With Amazon, Jeff Bezos created one of the largest sales platforms in the world – partly because he recognized the opportunities of online trading early on. But that’s not all when it comes to his intuition.
Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos as an internet company, Amazon was an online bookstore in its early years. But even then, Bezos had big plans for the young company. in one Interview with talk show host Charlie Rose from 1999 he spoke about his vision and the future of e-commerce.
The predictions Bezos made at the time “BusinessInsider” summarized. But how accurate have they been? TECHBOOK checked it.
1. Amazon becomes the first port of call for online shoppers
“We want to try to build a place where people can find and discover anything that they might want to buy online” – a quote from the 1999 appearance on the Charlie Rose talk show. This vision has now become reality, with many online shoppers using Amazon as their first point of contact – even before they search for an item on Google or other platforms. That resulted in at least one opinion poll the US news channel NPR from 2018.
In fact, Amazon in North America has noisy extra a market share of almost 40 percent. With a 9.8 percent share of the European market, Amazon is also the largest provider here. The company can claim 9.2 percent worldwide. Data from extra According to the report, Amazon is behind the online sales platforms Taobao and Tmall, both of which belong to the Chinese Alibaba Group.
2. Smart Home is the future
“I’m a fan of the idea of some kind of home appliance that there are lots of little things connected to the internet […] There’s going to be a bunch of stuff that’s kind of connected to the network.” Also in the interview with Charlie Rose, Jeff Bezos appears to have predicted the smart home. Amazon itself has followed this vision with the smart Echo devices, which cover more and more household appliances. The company now not only offers speakers, but also displays, power plugs and door locks. And Amazon has even equipped cars, microwaves, glasses and headphones with the language assistant Alexa.
Bezos hasn’t always predicted the future correctly. Read here about the biggest mistakes the Amazon founder has ever made.
3. Amazon will sell more than just books
Before the turn of the century it was not foreseeable that Amazon would rise to the online sales platform it is now. In 1999, the company was still competing directly with the US bookstore chain Barnes & Noble.
In a 1999 portrait article, Bezos told the magazine, “Wired‘ but then already: ‘I bet that they [Barnes & Noble] don’t see us as direct competitors in a year’s time. Now they sure do, but we’re on different paths […] We’re trying to invent the future of online retail and they’re just defending their territory.”
22 years later, it’s clear that Bezos was right. While Amazon has risen to become the world’s largest e-commerce company, Barnes & Noble has remained primarily a bookstore with physical stores. Amazon has also outplayed Barnes & Noble on the e-book market, with the Kindle e-readers, which are selling significantly better than Barnes & Noble’s “Nook”.
Wired also writes about Bezos’ vision of expanding Amazon into an online shop for “everything” by 2020. As a result, Bezos wants people to buy basic groceries, paper products, cleaning supplies and the like online instead of in stores.
Amazon was not able to assert itself as the main supplier of household products. However, the Covid 19 pandemic in particular has given Amazon a real boost in this area. The company is also attempting to establish itself in the growing food delivery market through the acquisition of the Whole Foods supermarket chain and the expansion of Amazon Fresh.
4. Targeted advertising is the future
Today, personalized advertising is ubiquitous on the Internet. A large part of the business model of companies like Facebook and Google is based on recognizing the interests of users. In this way, they enable other companies to play out more relevant advertising in a targeted manner.
Bezos said in 1999: “Advertising is also a valid model on the net. They will be able to make their advertising more relevant to customers by targeting the advertising. Something that’s hard to do with TV.”
Amazon is now at the forefront of the big advertising companies in the world, like that The Wall Street Journal reports. With a market share of just under 10 percent, it is only behind Google and Facebook.
Also see our interview with Carsten Maschmeyer: »Jeff Bezos should take care of fair minimum wages!
5. Computers will have short boot times
“There is nothing more frustrating than waiting two minutes for the computer to boot […] So I think it’s an important technology. And people are working on it. That will happen eventually.”
In 1999, at the time of Charlie Rose’s interview, Microsoft Windows 98 and Mac OS 9 were fresh out. Back then, you could just make yourself a cup of coffee or a sandwich during the boot process. But 22 years ago, Bezos was already convinced that computers would soon have an instant-on function, meaning they would be ready to use as soon as they were switched on.
Also interesting: Our video report from a German Amazon warehouse
Computers have taken a while for this function to actually become a reality. It wasn’t until around 2010 that instant-on really took hold with flash storage in the form of SSDs and newer operating systems. But before that, smartphones have already demonstrated how direct waking up can work. Today it is practically unthinkable to wait two minutes after pressing the power button for a device to be ready for use.