George Packer: Is Amazon Bad for Books? : The New Yorker
Is Amazon Bad for Books? Originally relentless.com, $AMZN keeps incr its reach: 1st kindles, now digi-content
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/17/140217fa_fact_packer
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Bezos originally thought of calling his company Relentless.com–that U.R.L. still takes you to Amazon’s site–before adopting the name of the world’s largest river by volume. (If Bezos were a reader of classic American fiction, he might have hit upon Octopus.com.) Amazon’s shape-shifting, engulfing quality, its tentacles extending in all directions, makes it unusual even in the tech industry, where rapid growth, not profitability, is the measure of success. Amazon is not just the “Everything Store,” to quote the title of Brad Stone’s rich chronicle of Bezos and his company; it’s more like the
Everything. What remains constant is ambition, and the search for new things to be ambitious about.
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