Amazon: Packed in the Stack

How Jeff Bezos Made Amazon Everyone's Everything All of the Time

"There are some things that you can only do," Bezos said at one point, "Or only do really well, if you get to play in the entire stack, including all the way down to the hardware and the operating system." 

Right from the horse's mouth, Jeff Bezos mentions Amazon's strategy for the stack: domination. In the article, Bezos details Amazon's current products and service in the stack, including its new virtual tech support feature, Mayday, which has just been introduced in its recently debuted Kindle Fire HDX. And as a treat for us MS-MBA students, he shares what he views as the company's greatest opportunity in the stack (spoilers: it's software). 

This is a great precursor to our discussion about Amazon and eBay next week (sadly, I'm not on one of the Amazon teams). Considering Bezos' emphasis on the customer and a mantra of "Premium products for non-premium pricing", you can begin to see how being in all layers of the stack really pays off.