The best comments, quotes, and random zingers we heard this week…
“The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment.”—Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos in a memo to employees of The Washington Post, the newspaper he purchased for $250 million in cash.
“Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has purchased the Washington Post for $250 million. He said that last night, like most Amazon customers, he was drunk and buying crap on the Internet he didn’t need.”—Comedian Conan O’Brien on Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos purchase of the Washington Post.
—”Why is Amazon’s founder betting on old media? Here’s one answer: Jeff Bezos loves content and he always has.”—Bloomberg BusinessWeek senior writer Brad Stone, and author of the soon-to-be-released book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, in his story on Bezos buying The Washington Post.
“All told, “Everywhere at Once” feels like a solid LP. It’s not particularly adventurous, nor is it particularly offensive – it just feels like a good album put out by a committed group of musicians.”—GeekWire’s Blair Hanley Frank writing about the new album from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
“I’ve made it clear, we’re not done. Un-Carrier 3.0 is already scheduled, and you can trust it’s going to do two things. It’s going to solve another customer pain point and it’s going to unveil another weakness of the major players, with an inability for them to respond.”— T-Mobile CEO John Legere on the Bellevue carrier’s plans to continue to shake up the wireless industry.
“When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose you’ll look up and see that balloon, and I’m not sure how it’ll help you. When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no website that relieves that. Certainly I’m a huge believer in the digital revolution. And connecting up primary-health-care centers, connecting up schools, those are good things. But no, those are not, for the really low-income countries, unless you directly say we’re going to do something about malaria.”—Bill Gates commenting on Google’s plan to provide high-speed Internet across the globe through a network of high-altitude balloons.
“In related news, the National Association of Travel Agents issued a press release calling Orbitz a ‘flash in the pan’ and Expedia a ‘waste of time and a danger for customers.’ Seriously, who cares what the NAR thinks? They represent a people who expect to be paid handsomely for a job that is being mechanized on a daily basis.”— A GeekWire reader commenting on the National Association of Realtors’ biting response to President Barack Obama sitting down for an interview with Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff.
“No one really knows what happened. We were just told we are no longer are employed by Contour and the doors were locked on Friday.”—Jacob Hase, the former social media manager at Contour, the Seattle maker of helmet-mounted digital cameras.
“The ending is sad and good people out of a job is horrible. But I know everyone involved was proud of what they were able to build over the nine years. GoPro did a great job at building their brand, they should be commended.”—Contour co-founder Marc Barros commenting on the closure of the helmet-mounted camera maker Contour.
And just for a little fun. Here’s our favorite video of the week:
