Rating: 
Summary: A good read for aspiring [online] start-ups!
Review: This book helps me understand why Jeff Bezos left a 7-digit annual income to set up a new online bookstore. I also learn the advantage of his initial business plan (no warehouse unlike mortar-bricks, thus no inventory cost) and how he has to tweak it almost every 6 months.If you are planning to set up business online, whether small or big, this is an encouraging book to read. Of course it tells you a lot of the good things about amazon.com and Jeff Bezos, but that is what the author wants us to gain: learning from amazon.com. I don't think this book is biased. If Jeff Bezos were involved in this book, I'm sure he'll tell all the positive about amazon.com, since he's in the PR spotlight too. The author also explains amazon.com blunders, and how it became a bit more "arrogant" than its young years. Overall, a must read if you are looking for an inspiration to set up an online business!
Rating: 
Summary: Good background reading but not enough on the detail
Review: This book is a good introduction to Amazon and some of the basic philosophy behind the company. For those interested in establishing an e-commerce company it makes helpful reading, especially if our current knowledge of the technology is limited. Unfortunately the author did not interview Jeff Bezos and therefore much of the information was already in the public domain. My criticism of the book is two fold. First there appears to be little or no information on the problems of establishing the technology and learning how to offer a customer centric service. As a long time customer of Amazon I for one have seen dramatic improvements in the customer service model; for instance allowing customers to consolidate orders and requesting part vs. full shipment are changes made after the first few years of trading. I think that a detailed analysis of these kinds of issues would have been really helpful. Second the author appears to accept the business model that Amazon have developed - huge losses aimed at long-term market position without question. I would have liked a little bit more on the view expressed by Barnes and Noble that they don't want to win a hollow victory - owing the market and the losses.
Rating: 
Summary: Journalistic Material for Future Histories of Amazon.com
Review: When I was trained as a historian, I came to realize that it is very important that contemporaries of an important events interview as many people as often as possible while the events unfold. These perspectives provide the key touchstones for the ultimate histories of the events. Usually such interviews are done by journalists. And that is what Robert Spector has done with the book, Amazon.com. I commend him for fulfilling that important role. Those who want to understand what Amazon.com's brief history means for the New Economy, new business models, best practices in leadership and management, and its own future will have to look elsewhere. The book has almost no analysis of the material included here. Think of this book as though it were a series of magazine articles written over the last few years about Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos. Mr. Spector makes an attempt to build a theme around the concept of Get Big Fast, first articulated in print by Robert Reid in the 1997 book, Architects of the Web. Amazon.com obviously pays attention to this idea based on the report on page 97 that the company handed out T-shirts with Get Big Fast written on them at its first employee picnic in 1996. But he fails to develop all of the dimensions of the point. How does this concept affect the stakeholders in Amazon.com (customers, users, partners, employees, suppliers, shareholders, and the communities the company serves)? How can the concept be adjusted to reflect changes in the company's external environment? How should a new company apply the concept? There is an important debate today about whether Amazon.com's current direction will or will not pay off for customers, employees, or shareholders. That debate is largely ignored in the book. That's an important omission that greatly limits the book's value. I do recommend reading the book. It did add details to my knowledge about Amazon.com which I am sure will be valuable to me in the future as an author, reviewer, associate, and customer of Amazon.com. This book is a good example of one form of the communications stall: failing to communicate what people are most interested in causes missed opportunities to make progress at a rapid rate. Keep asking your questions about Amazon.com, and someone will eventually answer them. Perhaps it will be Amazon.com itself. That would be welcome.
Rating:
Summary: Documents the ongoing history of Amazon.com
Review: While many of us still treat E-commerce as a source of 'insurmountable opportunity', Amazon.com has created a new way of doing business. The five-year-old company has become E-commerce's success story, and is so well known that some people refer to the other Amazon, the one that is shrinking, as Amazon dot country.
Robert Spector's book takes us behind the scenes. It traces the biography of Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO, documents the ongoing history, and gives an inside view of the "revolutionary business model that changed the world". The model puzzles investors and businesspeople, who ask: "When will Amazon make a profit?" According to Bezos, this is difficult to predict. "Our ... business was profitable in December 1998 ... a seasonably strange month. This was a mistake ... if we had been better organized we could have avoided this." This does not mean that Bezos subscribes to "new math", or that he is financially naïve. Bezos gave up a seven-figure Wall Street income and appreciates the shortcomings of medieval accounting; he has his own tools, and understands valuation perhaps even better than he understands technology or books. He may prove spectacularly wrong, but one cannot double guess him without his inside knowledge. In many other ways, Amazon is the classic case study. Bezos takes irreversible decisions well, and other decisions quickly. We see how Bezos decided on the book segment by dissecting and dismantling the value chain, how he gathered statistics to shortlist Seattle, how he systematically settled on the name, and how he chose the key people. Bezos has been likened to Bill Gates, brilliant technologist, brilliant manager. He created a culture where the founder helped pack books. He spared no dime on solutions, the "technical pessimism" ensuring that Amazon could scale beyond everyone else's wildest dreams. But he also bought furniture that looked cheap, though it cost more, to reinforce a culture of not wasting money. The book is at its best reporting the unfolding story. Spector did not have direct access to Bezos and, ironically, this makes the book at times uncritical. Bezos wakes up every morning "trying to confound those who encapsulate Amazon.com into an eight second sound bite". This book is the 250-page version and gives the flavour of an industry with a growth rate "one doesn't usually find outside a petri dish".
Rating: 
Summary: A recitation of history, with no analysis
Review: While many who are reading this review are probably interested in the website story, this book is probably not the one to read. The author did not have access to Jeff Bezos and many other key players when writing this book, and the lack of first hand information shows. It reads like a detailed, outsiders view of the history of the company. This happened, then that happened, then the site did this other thing. There is very little discussion of *why* these events and actions were important. And most importantly, very little context as to how the site changed the face of internet commerce. This book is certainly not the definitive work on [site], which is still to be written. A better (and funnier) look at the internals of Amazon can be found in "21 Dog years - Doing time at Amazon.com".
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