, make this look pretty. So you're seeing that to some extent. To me, I think the key is to remember that OpenAI is not just ChatGPT. In other words, OpenAI has a variety of technologies. Yes, its its main strength is

• 55:43Speaker 02

  in natural language processing. And so there we see ChatGPT really taking off. And I think you do have some potential for that. But to your point, DALL-E and other types of visual technologies, I think you could see being incorporated. I do think there's a risk, though, of technology for technology's sake in some of these integrations. And granted, we have not seen them, not seen all of them that are on the drawing, drawing boards. But if you look at what OpenAI's technology was able to do in GitHub with the GitHub Copilot

• 56:24Speaker 02

  program, developers love that thing. I mean, it is able to essentially be a second pair of eyes, a pair of AI eyes on your code saying, did you really mean to do that? No, I think you should do this. I mean, I'd love that in my job, writing a story. I could probably have used that on this podcast. Somebody chirping into my ear saying, no, Todd, AWS profits were this, you know?

• 56:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  Like, you could see in different scenarios and in different industry verticals where it could be something beneficial.

• 56:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting. So we just, Ron John Roy and I do a weekly Friday show. And last Friday, we talked about how Satya might be the GOAT CEO for keeping OpenAI so close, especially as Google has been a little lukewarm to release some of its products, like Lambda, which we haven't seen yet. You agree with that assessment?

• 57:18Speaker 02

  I think that

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Let me just say this. When Satya Nadella was named Microsoft CEO, I was skeptical.

• 57:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 57:26Speaker 02

  I now, I, yes, I.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  So I had talked with Satya in his prior roles as the head of Bing and server and tools. And he was always on message about whatever they were announcing from, from those divisions at the time, very focused, very focused. And I had not at that point seen what I think we could accurately call someone with vision.

• 57:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  He certainly has a vision and an ability to communicate.

• 57:57Speaker 02

  The growth mindset, which is kind of Microsoft's adaptation of day one.

• 58:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of day one. Well, every, that's the thing I was saying in, um, always day one, just a bit of a side note. Every company has this. Microsoft has a growth mindset. Amazon has day one. Facebook has where 1% done, et cetera, et cetera. This is a thing.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  But, but I think that looking now in hindsight, with the benefit of hindsight,

• 58:24Speaker 02

  you got in Satya Nadella, somebody who's able to have the institutional knowledge, the internal credibility and a sense for what this company is, but also the open mind to these kinds of partnerships.

• 58:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  And

• 58:42Speaker 02

  I, I wonder, I wonder if Steve Ballmer would have done the OpenAI deal.

• 58:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, given his track record, I would say likely not. So, or if he did, it would find some way to explode.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  I don't know. He is, he might've tried to just acquire them outright, given his, his track record back.

• 58:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  If he had any money left after all, that he spent on Nokia. Sorry, Ballmer. I'm giving you a hard time again. It's one of the themes on this podcast, but yeah.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I think he is, um, I think, looking back on his tenure, there are a lot of things that went right that people don't give him credit for. So I will say that.

• 59:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  And elevating Satya as the head of server and tools was one of the, was probably the best move that Ballmer made the whole time. Sorry, go ahead.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  No, Azure, Microsoft Azure. Heck, if Ballmer wasn't there, you wouldn't have Bing for Microsoft to incorporate GPT into, you know? So, there you go.

• 59:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  You gotta judge these people with the benefit of history. So, it does seem like, yes, that was a good decision. So, I'll give Ballmer that. He should have spent at least, at least half of that billion, though, on dancing lessons. That's my, I won't stand, I won't back down on that. Spend that money on dancing lessons. So, yeah, it's interesting, interesting stuff. It'll be interesting to see. I know in Google, they did a code red about this. That's what The Times was reporting. And I'm sure there's this picture, I think you guys had it, of Satya Nadella and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, standing next to each other with these big smiles on their faces, looking kind of jacked. And I'm sure that, like, inside Google right now, Sundar Pichai

• 1:00:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  has that on a dartboard. And he's just playing a darts and being like, "Why? I said AI was electricity and fire. And look what they're doing."

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Maybe. I don't know. I don't, I know even less about Sundar's mentality.

• 1:00:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  He's not really a dart thrower, but it's fun to imagine.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Todd, so great to have you on. I know that people can go to GeekWire to read your stories, understand there's a GeekWire podcast, which you can find

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:00:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  on your podcast app of choice, anywhere else that people can find your work.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Those are the best places, geekwire.com and the GeekWire podcast. I appreciate the plug. We, we have a lot of fun. And ChatGPT was the discussion last week with Mary Jo Foley. So, that's a little bit more on that topic.

• 1:01:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Thank you, Alex.

• 1:01:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that'll do it for us here on Big Technology Podcast. Thank you so much, Todd Bishop, for joining. It was a really thought provoking conversation, and it may very well inspire some stories on big technologies, the newsletter. So, stay tuned for that. Ron Janeway joins us again on Friday for a conversation about the news. Again, we do these flagship interviews on Wednesday, and then the news breakdown, shorter episodes on Friday. So, two episodes a week now on Big Technology Podcast. It's been super fun. And we're right in the thick of it. We've already got two in the books, and we continue to charge on in January. Thank you, Nate Quatney, for handling the audio, as always. Thank you to LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. Thanks to all of you, the listeners, really appreciate you coming back week after week. It's great to have you here and hope we can do it again sometime soon.

• 1:01:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hope you have a great rest of the week and we will see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

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