Jeff Bezos steps down as Amazon CEO
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will step down as CEO and transition to a new position at the company as executive chair of the Amazon board in Q3 2021
Andy Jassy, who currently serves as CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS), will replace Bezos as Amazon CEO.
“Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming. When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else,” commented Bezos in an email announcing the change. “As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions.”
Andy Jassy is a familiar face at the company, having joined back in 1997, reports TheVerge. He has led the Amazon Web Services team since it was founded in 2003 and was named the CEO of AWS in 2016. The choice of Jassy — who has headed Amazon’s cloud service business since the beginning — over a retail or hardware executive is a telling one for Amazon’s priorities as a company.
Amazon’s cloud business is a huge part of the company (and the internet at large, to the point where AWS outages can take down whole swaths of internet for hours), and its new leadership choice reflects that.
More Amazon news
Amazon got caught copying products and manipulating search results
Amazon got caught cheating? Amazon has been repeatedly accused of copying third-party sellers’ products and then manipulating the search results to favor Amazon’s own brands. The company has denied the accusations. Reuters got access to internal Amazon documents...
China energy crisis wreaks havoc in the manufacturing sector
China in the dark Factories in China's busiest manufacturing provinces have been ordered to suspend production for up to a week or even longer, prompting concern global supplies of goods might be disrupted. China is in the midst of an energy crisis that has turned...
China stands up to protect intellectual property
E-commerce sites must guard intellectual property or be shut in China China plans to tighten oversight of e-commerce platforms like Alibaba Group over the infringement of intellectual property rights. Companies would lose their trading...
