Der Allesverkäufer: Jeff Bezos und das Imperium von Amazon

Geschrieben von Brad Stone

Erzählt von Sebastian Pappenberger

Inside Amazon Bewundert, gefürchtet und hart kritisiert: Firmengründer Jeff Bezos und sein Unternehmen Amazon mit Sitz in Seattle ist längst nicht nur der größte Onlineeinzelhändler der Welt. In beängstigendem Tempo treibt der Erfinder des Kindle die digitale Wirtschaft vor sich her und erobert immer mehr Geschäftsfelder: von Hardware, Logistik, digitalem Content und künstlicher Intelligenz - Alexa lässt grüßen - bis zu einem ehrgeizigen Raumfahrtprojekt. Was ist das Geheimnis des Systems Amazon? Wer zahlt den Preis? Der Technologieexperte Brad Stone ist der Erste mit Zugang zum Zentrum der Macht. Er liefert den spannenden Insiderblick auf Licht und Schatten der Erfolgsgeschichte des Netzgiganten, auf das Profil seines rücksichtslos kompetitiven Gründers sowie den Ausblick auf seine Zukunft.

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: ABOD von RBmedia Verlag
• Erscheinungsdatum: 3. Feb. 2020
• ISBN: 9783954711475

Rezensionen für Der Allesverkäufer

[dilip1kumar-572329 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

A fascinating account of how Jeff Bezos conceived the idea of a universal bookstore, and then developed it into an 'anything, anytime' online store for a whole range of products, from books and music to home and office, hardware, software, streaming entertainment, web services, and so on. The main point is that this massive company was built, not by being a nice guy, but by a ruthless drive and focus that destroyed many existing, traditional, concerns by relentless under-cutting and acquisitions. The benefit of low prices and fast shipping are, of course, the delight of those who take the risk of ordering online supported by a no-questions return or replacement policy and a superb user interface.

[ladyars · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

This book drips corporate blood. Amazon does not play nice and it makes me wonder if we, as customers, are trading low prices and great customer service now for a very bleak future later.

[susandennis-139327 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

I found this book to be fascinating. I read it slowly to savor it. It was truly delicious. I'm fascinated by the inner workings of Amazon and this book just fed my fascination. I've long been a customer. I interviewed for a job there before they were even on the air (mutual decline there). And for many many years I could see their world headquarters from my living room. I'm sure this book is chalk full of errors and important omissions but I don't care. It was a truly great read.

[john257hopper · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

This book, published in 2013, is both a history of Amazon as a company in its first nearly two decades and a biography of its remarkable founder, who has imprinted his philosophy probably more deeply than any other CEO of a major company, arguably even more so than Steve Jobs did with Apple. Indeed, the author, a technology journalist claims that: "In a way, the entire company is scaffolding built around his brain—an amplification machine meant to disseminate his ingenuity and drive across the greatest possible radius". The company is often stated to be based around certain key concepts: putting the interests of the customer at the centre of everything it does, especially in terms of low prices and excellent customer service, and ahead of the interests of employees and the potential threat from competitors; a capacity for reinventing the rules of retail, as the most successful company whose rise coincided with that of the internet in the mid to late 1990s, surviving the dot com crash; and a determination to take a long term view of the company's prospects, eschewing immediately profitable lines for long term future growth areas across an ever great wider range of goods: witness, Amazon Fresh. This is powered by a virtuous cycle, or flywheel, described thus: "Lower prices led to more customer visits. More customers increased the volume of sales and attracted more commission-paying third-party sellers to the site. That allowed Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like the fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the website. This greater efficiency then enabled it to lower prices further. Feed any part of this flywheel, they reasoned, and it should accelerate the loop".Clearly in all the above, Amazon has been massively successful. Yet it has faced criticism over tax and some of its employee policies, and as Brad Stone, and many past employees point out, Amazon has no culture of work-life balance and different teams working together: Bezos appears to believe that creative tension creates progress and drives up standards. There is a powerful feeling across the political divide in the US that Amazon has got too big and is exercising a distorting effect on many markets (though some of this is caused by political jealousy, for example Trump's dislike of the liberal Washington Post newspaper, also owned by Bezos). Brad Stone is apparently writing an updated version of this book, which should be an interesting read. Certainly, barring some unforeseen catastrophe, Amazon's capacity for forward-looking thinking and not resting on its laurels seems set to ensure it continues to evolve and play a key role in online retail for many years to come.

