zlacker

I think Amazon is just a more chaotic business model. Bezos is a more chaotic person than Brin, Page, or Zuckerberg. He is happy to keep his cards in the air (thus his finance strategy) and push people in destructive ways (thus his business practices). All he needs to know is that when the chips fall, he has a good shot at having something to control. He doesn't even seem to care if that ever happens, happy to spin his resources into wilder and wilder pursuits (thus Blue Origin).

If Google and Facebook are cities, Amazon is more like an army. Can be city-scale depending on the nature of the conflict. They have great power, and in some ways the very same kind of power as a government. But at the same time the power structure is more ad-hoc, and subject to falling into collapse or docility when not led by a strong leader.

In some ways, I think Steve Jobs realized the was more in he Bezos category, and that Apple couldn't really carry on without him. So he deliberately changed his management style, developing a leadership class and stronger cultural inertia in terms of process and values. He wanted to leave a city behind him, not a headless army.

>>erikpu+(OP)
A huge difference though was that the Jobs bullied for changes to get the iPhone produced.

Bezos on the other hand, made the Fire phone team answer to him (similar to Jobs bullying, without any of the mythical stories..) Yet the product he made them create was a total miss with consumers. As egotistical and deluded people might say Jobs was - he still had to be aligned with the needs of the average person to produce the iPhone, a masterful manifestation of usability principles.

Bezos is chaotic, sure. But more damning, he is out of touch.