Bezos said at the March employee meeting that the best way to respond to increased scrutiny is to “conduct ourselves in such a way that when we are scrutinized we will pass with flying colors.”
However, Bezos also stressed the importance of distinguishing Amazon’s story so that it doesn’t get “bundled together” with other tech companies. For example, he said, Amazon has a “good story” to tell around how it’s “improving the lives of customers.” And it also has a very different business model than its tech peers.
“Facebook is not the same as Google, and Apple is not the same as Amazon,” Bezos said. “I don’t want to fight this kind of big tech impression — I want to just talk about Amazon.”
But employees have good reasons to feel unsettled. Just last week, President Trump told Axios that his administration is looking into antitrust violations by Amazon, following up on similar statements he’s made about the company dating back to his presidential campaign. Meanwhile, regulators in Europe opened an antitrust probe questioning Amazon’s use of merchant data, and Japanese officials are also reportedly investigating the company over antitrust allegations.
At last week’s meeting, Bezos did choose to have a little fun with his answer on how Amazon can survive and thrive. He said that when looking to the types of companies that have made it the longest, they tend to sell a particular type of alcohol.
“Most of the companies that are multi-hundred year old companies are breweries,” he said with a laugh. “It’s very interesting — I’m not sure what that says about society.”
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