

I'm meeting Jeff Bezos tonight-- what should I ask him? - joshwa

Going to an event at NYU/Stern tonight, where Jeff Bezos will be speaking, as well as the private reception afterwards.<p>Anything that fellow HNers would like me to ask him?
======
sanj
Bezos had gone on record many times as saying that Amazon tries out a lot of
things on their site(s), and then gauges reaction to them based on usage. He
talks about how inexpensive it is to test something new because you can just
put it out there.

Over the years, I've found Amazon becoming more and more cluttered. I find
myself becoming blind to _useful_ new features because they are hidden in
amongst blogs, plogs, video testimonials, recommendation, lions and tigers and
bears.

In aerospace, there's the notion of new displays "buying their way into the
cockpit", which is not about money, but about being worthwhile enough to share
the valuable real estate with other displays. There is an acknowledgement that
the existing displays will either get smaller or viewed less or both.

I'd be interested in hearing how he thinks about the fracturing of attention
that occurs when there is so stuff on Amazon's pages. There's a real cost
associated with that, and it feels like Amazon is not paying attention to it
at all.

~~~
Maro
I find that Amazon is getting better all the time. Eg. the recommendation
system is like "magic" - the books it recommends are actually highly relevant
to me.

~~~
sanj
I agree on recommendations.

But have you ever read a plog?

------
ardit33
Are they planning to provide a good portal/software management for all their
offerings (S3/EC2 etc.). Why do most of the hard part, but just not care about
the last touch; the way a user interacts with them?

Their offerings are awesome, but they need to improve the interface with them,
and make them more user friendly.

~~~
wehriam
Have you tried the Firefox extensions?

[http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?ex...](http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=609)

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247>

~~~
ardit33
Yes. And there is scalr too, but it would have been much better if Amazon
provided a very robust solution themselves, as they know their systems better
than anybody else.

Then Google's app engine would really pale in comparison to Amazon's offering.
Right now google is providing an engine that scales up, and which is very easy
to get started (their main advantage), but the downside you have to be tied to
a very cripled enviroment.

If Amazon provided the glue that sticks all their offerings into one
comprehensive package that is easy to use that this would be the best of both
worlds. Who would even use google's app engine where you can have great
scalability, easy to use, and have your own linux systems running on Amazon?

------
mkull
Ask him if Amazon intends to attack any other niche vertical markets. Recently
they have gotten involved with footwear via endless.com
[http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/05/amazoncom-launches-
inde...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/05/amazoncom-launches-independent-
endlesscom/)

Since I operate an ecommerce statup in a niche market (motorcycle gear -
revzilla.com) , his answer to that is very interesting to me.

------
lurkage
What does he know now that he didn't know when he started Amazon? What would
he now do differently?

~~~
dcurtis
But everyone asks this question, and the response is always the same. You can
ask a question like this if you're getting a written response, but when you're
asking someone to immediately think of things in person and then justify them
on the spot, it doesn't work well.

------
run4yourlives
What is Amazon's strategy around an offering (EC2/S3) that wouldn't be subject
to the PATRIOT act for those of us who aren't American? (ie the rest of the
world)

One of the biggest gaps to me using AWS as a Canadian is that I would face a
firestorm of crap for storing personal information that could be mined at the
whims of US services.

Any plans to open/license S3 to someone in Canada or the EU?

------
wanorris
What is Amazon's strategy regarding digital media sales? Their MP3 store is
built around open standards, but Unbox video is tightly DRMed and doesn't even
run on Macs, and their Kindle books only work on a single, closed device. Is
this all purely tactical based on the individual markets? Do they have a long-
term vision for how digital media ought to work?

~~~
pchristensen
Not sure about Unbox, but Kindle is just doing what the iTunes did - start out
locked so that media owners agree to get on board, then once they're addicted
to your revenue stream, then you can pry some openness out of them if you want
(or any other concession for that matter).

------
yters
What counter intuitive things have they learned by analyzing all their user
data?

------
gibsonf1
Who came up with the brilliant idea for EC2/S3?

~~~
apathy
In all honesty, if you have ever wondered what to do about the cycles and
storage that went unused or underused in your datacenters (and the effect of
said on operating profit and loss), I have to wonder who wouldn't have come up
with it eventually.

Amazon came up with a way to rent supercomputing facilities to people outside
of academia, and continue to refine the offerings. I'm a little surprised it
took this long, but that could just be a reflection of Amazon being the first
to get it mostly-right for a maturing market.

I'd be more interested in their thought process in terms of "OK, we can offer
_this_ , but it's too risky to offer _that_ , and a waste of time to implement
_that_..." That could be enlightening.

------
zemote
How many Kindles has Amazon sold :)

~~~
icey
And does he have as much faith in Kindle as he did in "Ginger"?

------
jdavid
I usually do not ask celebrities about their work. it quickly puts you in the
"eager follower category" and gives you little chance of getting outside of
that. I think i would ask Jeff what his favorite beer was, and if you could
take him out for one sometime. I suggest just talking to him like a friend.
You will have time for work later.

------
istaken
his values about software patents & why is he forcing the 1-click patent onto
the EU

------
justindz
Have you looked at buying Heroku?

------
dawie
I would ask Jeff:

1) What would you attribute your success to?

2) What was the early days of Amazon like? When did you realize that you can
change the way people buy books (and anything for that matter) for ever?

------
simplegeek
Please ask him about his (all time favorite) reading list and report back ;)

------
davidw
Probably not very interesting for most people, but I'd be curious if they're
planning on opening an Italy office.

I'm curious because I worked for an Italian online bookseller for a few years.

------
prakash
Who had the fantastic idea to hire Werner Vogels as the CTO of Amazon?

~~~
simplegeek
Fact that he was a student of Andrew S. Tanenbaum might have made this
decision a lot easier.

------
nextmoveone
I'd love to know how he considers an investment when it is brought to him and
if/how he seeks out his investments.

Also, where does he believe e-commerce is going? Mobile? Why?

------
tigerthink
What was the most frequent mistake the company made?

<http://ben.casnocha.com/2007/08/what-was-your-m.html>

------
delano
Are they interested in adding features like global availability zone regions,
private availability zones, various security compliance (PCI, CISP, etc...)?

------
joshwa
Note: see followup here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=164849>

------
brfox
Why not enter the search market again? A9 had some cool features... and it
would be fun to access that type of data via EC2.

------
istaken
and about the right to read. <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
read.html> [http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/19/the-future-of-
re...](http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/19/the-future-of-reading)

------
pibefision
Are you planning a free version of AWS to compete with Google App Engine?

~~~
sah
In general, what does App Engine mean for AWS?

------
Fuca
What is minimum amount of money for a startup today?

------
melvinram
Can I get a free Kindle?

~~~
melvinram
lol No one thought that was funny? Yeks!

~~~
crux_
No, funny would have been: Would you like to see the dessert menu, sir?

------
andr
Why is six afraid of seven? :)

