Bezos, Ballmer make top 10 in Vanity Fair’s lists of movers and shakers

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Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has held onto his No. 3 spot on the New Establishment side of Vanity Fair’s annual rankings of business leaders and entertainers with serious cultural pull. And despite the decade-long stagnation of Microsoft’s stock price, and the magazine’s recent critical piece on his leadership, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer moved up one… Read More…

Ads on a tablet? How Amazon could upend the market

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Here’s an important story to note, in the category of news you may have missed over the holiday. The Wall Street Journal, quoting anonymous sources, reported over the weekend that Amazon is preparing to launch an ad-supported tablet — presumably as part of the next wave of Kindle Fire devices — aiming to appeal even more… Read More…

Jeff Bezos-backed Workday files for $400M IPO, facing off against Concur, SAP, Oracle

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Workday, a Pleasanton, California-based company that specializes in cloud-based payroll, financial management and employee expense management, has filed to raise up to $400 million through an initial public offering. It is backed by Amazon.com co-founder Jeff Bezos, Greylock, NEA and others who’ve pumped more than $250 million into the company. It competes against Redmond-based Concur… Read More…

Amazon’s Kindle Fire sells out, signaling new hardware ahead

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Amazon has sold out of its Kindle Fire one week before a news conference where the company is expected to unveil a follow-up to the tablet and other Kindle devices. The company has “an exciting roadmap ahead,” teases Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a news release this morning touting the growth of Kindle Fire over… Read More…

Amazon Prime celebrates an amazingly vague milestone

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It’s interesting how often a company as numbers-driven as Amazon.com asks its customers and shareholders to judge its progress with incomplete data. The tradition continued this morning as the company announced a big milestone for its Amazon Prime subscription service, complete with a letter from CEO Jeff Bezos on the Amazon.com home page: Amazon now… Read More…

Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Evan Williams and others bankroll D.C. education upstart EverFi

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Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Twitter co-founder Evan Williams are among the tech heavyweights bankrolling EverFi, a Washington, D.C.-based startup that hosts online educational programs that teach students digital literacy, alcohol abuse prevention and financial responsibility. The financing round stands at $10 million, and total funding in the four-year-old upstart now… Read More…

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos donates $2.5 million to support same-sex marriage measure

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In what is being called the largest individual gift to support same-sex marriage in the U.S., Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos have donated $2.5 million to a Washington state coalition working to approve Referendum 74. That measure, on the November ballot, is designed to uphold the state law protecting the rights of same-sex couples to marry. The… Read More…

Here’s the startup advice Jeff Bezos gave to Mark Pincus (before the guidance abruptly ended)

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Zynga CEO Mark Pincus sat down with PandoDaily’s Sarah Lacy for an entertaining interview last night, covering a range of topics (startup failures, advice for Marissa Mayer and even news that he may open a new San Francisco incubator space). But our favorite portion of the interview was Pincus relaying the advice he received from… Read More…

Amazon ‘Yesterday Shipping’: Wrap your brain around this

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A popular theory right now is that Amazon is moving toward same-day delivery of products, potentially posing a bigger threat to traditional retailers. But could Jeff Bezos & Co do even better? For your mid-day entertainment, check out out the spoof above by Ben Stadler and collaborators, envisioning the Seattle company’s next possible innovation. We’ll be on… Read More…

Why Amazon.com gave up the sales tax fight: A new face for the ‘online’ retailer?

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An interesting thing started happening last year. Amazon.com, which for months had battled states over the collection of sales tax, began changing its tune on the issue. It started agreeing to collect sales taxes on purchases in some states where it didn’t operate physical locations, while simultaneously inking deals to bring massive warehouses (and jobs)… Read More…