[abycats_1 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

Jeff Bezos is every bit as revolutionary a figure as Steve Jobs. While acknowledging that any history of Amazon is bound to be skewed by the choice of interviewees, the basic chronology and fundamental choices made are clearly presented. Even a reader knowledgable about merchandising will find gems here about the power of always insisting on customer service above profit on each individual transaction. As a heavy Amazon buyer, individual seller, and Amazon Prime member, I've been quite happy with my own treatment by Amazon. I pay fees to sell and will renew as a Prime member because Amazon offers a great value and convenience.

But Amazon has not been reluctant to use its size and marketing channel to pressure suppliers. Amazon's frugality may benefit the consumer but at what cost to competitors? And at what cost to employees such as those who work without air conditioning in some fulfillment centers? Absolutely fascinating book that the NY Society for Ethical Culture will be discussing precisely because of such issues on April 7, 2014. Is Amazon becoming the online WalMart? Their pay levels don't put its employees on food stamps but still....

Amazon has obviously not reached its peak and continues to innovate. This book offers an intriguing peek at why and how the company works. Definitely a good read for those interested in how successful businesses operate.

[bdartnall_1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Even though the author (long time business writer/journalist) includes details of Jeff Bezos' life, & his growing up years, etc. this is really the story of the birth & maturation of his "baby" -Amazon, the "everything store." Really illuminates the farsight Bezos had about the power of the internet but even more the ways he could stretch the 20th century idea of "store" and "business" into a 21st century Amazon - fascinating read. Doesn't pull any punches about the downside of working for Bezos or working at Amazon - ugh. Gotta be the hardest jobs in the world.

[wareagle78 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I have been an Amazon customer since at least 1996, and I didn't realize how early to its inception that placed me. I've enjoyed the convenience, but never known much about the structure itself. Add to the mix my fascination with young tech types who have the vision to make new things happen, and I was poised to love The Everything Store. In many ways, I did. The story of the start-up was everything I had hoped, and Bezos' vision was intriguing. However, as the book moved on and the company grew, the story (and company) changed to a ruthless competitor and Sigma Six efficiency striver pushed by Bezos' endless vision. Optimist that I am, it made me like Amazon less. It seems to be an unpleasant workplace and Bezos a difficult boss, but its success has been staggering. It seems that the author had deep access to Bezos and other Amazon insiders, and the story seems candid. Certainly it was readable. There is a lot to learn here about the enterprise that started as a bookstore kept afloat by not holding inventory to a merchandising and warehousing behemoth. If you like this type of story, go for it.

[sarah_beaudette · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Having lived in a third world country for a year, I miss good old-fashioned Customer Service the same way I miss freshly baked peanut butter cookies. No, no one here has ever eaten a peanut butter cookie, and their deprivation saddens me. If you can't wait to see a drone dropping packages on your doorstep, if you are inspired to tweet about the wonders of Amazon Prime, if you have come to harbor ridiculously high expectations of Customer Service, (why shouldn't they be able to tell me where the nearest pizza joint is while I have them on the phone? A thirty second wait time for my call to be answered? What is this, 1953?), then this book will reveal how your magical consumer-driven life has come to full fruition ala Jeff Bezos. As an ex-Amazonian, I'm slightly biased and a little offended by the term Jeff-bot, but it's a good read for anyone interested in the rise of the Age of Amazon.

[rlangston-1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

A good insight into all the workings and development of Amazon, right up to date with their dominance of cloud computing. Perhaps too little detail of early development, but plenty of detail about the current workings of the company.

[rhodesdavis · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

This biography of Jeff Bezos, Amazon, and even Internet e-commerce traces the development of a man, business, and industry that has noticeably transformed American society. The author gives insight into the problems faced by Amazon as it grew into the "Everything Store" and the demanding founder who brought the vision to reality. It is amazing what Bezos and Amazon accomplished despite frequently getting in their own way. I was intrigued by Amazon's approach to logistical demands, surge challenges (holidays), and surprised about the inbreeding with Walmart. The history behind some of the features that thrived and died: Prime, Auctions... includes the reasons that some of these things were tried; for example, the Auctions experiment to face off with eBay.

The author portrays Jeff Bezos as an intriguing brilliant individual who could be as caustic as Steve Jobs but wasn't as cool as Steve Jobs. Also explored was its founder's ability to will an incredible organization into existence focused on customer service and loyalty while sometimes compromising employee service and loyalty. We who work in the tech industry know the Jeff Bezos type and are probably more forgiving of the idiosyncrasies and impaired social skills that is the shadow side of technical brilliance and focus on excellence. We are left with respect for the man and a clear reminder that he is just a man with outstanding qualities that have contributed value to the marketplace and abrasiveness that has created problems.

