GigaOM Interview: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

Om Malik | Friday, May 30, 2008 | 5:00 PM PT | 37 comments

Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was one of the attendees at this week’s D6 Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., to be interviewed on stage, where he talked about Kindle at length. But right after his chat with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, I caught up with him to discuss Amazon Web Services and his company’s efforts in cloud computing. Here is a short excerpt from that conversation, captured on my Sanyo Xacti. In particular, he talks about…

  • How and when Amazon began its cloud computing effort.
  • Why Amazon has become an innovator with Amazon Web Services and how it relates to their core business of being an online retailer.
  • Whether or not Wall Street recognizes Amazon’s cloud efforts.
  • What’s next for Amazon Web Services.
  • Whether or not Amazon has plans for a VC fund or for cloud computing startups.

For even more info about Amazon’s cloud computing efforts, join us at our upcoming conference, Structure ‘08, where CTO Werner Vogels will be delivering a keynote address.

GigaOM Briefings Want to know more about the rapidly changing Cloud Computing landscape? Preview our Cloud Computing Briefing or purchase the full version.

23 trackbacks so far

May 31st, 2008
8:29 AM PT

[...] Whether or not Amazon has plans for a VC fund or for cloud computing startups. (GigaOm) [...]

May 31st, 2008
9:32 PM PT

[...] GigaOM Interview: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos talking bout the cloud (tags: amazon jeffbezos) [...]

June 1st, 2008
5:04 AM PT

[...] week at the D6 conference, Om Malik caught Jeff Bezos on video after his on-stage appearance (in which he talked about a new pay-per-download movie service). In [...]

June 1st, 2008
5:46 AM PT

[...] Talks Web Services Last week at the D6 conference, Om Malik caught Jeff Bezos on video after his on-stage appearance (in which he talked about a new pay-per-download movie service). In [...]

June 1st, 2008
5:48 AM PT
Unfortune said:

[...] week at the D6 conference, Om Malik caught Jeff Bezos on video after his on-stage appearance (in which he talked about a new pay-per-download movie service). In [...]

June 1st, 2008
6:19 AM PT

[...] caught up with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos at the D6 conference this week. A lot of people on Wall Street have [...]

June 1st, 2008
7:11 AM PT

[...] week at the D6 conference, Om Malik caught Jeff Bezos on video after his on-stage appearance (in which he talked about a new pay-per-download movie service). In [...]

June 1st, 2008
10:42 AM PT

[...] Om Malikgot an interesting interview with Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO. [...]

June 1st, 2008
12:08 PM PT

[...] Malik managed to catch Jeff Bezos offstage at Walt Mossberg’s D6 conference last week, and the resulting video [...]

June 1st, 2008
4:29 PM PT

[...] 先週のD6カンファレンス会場で、Om MalikがビデオでJeff Bezosを捕えた。Bezosが新しいペイ・パー・ダウンロード方式の映画サービスについて語ったステージを終えた直後のことだ。Bezonsはこの5分間ほどの通路インタビュー(下に貼り付けてある)の中で、なぜ、一ウェブ小売店[であるAmazon]がクラウドコンピューティングサービスを提供するのかを説明した。答えはこうだ。Amazonはウェブ規模を持つアプリケーションとして、いずれにしても自身でその類のサービスを作る必要があったから。(投資家やウォールストリートのアナリストたちの多くは、未だにこの関係を理解できていない)。 [...]

June 1st, 2008
6:55 PM PT

[...] week at the D6 conference, Om Malik caught Jeff Bezos on video after his on-stage appearance (in which he talked about a new pay-per-download movie service). In [...]

June 1st, 2008
10:36 PM PT

[...] question and one that Om Malik posed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at last week’s D6 Conference in this very good, impromptu video interview. People often wonder about this aspect of Amazon’s web services strategy and if you watch [...]

June 2nd, 2008
12:52 AM PT

[...] question and one that Om Malik posed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at last week’s D6 Conference in this very good, impromptu video interview. People often wonder about this aspect of Amazon’s web services strategy and if you watch this [...]

June 4th, 2008
7:15 AM PT

[...] GigaOM Interview: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos [via Zemanta] [...]

June 6th, 2008
5:47 PM PT

[...] most telling about who will get in is shown by this video of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Amazon made their cloud because they had to in order to run their own business. They realized that [...]

June 17th, 2008
12:05 PM PT

[...] Interview: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos | GigaOM June 17, 2008 Posted by thaadsma in Amazon, SOA, SaaS, development, web, web services. trackback GigaOM Interview: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos - GigaOM [...]

