Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

by Brad Stone

To make a credible case for breaking up Amazon, they will have to answer questions that the company goes to remarkable lengths to obscure. How do its various components interlock? How do you gauge the true profitability of the individual business units when some costs are covered by the subscription fees of services like Amazon Prime? Is it anticompetitive when Amazon increases those fees or seeks to improve its market position by dropping them altogether, as it did in the fall of 2019 when it waived a separate $15 a month charge for grocery delivery? “There is no company in the world that is more complex and difficult for outsiders to understand than Amazon,” said Kurt Zumwalt, Amazon’s treasurer for fifteen years, before he left in 2019. “This is not a typical corporate conglomerate like Berkshire Hathaway or General Electric. Almost every aspect of Amazon is built around subtly increasing its connection to customers. The power of the business model is the combination of the sum of its self-reinforcing businesses and services, enabled by world-class technology, operational excellence, and a rigorous review and measurement process.”