Posts by brad
How I Found Jeff Bezos’s Biological Father
Children with fractured or nonexistent relationships with one or both of their birth parents are more likely to end up with psychological or behavioral problems—not leading powerful nations, companies, or cultural movements. But in the case of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs — and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — the unusual circumstances of their birth seemingly helped to create an overpowering drive to succeed and to challenge the status quo.
Read MoreSecrets of the Amazon: “The Everything Store” Book Excerpts are Now Out!
Question mark emails. The Lubricant Crisis. Amazon’s battle with Diapers.com. And the incredible story of Jeff Bezos’s biological father, a unicycle performer and bike shop owner who never knew what became of his son.
Read MoreGrading the Kindle Fire as Amazon’s Tablet Turns Two
Two years ago, Bezos introduced the original Kindle Fire at one of those stereotypical press confabs in New York City. That first device was in many respects a dud. Now Amazon is taking on Google and Apple in the tablet market.
Read MoreAmazon Unveils New Kindle Readers
For the last six years, Amazon has constructed a nearly unbreakable hold on the digital-reading market, thanks in part to the company’s Kindle e-readers—and its ability to weave together attractive new features that broaden the reading experience.
Read MoreTalking About Jeff Bezos’s Buy of the Washington Post
These are a few of my media appearances talking about Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post – and previewing The Everything Store
Read MoreShocker: Jeff Bezos Buys the Washington Post!
The deal is surprising for a number of reasons. Bezos believes that the Internet is changing the entire business landscape, but so far he has seemed devoted to blazing new paths, not rescuing ailing old media franchises.
Read MoreMy new Yahoo cover story
Here’s the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, with my story on Yahoo and Marissa Mayer on the cover.
Read MoreCan Marissa Mayer Save Yahoo?
It’s been a year since the longtime Google executive took the reigns at Yahoo!, the company with the inexplicably exuberant exclamation mark. I got an exclusive interview for this Businessweek cover.
Read MoreCostco: The Cheapest, Happiest Company in the World
My cover story on Costco. It’s more than just a great $2 hot dog folks. Despite the sagging economy, Costco pays its hourly workers more than $20 an hour and has managed to keep Amazon and other online retailers at bay.
Read MoreInside Google’s Secret Lab
An exclusive peek at Google’s secret Lab, Google X, whose mandate is to come up with technologies that sound more like plot contrivances from Star Trek than products that might satisfy the short-term demands of Google’s shareholders.at
Read MoreWhy Hasn’t the Web Changed the Real Estate Business?
The Internet has eliminated travel agents, decimated classified ads, depressed stock brokers, and taken the swagger out of car dealers, but it hasn’t dented the fortunes of real estate brokers.
Read MoreBattered Dreams, Battered Dreamliner
The grounding of the Boeing 787 was in many respects inevitable for a project marked by narrowed visions and provides a dispiriting example of the shrinking tolerance for risk among corporate executives and government regulators.
Read MoreDoes Jeff Bezos Care About Profits?
The Bezos Doctrine is powerful. New businesses don’t have to be good. They just have to appeal to customers. As long as consumers are consuming and shareholders are buying what Bezos is selling, Amazon looks fairly unbeatable.
Read MoreMapping a Path Out of Steve Jobs’s Shadow
Since Jobs’s death one year ago, many Apple observers have predicted the company would suffer from the loss of his internal authority and intuition about product design and features. Apple is undoubtedly a different company under Tim Cook. It misses Jobs’s conspicuous creativity and entrepreneurial fervor, but it’s gaining in maturity, rationality, and, yes, value.
Read MoreMy Life As A Task Rabbit
Silicon Valley startups in the distributed workforce movement want to help auction off our most tedious chores. I dove into the labor pool.
Read MorePart 3: The Talented M. Despallieres
In 2011 I discovered that “Alex Becker” was also known as Alexandre Despallieres and was in jail for the suspected murder of his husband, music executive Peter Ikin. I retraced the steps of our earlier collaboration and made some unpleasant discoveries. Later I visited him in Paris after he had gotten out of jail and…
Read MoreHow Mark Zuckerberg Hacked Silicon Valley
Mark Zuckerberg and his crew have made a series of high-risk moves—five hacks that have changed Silicon Valley forever—that were far more daring than wearing a hoodie to an IPO roadshow.
Read MoreThe Education of Google’s Larry Page
An exclusive chat with Larry Page one year after he retook the reins as CEO of Google.
Read MoreTwitter, the Company that Couldn’t Kill Itself
Throughout its first five years of existence, Twitter always seemed on the verge of committing some excruciating form of startup seppuku. Now something freakish is happening in San Francisco. Twitter, which for years treated the responsibility of earning money as an annoying distraction, may be turning into a viable business.
Read MoreAmazon’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 More