The abrasive personality is on display in the tumultuous and contentious relationship with book publishers and distributors especially around the development and release of the Kindle. The author describes the market attempts, and failures, to popularize an electronic reader and the eventual success of the Kindle platform. As a Kindle user, and lover of books, I was engrossed in this part of the history and I think most bibliophiles will be as well.

The contentious relationship with the book industry and other suppliers made me consider the same question I had after watching a documentary of Walmart's relationship with its suppliers: do low prices come at a high cost? We enjoy a convenience of what we need when we need it. My local Walmart is 24-hour and has items that I never thought I'd need after 9pm when most stores close. Amazon has items that would require me to drive across town wasting time and gas in traffic. I am a customer of both organizations. However, we must also balance it with the loss of some local retailers (and their jobs), minimal profits for suppliers (profits that can go into developing new products), livable wages, and perhaps other issues. I did not develop an answer to the question and I imagine we will continue to ponder such questions. There is much to admire and fear about how Amazon became a success. Did we sacrifice some intangibles that we will greatly miss for cheaper products? Have we not been able to calculate the true value of Amazon and Walmart's contribution to the marketplace in ways that far exceed what we can truly grasp? It may be that in holding onto the Main Street of the past with a false nostalgia and that the cottage industries and small business opportunities these global behemoths created are the success stories we should be cheering. In fact, the end of the book, which chronicles the development of Amazon Web Services which is fueling many Internet businesses that are creating value and jobs worldwide.

I listened to this on the unabridged audiobook and it is well narrated and produced.

[infjsarah · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Very interesting. It does seem to confirm that you need to be slightly insane to create a new Internet business. And I wouldn’t want to work for Amazon either – far too adversial and work obsessed for me.How much more disruption do they have in them? Will they survive Bezos retiring - interesting times indeed.As a contrast, I also recently read “In the plex” about Google which is also fascinating and scary. It’s also interesting to see the seeming contrast in company culture between 2 web giants. Amazon seems to be run on traditional lines – hierarchies and committees with Bezos as final power.Google seems to have tried to keep its university roots as a culture – less hierarchy and its engineers as the power.

[dickmanikowski · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Portrait of Jeff Bezos and the rise of the world's largest online retailer.

[brewbooks · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

Amazon seems to be one of the few companies that have been able to solve The Innovator's Dilemma (as Clayton Christensen has wonderfully described it.) Brad Stone's book gave me some excellent insight as to why Jeff Bezos and the Amazon team have been able to do that. I highly recommend this book. I started with a copy from the library, but I finished it on my Kindle, as it is a book I'd like to refer to in the future.

[fist_1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Having recently finished "In the Plex" (a biography of Google), I thought it might be interesting to follow it up with this story of how Amazon become the behemoth of internet retailing. If the results are similar, the trajectories are quite different. The Google founders were idealistic dorks; Jeff Bezos comes across as an old-school self-made man keen on making his fortune - regardless in which sector. Amazon has Walmart as its great example, and like Walmart, it leaves economic devastation in its wake, not only among smaller mom-and-pop stores, but also among competitors in books (Borders, Barnes & Noble) and other areas. Bezos is portrayed as a bully, both inside the company (I'm still shocked that Amazon employees are paid below market rate, and that they must pay for a spot on the company parking lot), and in dealing with other market players. Less well-written than the Google story, and less pretty a character, but still highly interesting if you want to understand the drive towards instant gratification through next-day or same-day delivery of low-priced goods, and the economic effects it has on jobs and wages (spoiler: both effects affect the same population).

[eglinton_1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Enjoyable history from the adventurous frontier years of the early dotcom era to the ambitions and megalomania of more recent times. Snigger at the egos and conceits of the Web barons: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos 'made a big show of keeping one chair open at the conference table "for the customer" he explained'.Their business ethos and process is indulged here more than the personalities, so you still don't fully get up close with Bezos; but detail enough here to realise that if you've not become quite that wealthy, it's partly at least that you're not quite as driven and rigorous as him.

