Reading this email or the one by Autodesk's founder (http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_22.html) sometimes leave me with questions on why most people can't take this more "like-a-person" approach in communication.
Most letters from top management that i know of are usually boring and i rarely understand the whole information (usually i ditched it far before i can get through the whole formal languages)
they're normally written by lawyers and advisors. To partially answer your question - you should check out the SEC guidance on this kind of thing - it's not easy telling people you're about to engage in a massive deal that impacts lots and lots of people with lots and lots of money.
Sure. I can understand that. I am no expert in legal system, but, is it illegal to send out something that is legally correct AND/OR maybe accompany by another letter that practically is more human-readable?
After all, what's the point of the letter if no one is reading it?
It's not so much a matter of "illegal" as "unwise" (and hence prevented by lawyers).
Securities law is large, well-established, and quite complex. Especially in the early stages of a merger, there are very clear legal restrictions on what you can and can't say, and very high requirements for precision in reporting.
Legal statements of this type (as you can see in the last paragraph) are meant to be very specific, and to say one thing only (and make it almost impossible to interpret it any other way). Casual conversation is designed to be pretty much correct, and leave some details unsaid/to common understanding. The clash comes in that it's hard to say something that's as precise as you need without sounding like a robot.
When you're thinking about things like this, don't think about Tony Hsieh, who seems (by all reports) to be a pretty open and upstanding guy. Think about the most fraudulent and deceptive private CEO you could imagine trying to merge his company with the most fraudulent and deceptive public company you can imagine. They're the people that these laws are designed to regulate - so that they can't say something in "casual English" which one would normally read one way, but could be read (and they would read) in a nefarious way. to disrupt he market.
Law is, in some ways, like an obscure form of math or engineering. We could say "the Fourier transform of a function is equal to the integral of the function times e^-i", which is broadly correct, but not sufficiently precise to understand what is going on and react accordingly. Instead, we specify it exactly and boringly in a domain-specific language, not unlike certain aspects of law.
IANAL, but anything you do say on a deal can be used as evidence in a deal- even posts to twitter. Remember also, the deal may still not complete, depending on amazon's terms of business and if their shareholders need to vote on it.
The SEC's job is to try and protect everyone's financial interests - and to prevent people from gaming the system. Part of that is to regulate how and what people say during a transaction such as this.
But- the letter is being read, as will all the analyst reports and so on thru wall street... it's just that they speak in a different language- call it their own code. :)
I think though that in general, Tony at Zappos cultivates a pretty open image about him and the company. Anything you read from them is really light on the legalese with clear thoughts. There are a few other notable CEOs that take this approach, but most do not.
Most letters from top management that i know of are usually boring and i rarely understand the whole information (usually i ditched it far before i can get through the whole formal languages)