Jeff Bezos Oficially Steps Down as Amazon CEO
Jeff Bezos has stepped down as CEO of Amazon. His place is taken by trusted associate Andy Jassy. The American billionaire will now be able to devote more time to his other ventures, including a space flight.
Jeff Bezos has stepped down as CEO at Amazon. The new executive is Andy Jassy, formerly of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Bezos has spent 27 years at the helm of his company, which has evolved from an online bookstore into a digital empire that is part of the so-called "Big Four" (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) of technology giants.
When you're the head of one of the biggest companies in the world, you can't just leave overnight. The transfer of power in Amazon took several months and already in February this year it was known who will be Bezos' successor. The new CEO Andy Jassy has been working at Amazon since 1997, so he knows the company inside out. Initially he was in charge of marketing, and since 2006 he led the subsidiary responsible for Amazon's cloud services.
The founder of Amazon is not leaving the company. Bezos will remain its executive chairman, responsible for strategic growth, including new products and initiatives. He is also the digital giant's largest shareholder, holding more than 10% of stock. So what will change? The American billionaire will no longer be responsible for the day-to-day running of the company - he will instead point out the long-term directions of development and suggest new ideas, which will be implemented by others.
As we reported earlier, Jeff Bezos has announced that after his resignation he will focus on charitable funds such as "Day One Fund" and "Bezos Earth Fund", the newspaper The Washington Post and space company Blue Origin. Currently, most of his time is probably devoted to the latter. He will go to space as soon as July 20, on board of the company-built rocket New Shepard together with Wally Funk, an anonymous winner of an auction and his brother. The billionaire recently did not enjoy the best opinion among employees and Internet users, which resulted in a petition for him not to return from space.
From the point of view of Internet users, will the change at the head of one of the most powerful companies in the world change anything? Probably not in the short term, but the new CEO's long-standing relationship with Amazon Web Services may result in new initiatives that take even greater advantage of Amazon's vast cloud computing capabilities.