[brianinbuffalo · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Any folks who have even an armchair interest in changing business matrixes will find "The Everything Store" a fascinating read. Bezos' offbeat management style and unusual persona permeate this work. As a small press publisher of regional books, I was particularly interested in Bezos' strategies for building one of the most successful retailing entities in history.

[sigmundfraud · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

THE EVERYTHING STORE JEFF BEZOS AND THE AGE OF AMAZON is a compelling read but as is so often the case too much detail that derails the story. Jeff is obviously a genius and the single driving force behind the behemoth that is Amazon. I didn't like him. I don't think he is a nice guy and he would be terrible to work for. Without Bezos the company may be just another large conventional retailer so it is critical that he continue to be the man in charge. I don't know why people work for him unless it is the potential of the stock options because they are not well paid and pressured to work very hard. To dedicate their life to Amazon. The turnover in executive personnel seems to have been very high.

[markon_305303 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

I picked up The everything store: Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazonbecause I wanted to try and understand Amazon’s business from a larger perspective than the online retail space where, yes, I am a customer. This book did help me get a better understanding of how Bezos (& co.) have positioned Amazon as a technology company (pioneering providing cloud computing/server space to businesses, developing a user-friendly ereader and driving publishing into ebooks, etc.) Given the description of working conditions at Amazon, I remain puzzled about why anyone would want to work there, but my job/career has never been the defining character of my existence. I would make a lousy executive. I have mixed feelings about the intersection of innovation & efficiency of businesses like Amazon with the needs of the workforce. The creativity and innovation is great, and of course who doesn’t love lower prices? But I am afraid it sometimes comes at the expense of treating employees like human beings. I’m also curious about what percentage of Amazon’s revenues come from retail and how much comes from other sources.I had to turn this back into the library before reviewing, so here is what I remember about the book. It is divided in three sections:Faith describes Bezos early life and career and the beginnings of Amazon.com.Literary Influences describes the growth of Amazon, the strategies they used to improve logistics and move themselves beyond functioning only as an online retailer and into becoming a publicly traded company. Bezos apparently started with books because no one was selling them online, but retail was never his long-term goal.Missionary or Mercenary? Is the final section, don’t remember the focus of this section. I think this included the discussion of maneuvering regarding sales tax, and some guessing about where Amazon might go in the future.

[jcbrunner · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

The author tries very hard (but fails) to position this book as similar to Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography. The main difference is that the author did not have access to Jeff Bezos. The closest contact was apparently Bezos' estranged natural father who has had next to no contact with his famous son. The author's contact with Bezos was based on business interviews done for Business Week and other outlets. It is also very US-centric. Amazon's international expansion is hardly mentioned at all.The best part of the book is highlighting the parts that went into Bezos Frankenstein monster. The first part comes from Wall Street and its liar's poker culture. Bezos and Amazon see no problems to break contracts and stiff their suppliers when they are in a position of strength. The author, given his daytime job of adoring CEOs, is mostly admiring Amazon's ruthlessness, with a faint hint of a gasp about the blood spilled by Amazon's victims. The second part comes from Walmart. Bezos picked Walmart managers to create Amazon's logistics and also its approach to blue collar workers. Everybody is at liberty not to work at Amazon. Those that agree to work according to Amazon's conditions work there at their own peril. The author does not mention Amazon employing neo-Nazi security guards to check Spanish and Eastern European guest workers in Germany. He does mention Amazon's stationing ambulances at their logistics center because this was cheaper than installing air conditioning or posed fewer security risks than opening the doors to let in fresh air.Amazon excels at ham 'n' eggs partnerships were it supplies the eggs while its partner is carved up and served to the customer. It is Amazon's customers who are the main beneficiaries of Amazon's ruthlessness and exploitation of its partners, be it its employees, the distributors or suppliers. Amazon's customers benefit from low prices because Amazon keeps breaking price agreements with its suppliers because it has to "match the price" offered - by a shady Amazon subsidiary. By the book, this is apparently legal but it is deeply unfair. Exploiting loopholes is an Amazon specialty: It only managed to supply its customers with books because it kept exploiting a loophole in the minimum book order number of the wholesaler. It ordered one copy of the book it needed and nine copies of a book it knew to be out of print, thus getting free shipping. The same approach is used to get around paying taxes and labor laws. You better check the small print before doing business with Amazon because if they can exploit you, they will. Customers enjoy the fruits of these ill-gotten gains but ultimately will have to pay for the ruined infrastructure. While the book does not mention it, reading this book made it much clearer why Jeff Bezos wrote big checks to George W. Bush.