Amazon’s Hit Man
Amazon and New York City book publishers have very different views of the future of the book business.
Read MoreFlight of the Warbots
AeroVironment was founded in 1971 by Paul MacCready, a legend in aerospace engineering and meteorology. MacCready obsessed with unconventional planes that flew without conventional fuel. In 1977 he created the Gossamer Condor, a pedal-powered craft made of piano wire, Mylar, and old bike parts. Now his company is a leader in unmanned aerial vehicles.
Read MoreScott Forstall: the Sorcerer’s Apprentice At Apple
A number of high-ranking Apple executives left the company because they found working with Forstall so difficult. That sentiment, it seems, has not been limited to fellow executives. One former member of the iOS team, a senior engineer, describes leaving Apple after growing tired of working with Forstall and hearing his common refrain: “Steve wouldn’t like that.”
Read MoreSteve Jobs: The Return
When Steve Jobs passed away in the fall of 2011, we assembled a tribute issue of Bloomberg Businessweek that hit newsstands a few days later. Here is my chapter from the issue, about his triumphant return to Apple.
Read MoreSteve Jobs Departs a World He Helped Transform
A heartfelt remembrance of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, written for Businessweek.com in the hour after his death.
Read MoreAmazon, the Company that Ate the World
Jeff Bezos gave me an exclusive preview of the first Kindle Fire, Amazon’s risky foray into the tablet market.
Read MoreUnderstanding China’s Tencent: March of the Penguins
Tencent is the Internet Goliath you’ve either never heard of or know little about. Yet 674 million Chinese actively use its QQ service, and hundreds of millions more are familiar with its cute cartoon mascot, a winking, scarf-wearing penguin that has helped make Tencent one of the most recognized brands in China.
Read MoreWhy Facebook Needs Sheryl Sandberg
A look at Mark Zuckerberg’s top deputy, who has some lofty ambitions of her own.
Read MoreSilicon Valley Cashes Out in Secondary Markets
How early executives at Facebook unwittingly spawned the private secondary stock markets that are now roiling Silicon Valley startups
Read MoreHacker vs Hacker: the HB Gary Story
The HB Gary saga—involving a high-powered Washington (D.C.) law firm, the Justice Dept., and the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks—hasn’t just been entertaining geek theater but a rare look into the esoteric realm of cyber-security.
Read MoreCan Virgin America Fly?
Virgin America’s philosophy of fun in the skies has shown promise, despite byzantine regulations and powerful competitors. But the airline is at a turning point, and its future is far from certain.
Read MoreThe Calculus Behind Amazon Prime
Now six years after the program’s creation, rivals, both online and off, have sensed the increasing threat posed by Prime and are rushing to try to respond.
Read MoreHow Baidu Won China
Robin Li started the dominant Chinese search engine that beat Google at its own game.
Read MoreHow Facebook Sells Your Friends
A look at how Facebook converts your personal information into advertising dollars.
Read MoreCan Amazon Be the Walmart of the Web
A look from 2009 at Amazon’s gathering power in general merchandise categories. Walmart, incidentally, did not like the headline to this article, and initiated a price war that holiday season.
Read MoreAmid the Gloom, An E-Commerce War
A story from the heat of the Great Recession, when eBay’s fortunes were flagging and Amazon’s were starting to rise.
Read MorePart 2: An E-Commerce Empire From Porn to Puppies
In 2008, Alex Becker helped me with a followup story into a man named Richard Gordon, who had ties to Stickam and the Japanese pornographers and also to politics, Christian philanthropies and a “charity” called the SPCA International. Here’s that second story in the New York Times, which caused the American Bible Society to not…
Read MorePart 1: Accuser Says Web Site Has X-Rated Links
In July 2007, Alex Becker emailed me with a story to tell. He claimed that the social network Stickam, which catered to American teens, was secretly owned by a Japanese pornography company. I visited him in Los Angeles, where I met his wife and friends. They snuck me into the Stickam headquarters on the top…
Read MoreGearheads
In the early nineties, a visionary special-effects guru named Marc Thorpe conjured a field of dreams different from any the world had seen before: It would be framed by unbreakable plastic instead of cornstalks; populated not by ghostly ballplayers but by remote-controlled robots, armed to the steely teeth, fighting in a booby-trapped ring. If you built it, they’d come all right….
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