June 25th, 2008
11:08 AM PT

[...] this month, Om Malik interviewed and wrote a post about Jeff Bezos. Anyways, Om did the work, then RoughType links to the post and embeds the [...]

August 1st, 2008
7:24 AM PT

[...] looks like after Amazon, a mere book retailer, showed them the way, all the technology powerhouses have fallen in love with cloud computing. Hewlett-Packard, Intel [...]

August 21st, 2008
6:24 AM PT

[...] Related Post: Check out my interview with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his views on cloud computing. [...]

[...] Some guides on going Bedouin: Article in Web Work Daily from Sept. 2006, great site that I read regularly: (link) Another article from Feb 2008: (link) So how did the Amazon EC2 elastic compute cloud come about? Jeff Bezos explains in this interview: (link) [...]

October 12th, 2008
11:58 PM PT

[...] P.S. Check out my video interview with Jeff Bezos [...]

October 22nd, 2008
4:54 AM PT
November 21st, 2008
3:03 PM PT

[...] Check out my video interview with Jeff Bezos. [...]

14 comments so far

May 30th, 2008
6:50 PM PT
Ben said:

Wow! Nice exclusive interview grab Om!

How did you pull this off? Was it the Gigaom clout? Or are you dating his sister?

May 30th, 2008
8:46 PM PT
Om Malik said:

@ Ben,

very simple - just asked him if he had a few minutes for me. best

May 30th, 2008
9:25 PM PT

good interview Om.

May 31st, 2008
12:23 AM PT
Muneeb said:

He didn’t mention anything about Dynamo

May 31st, 2008
2:27 AM PT
Darren said:

I would be interested to see if they could get windows server 2008 virtualization running on ec2. good interview om.

May 31st, 2008
9:04 AM PT

Great interview and insights. Very good!

May 31st, 2008
1:13 PM PT

Jeff, a legend, appears to be a humble person. Also, the way he laughs is infectious. :)

May 31st, 2008
7:34 PM PT
Sachin Balagopalan said:

Good one and nice job with the Xacti :). The highlight for me was Jeff articulating the fact that their Web Services business stems from their own internal need for a set of API’s to mitigate the “fine grain coordination” between their network and applications groups!

June 1st, 2008
9:23 AM PT
adamfisk said:

Things are getting more and more interesting with App Engine announcing their pricing. I’ve delved into some of the ways App Engine actually beats AWS by considerable margins on my blog at:

(link)

I can’t wait to hear what Werner Vogels has to say on the topic at Structure ‘08.

-Adam

June 5th, 2008
8:09 AM PT
Alex said:

Cloud compute startup that Bezos personally funded, everyone should check it out. They are bridging the gap between on demand infrastructure and test lab automation.

June 6th, 2008
8:11 AM PT
Jim said:

I don’t think Jeff answered the question regarding Wall Street - What people want to know is if Wall Street has recognized this technology edge and new market and factored that into the pricing of AMZN stock -

June 17th, 2008
7:54 AM PT
Cindy said:

i seen video i think Jeff answered the question regarding Wall Street. They are bridging the gap between on demand infrastructure and test lab automation. People often wonder about this aspect of Amazon’s web services strategy

August 23rd, 2008
10:14 AM PT
Vectorpedia said:

Nice interview……….I learned a few things about Amazon and Jeff Bezos

October 13th, 2008
4:06 AM PT
Jim said:

Nice interview.

Here are my thoughts as a consultant trying to leverage Amazon into a B2C/B2B client….I don’t think Amazon has done a good job of marketing, and promoting these new technology services. As Jeff put it, some of this stuff is years old. There might be companies using it, but it’s still not clear to me how I can leverage it and what the details are.

They also don’t do a good job of providing help. If you send Amazon an email (which seems to be the only way to communicate with them, and get more information on the services), you get a reply from someone overseas in 2-3 days. …. and of course, the reply is poor, so you have to play 20 emails because they dont really understand english.

Again, my point is that Amazon had good technoologies, they can be a bigger force, but I think they are still playing around.

Leave a Comment

Get the comments RSS feed, instant notification of new comments

Editorial Masthead

Carolyn Pritchard
Managing Editor
Celeste LeCompte
Special Projects Editor
Om Malik
Senior Writer
Stacey Higginbotham
Staff Writer
Wagner James Au
Contributing Editor
Liz Gannes
Staff Writer
Chris Albrecht
Staff Writer
Katie Fehrenbacher
Staff Writer
Josie Garthwaite
Staff Writer
Close
E-mail It