A new book explains how the world’s richest man is pursuing wild interplanetary plans funded by an army of Chinese online sellers, sponsored adverts and Hollywood movies. It’ll make you want to cancel your Prime subscription.
When megabucks gazillionaire Jeff Bezos began including helicopter pads in the building plans for Amazon’s ever-expanding property empire, it was a sure sign that the man who turned bookselling into the biggest business on the planet had broken free of his moorings.
Bug-eyed Bezos was smitten with the new woman in his life, TV host Lauren Sanchez, a newly-qualified helicopter pilot, so it meant plans for a second Amazon headquarters in Long Island City – a decision later reversed – and even the massive luxury yacht being built for the couple under close guard in Rotterdam just simply must have space to land a helicopter.
Of course the game was up instantly, as author Brad Stone notes in the freshly-published Amazon Unbound, because while the business giant had untold reach across the internet, provided cloud services worth billions and produced hit Hollywood movies, there were no helicopters within his company. After all, what sort of frugal, down-to-earth, man-of-the-people uses a helicopter for that commute to work?
But Bezos was no longer that man, despite what the huge staff of Amazon’s PR department might wish anyone to believe. And it’s not the TV star girlfriend, the newly-pumped biceps or the wish to soar above the choking traffic of the poor people below that signalled Jeff Bezos had arrived on a different plain.
