Amazon CEO Sides With Media in Gawker Case
June 01 2016 - 1:10AM
Dow Jones News
RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif.—Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff
Bezos said he doesn't support efforts by billionaires to undermine
the media by funding legal campaigns, part of a discussion about
venture capitalist Peter Thiel backing lawsuits against Gawker
Media.
Mr. Bezos, who is also the owner of the Washington Post
newspaper, said public officials need a thick skin because they
will always have critics. "Move forward, it's not worth losing any
sleep over," he said at the tech summit Code Conference here
Tuesday. "If you're doing anything interesting, you're going to
have critics."
Mr. Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and a director at Facebook
Inc., has drawn a mixed reaction in media and tech circles for
providing about $10 million to finance former wrestler Hulk Hogan's
invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against Gawker. Mr. Thiel has said he
backed the lawsuit by Terry Bollea, who uses the professional
wrestling name Hulk Hogan, because he believes Gawker violates the
privacy of people who can't easily fight back.
Mr. Bezos didn't talk specifically about Gawker, but he broadly
defended the media and free speech, saying "beautiful speech
doesn't need protections. It's ugly speech that needs protection."
When asked about Mr. Thiel's effort, Mr. Bezos evoked an old
saying, attributing it to Confucius: "Seek revenge and you shall
dig two graves—one for yourself."
Separately, Mr. Bezos said the online retailer now delivers
about 50% of its packages directly to customers' homes in the U.K.
and plans to keep ramping up such delivery in the U.S.
"We have to have capacity for peak" delivery times, he said.
"We've had to take over a lot of last mile delivery in the U.K." as
the Royal Mail couldn't keep up.
Mr. Bezos said Amazon is growing its shipping business with
United Parcel Service Inc. and the U.S. Postal Service, but the
company still needs to supplement its own merchandise deliveries.
He denied that he is striving to put other delivery companies out
of business.
Amazon is putting more of its own trucks on the road to make
deliveries while opening new warehouses close to urban centers to
help limit its rising shipping costs. Delivery trucks with the
familiar Amazon "a" logo are more commonplace in the U.S., and the
company is leasing planes to ferry merchandise to warehouses more
quickly and inexpensively.
In the wide-ranging conversation, Mr. Bezos said the company has
1,000 people working on software and hardware related to its Echo
and Alexa virtual assistant service. Mr. Bezos said he is
"absolutely" committed to the technology and expects it to be
central to the future of Amazon and other companies over the next
two decades.
The Seattle online retailer faces new competition for its Echo
device after Alphabet Inc. said earlier this month it is plans a
similar service called Google Home. Apple Inc. too may be working
on a comparable device, according to recent reports.
Write to Greg Bensinger at greg.bensinger@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 01, 2016 00:55 ET (04:55 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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