Amazon’s Bid To Become Big Brother
Amazon turns 25, so what will the next 25 years look like?
It is 1994. It costs $3 per hour to access dialup internet, consumers are using 3.5-inch floppy disks, Mosaic is the web browser it-girl for a split second, and every teenager has gone emo listening to Nirvana. Oh, what a time to be alive. This was also the year that Amazon and Yahoo! opened their web portal doors. But only one of these soon-to-be technology titans would flourish during the onslaught of bubbles and recessions and thrive no matter how the economy performs.
When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon 25 years ago, he decided he was going to change the world and become a billionaire in the process. Suffice it to say, Bezos and Co. transformed our day-to-day living, from the way we shop to jubilantly welcoming a digital spy into our homes. Amazon has become its own ecosystem – and it is just getting started.
From humble beginnings selling books online from a garage, Amazon has transformed into a trillion-dollar business that will soon own the planet. And it will not be done by force, but through satisfying consumer demand. Maybe Earth will be renamed Amazon, and we will all be called Primes. As we have learned, anything is possible.
The last quarter-century has been impressive, so the obvious question is: What will 2034 look like?
Do You Hear An Echo?
Like a lot of corporations, Amazon has not been immune to the allure of government contracts. It is reported that the company could soon enter into a $10 billion deal with the Department of Defense to develop a cloud system. Although the proposal seems innocuous, it could be the first step toward something more malevolent that could affect our liberties. Let’s be candid: The intelligence agencies would love to get their hands on Amazon’s enormous infrastructure, from customer information to real-time data – if they haven’t already.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
