Jeff Bezos to step down as Amazon CEO

 Jeff Bezos, byname of Jeffrey Preston Bezos, (born January 12, 1964, Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.),

American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, Inc., an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon become the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and the model for Internet sales.

Early life And Career

A Childhood Photo of Jeff Bezos -

 While still in high school, Bezos developed the Dream Institute, a centre that promoted creative thinking in young students. After graduating (1986) summa cum laude from Princeton University with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, he undertook a series of jobs before joining the New York investment bank D.E. Shaw & Co. in 1990. Soon named senior vice president- the firm's youngest- Bezos was in charge of examining the investment possibilities of the Internet. It enormous potential-Web usage was growing by more than 2,000 percent a year-sparked his entrepreneurial imagination. In 1994 he quit D.E. Shaw and moved to Seattle, Washington, to open a virtual bookstore. Working out of his garage with a handful of employees, Bezos began developing the software for the site. Named after the South America river, Amazon sold its first book in July 1995.

Amazon.Com

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, on July 5, 1994. Amazon quickly become the leader in e-commerce. Open 24 hours a day, the site was user-friendly, encouraging browsers to post their own reviews of books and offering discounts, personalized recommendations, and searches for out-of-print books but expanded to sell electronics, software, video games, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. In June 1998 it began selling CDs. As more companies battled for Internet dollars, Bezos saw the need to diversify, and by 2005 Amazon offered a vast array of products, including consumer electronics, apparel, and hardware. Amazon diversified even further in 2006 by introducing Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud-computing service that eventually became the largest such service in the world. In late 2007 Amazon released a new handheld reading device called the Kindle, a digital book reader with wireless Internet connectivity, enabling customers to purchase, download, read, and store a vast selection of books on demand. Amazon announced in 2010 that sales of kindle books had surpassed those of hardcover books. That same year Amazon moved into making its own television shows and movies with its Amazon Studios Division. In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization. In 2017, Amazon acquired Whole foods Market for US$13.4billion, which substantially increased its footprint as a physical retailer. In 2018, its two-day delivery service, Amazon Prime, surpassed 100 million subscribers worldwide.

Amazon's yearly net sales increased from $510,000 in 1995 to same $600 million in 1998 and from more than $19.1 billion in 2008 to almost $233 billion in 2018. About half of the company's operating income in 2018 was derived from AWS.

Other Activities:

Bezos founded the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin in 2000. Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle reached space in 2015, and afterwards successfully landed back on Earth. The company has upcoming plans to begin commercial suborbital human spaceflight. He also purchased the major American newspaper The Washington Post in 2013 for $ 250 million, and manages many other investments through his Bezos Expeditions venture capital firm.

Jeff Bezos stepping down as Amazon CEO, here is full letter he wrote to employees

Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos announced on Tuesday that he would step down as the company's CEO. Bezos will take over as the executive chairman in the third quarter of this year. However, the head of Amazon's could division Amazon Web Services (AWS) Andy Jassy will take over as the new CEO of Amazon. Bezos informed his employees about his decision to step down as the CEO through an email.

Bezos said that he intends to focus on new products and initiatives in his letter. He is the biggest shareholder in Amazon, so despite stepping down as the CEO, he will still have a lot of control over the company. In September 2020, Jeff Bezos topped the Forbes' list of richest Americans for the third year in a row. His net worth now crossed $202 billion after an increase of $5.22 billion in a single day. However this year, Tesla supremo Elon Musk toppled Bezos to become the world's richest person. Elon Musk's net worth now surpassed $195 billion, and Bezos stood at 185 billion 

Here is the complete letter Bezos wrote to his employees

"I'm excited to announce that this Q3 I'll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO. In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence," Bezos said in a letter to his employees.