We’ve all heard by now that Jeff Bezos is ‘stepping down’ from the CEO role at Amazon, the company he founded around 25 years ago.  This is a move that has been in the works for years, of course.  So, what’s the real news here?

Here are a few takeaways for you to mull over:

• Bezos was already involving himself less and less in the day-to-day management of Amazon over the past few years.  He likes to make all the big decisions before 10am as he famously says.  He can now focus his considerable mental energies on his competition for space with Blue Origin and Elon Musk, among other things.
   
• Andy Jassy, the next CEO of Amazon, is now in the spotlight.  He has toiled in the shadows of Bezos since 1998, practically from the start of the company.  Jassy was courted by Steve Ballmer to become the next head of Microsoft and also was rumored to be in the running to become CEO of Uber after Travis Kalanick stepped down.

• Jassy is responsible in due part for the stunning success of Amazon Web Services, their cloud business.  AWS accounted for about half of the operating profit of the entire company in the final quarter of 2020.

But hey, that’s just our take.

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