Jeff Bezos grilled over violent games, movies during Amazon shareholder meeting

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Amazon just wrapped up its annual meeting of shareholders at Seattle Center, with Jeff Bezos giving a broad overview of the company’s business and fielding questions from shareholders. But the hot-button issue during the Q&A wasn’t profit margins or taxes — it was the company’s policies about sales of violent games and movies. Three shareholders… Read More…

Bezos defends Amazon’s profit-pinching strategy in annual letter to shareholders

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This just in: Jeff Bezos’ 2013 letter to shareholders. The annual missive from Amazon’s CEO, released this morning, defends the company’s “heavy investments” in areas including Amazon Prime, the Kindle and Amazon Web Services as ultimately in the interest of shareholders, even if it squeezes the company’s profits in the short run. As one example of… Read More…

MetroPCS to shareholders: Say yes to T-Mobile merger

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MetroPCS shareholders are making it quite clear that they think the proposed merger between T-Mobile and MetroPCS is for the better. MetroPCS sent a letter to its shareholders Monday, urging them to vote to pass the merger when the vote is expected on April 12. The company wrote that there could be “no assurance that… Read More…

Hedge fund manager David Einhorn to Apple: You’ve got a ‘cash problem’ (too much of it)

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Hedge fund manager David Einhorn has taken shots at Microsoft in the past, noting that the software giant should can CEO Steve Ballmer. Now, Einhorn is taking a shot at Apple, for an entirely different reason. It has just too much gosh-darned cash on the books. Einhorn, who runs Greenlight Capital and owns 1.3 million… Read More…

Thoughts on the hijacking of Amazon’s annual meeting

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Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday was a spectacle. Hundreds of people gathered outside the Seattle Art Museum to protest the company’s low tax rate, difficult working conditions at its distribution centers, and its affiliation with ALEC, the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. Inside, the mood was raucous, as a series of shareholders stood up to declare… Read More…

Amazon warns protesters to stay off Seattle campus

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Amazon.com’s Seattle headquarters campus has been the target of protests in recent weeks from a group called Working Washington that is calling on the company to pay more in taxes and improve working conditions at its fulfillment centers around the country. Today the company responded with a message of its own, putting up signs at the edges… Read More…

Microsoft doesn’t need to replace Ballmer as much as it needs to replace Gates

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Commentary: With his booming voice and boundless optimism, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is the technology industry’s version of a head coach. But these days he’s trying to run his team without a star quarterback. The perennial push to oust Ballmer is back. I understand why shareholders want him gone, and why Ballmer thinks he deserves… Read More…