Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos, Internet Retailer Jeff Bezos, 37, is founder and CEO of Amazon.com, the giant Seattle-based Internet retailer. As the poster child of the Internet revolution, Bezos has ridden the dot-com roller coaster--in 1999 as Time Person of the Year, then this year as Wall Street's whipping boy as Amazon.com's valuation plunged 90% from its peak two years ago.

The Securities and Exchange Commission may have booted Henry Blodget off Wall Street, but the former Merrill Lynch & Co. Internet analyst has attracted some big fans for Business Insider Inc., which he co-founded in 2007.  A major endorsement for the online news site landed this week in the form of $5 million -- venture capital rounded up by Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos.  “Jeff's leadership, vision and philosophy at...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, have pledged $2.5 million in support of Referendum 74, a Washington state ballot measure that seeks to affirm same-sex marriage with voters. Washington's Legislature passed a same-sex marriage law in February. The Bezoses' gift doubles the funds available to proponents of the same-sex referendum, the N.Y. Times reports . "To get this from a straight, married couple sends a powerful message that marriage is seen as a fundamental question of fairness,” Zach Silk, the campaign manager for Washington United for Marriage , told the paper.

Jeff Bezos: founder and CEO of Amazon.com, and now, bona fide ocean explorer. A year after vowing to send a team into the ocean to find F-1 engines from the historic Apollo 11 moon launch, Bezos announced Wednesday that the team had recovered F-1 engine parts. Because many original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, it was unclear if they actually came from the Apollo 11 mission. Calling it an “incredible adventure,” the billionaire said the team had just finished three weeks at sea, working nearly three miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

First impressions last. So some people still think of Amazon.com as an online bookseller, the form in which it arrived on consumers' horizons in the late 1990s. But since then Amazon has been acquiring, expanding and diversifying at a dizzying speed. Jeff Bezos, its founder, chief executive and the owner of a wall-shaking laugh, has taken the company into shoes, diapers and flat-screen televisions, as well as cloud computing services and e-readers via its Kindle device. Amazon's non-retail dexterity reached a new level last month when the Seattle-based company unveiled a Kindle-branded tablet computer, the Fire, to rival Apple's iPad.

Jeff Bezos, who helped create the electronic-commerce revolution by founding Amazon.com Inc., wants to make one thing clear: Sales on the World Wide Web will never approach sales in the whole wide world. In the long run, Internet sellers may capture 15% of the world's $5-trillion retail market, the chief executive of the Net's leading vendor said in an interview with Times reporters and editors on Thursday.

Heading into its sixth holiday season, Amazon.com has found itself facing some of the greatest challenges of its short but illustrious life. The company always has been a poster child of Internet commerce--and it still is. But along with all the usual accolades this year has come an unfamiliar din of complaints. Analysts and investors have yelped over the company's continuing losses--expected to total about $700 million for the year.

There's more evidence that digital books are upending the publishing industry. Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. says it is now selling 80% more downloaded books than hardbacks. Amazon's download format is for its Kindle electronic reader as well as other devices. "The Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, in a statement. "Astonishing when considering that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years and Kindle books for 33 months."

IMDb founder and Chief Executive Col Needham is a confessed movie nerd. Growing up in Manchester, England, his earliest memories were formed in movie theaters -- seeing "Star Wars" when it was released in 1977, he recalled, when the cinema was "so full that people had to sit in the aisles. " So when at age 12 he got his first computer -- a do-it-yourself kit -- he began using the new technology to keep track of the movies he had seen. "I'd be watching movies and would notice all of these connections between films.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into the timing of a stock sale by Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, the company confirmed. Spokesman Bill Curry said Bezos has responded to the SEC's request for information about the sale of 800,000 shares of stock worth roughly $12 million. He declined to say what information the commission was seeking. Bezos filed documents Feb. 2 and Feb. 5 saying he intended to sell the stock. On Feb. 6, a Lehman Bros.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, have pledged $2.5 million in support of Referendum 74, a Washington state ballot measure that seeks to affirm same-sex marriage with voters. Washington's Legislature passed a same-sex marriage law in February. The Bezoses' gift doubles the funds available to proponents of the same-sex referendum, the N.Y. Times reports . "To get this from a straight, married couple sends a powerful message that marriage is seen as a fundamental question of fairness,” Zach Silk, the campaign manager for Washington United for Marriage , told the paper.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos  and his wife, MacKenzie, have given $2.5 million to fund efforts in the state of Washington to legalize same-sex marriage, effectively doubling the current electoral war chest of proponents. The gift was announced by Washington United for Marriage, the coalition working to pass Referendum 74 in November. It's believed to be the largest individual gift “to secure or protect the freedom to marry,” the group said in a statement released on its website.

Despite strong sales of its Kindle devices during the holidays, Amazon.com Inc.'s fourth-quarter earnings missed expectations, sending the online retail giant's shares plunging in after-hours trading Tuesday. Amazon, whose shares rose $2.29, or 1.2%, to $194.44 in regular trading, reported its results after the markets closed. Its shares quickly fell more than 9% to $176.58 in after-hours trading. The Seattle e-commerce company said sales for the three months that ended Dec. 31 rose 35% year over year to $17.4 billion, which fell far short of what Wall Street analysts had expected.

First impressions last. So some people still think of Amazon.com as an online bookseller, the form in which it arrived on consumers' horizons in the late 1990s. But since then Amazon has been acquiring, expanding and diversifying at a dizzying speed. Jeff Bezos, its founder, chief executive and the owner of a wall-shaking laugh, has taken the company into shoes, diapers and flat-screen televisions, as well as cloud computing services and e-readers via its Kindle device. Amazon's non-retail dexterity reached a new level last month when the Seattle-based company unveiled a Kindle-branded tablet computer, the Fire, to rival Apple's iPad.

IMDb founder and Chief Executive Col Needham is a confessed movie nerd. Growing up in Manchester, England, his earliest memories were formed in movie theaters -- seeing "Star Wars" when it was released in 1977, he recalled, when the cinema was "so full that people had to sit in the aisles. " So when at age 12 he got his first computer -- a do-it-yourself kit -- he began using the new technology to keep track of the movies he had seen. "I'd be watching movies and would notice all of these connections between films.

There's more evidence that digital books are upending the publishing industry. Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. says it is now selling 80% more downloaded books than hardbacks. Amazon's download format is for its Kindle electronic reader as well as other devices. "The Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, in a statement. "Astonishing when considering that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years and Kindle books for 33 months."

Amazon.com Inc. founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos has bought the top floor of an apartment building on New York's Central Park West for about $7.5 million, according to a person familiar with the situation. Bezos bought out all the apartment owners on the floor and plans to create one large residence in the building, at 25 Central Park West between 62nd and 63rd streets. Officials at Corcoran Group, which brokered the transaction, declined to comment. Bezos wasn't available for comment.

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos said that his company, the largest Internet retailer, will generate cash flow from operations in the rest of the year and that it therefore runs no risk of running out of money. Answering audience questions after speaking at a computer trade show in New York, Bezos said the Seattle company's U.S. bookselling business was profitable in the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of 2000. And he said that the combined U.S.