Some ople asking if amazon is a monopoly. The question for the democracy is, are we okay with one company essentially winning capitali . How do you and jeff think about the call to break you guys up . Simply because the companys beenes suul doesnt mean its somehow too big. Narrator now on frontline. Domination was very much the idea. Narrator amazon empire. Frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporationor public broadcasting. Major support is provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. T and Ford Foundation working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide. Additional support is provided by the abrams foundation, committed to excellence in journalism. The park foundation, dedicated to heighteublic awareness of critical issues. The john and helen glener family trust. Supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. The heisingsimonsoundation unlocking knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and ann hagler. And Additional Support from ura debonis and scott nathan. Jeff bezos has already conquered the retail frontier. Now hes got a plan to colonize the planets. Bezos is laying out his plans for colonizing space. Bezos is known for going big, and now hes literally shooting for the moon. Ar tor in may of 2019, jeff bezos, the richest person onhe planet, unveiled his latest invention. This is blue moon. Its time to go back to the moon, this time to stay. Jeff has said over and over again that the most important work hes doing is work in space. What hes built in ais really important and really interesting, and its, its revolutionized commee. But its only revolutionized commerce. Narrator bezoss plan is to art a new course for the future of humanity. Manufactured worlds rotated to create tificial gravity with centrifugal force. These are very large structures, miles on end. And they hold a Million People or more each. Narrator its an idea hes had since he was a teenager. His is me in high school. Quote the earth ite, andis if the World Economy and pulation is to keep expanding, space is the only way to go. I still believe that. The way jeff bezos sees is it is that consumerism is an example of how Todays Society lives beer than our parents did and our grandparents. And he wants, you know, future nerations to continue to have an increasingly better lifestyle. These are beautiful. People are going to want to live. Narrator bezos unveiled his extraterrestrial plans at ain time of grconcern about the empire hes built here on earth. Amazon is the greatbo disrupter, frooks to retail to grocery stores. Narrator for more than 25 disrupting and traing been almost eve aspect of our modern lives. Once you Start Connecting the dots, you see that amazon is building all of the invisible infrastructure for our futures. Amazon announced a healthcara nership. Amazon is helping the c. I. A. Build a secure cloud. How much of the intnet do you run . Thats a good question, um, its a lot, though. Narrator but in recent years, amazon and bezos have come under scrutiny for their t aggresactics and expandingr. Po bezos laughing everything that is admira abouamazon is also something that we should fear about it. Narrator for the past year, weve been investigating howos jeff built his empire and at what cost. And so think about this. Big things start small. Narrator jeff bezoss empire has its roots not in silicon valley, but on wl street. Thats where the young princeton graduate went to work in t early 1990s, at a Secretive Hedge Fund called d. E. Shaw. Av shaw was thone who revolutionized wall street by introducing data. And i think jeff really embraced that, that idea that, hey, if you ha data, ultimately, you win. One of ththings that david shaw asked jeff bezos to do was to go and investige new businesses, and in particular this new thing in the early 90s called the world wide web. P dial modem connecting we all know that a Communications Revolution is undeay in this count. What is the internet . Its sort of the mother of all networks. Its formation highways. Itkind of like your Remote Control to the world. Narrator bezos was qui to see the Untapped Potential of the new digital landscape and was determined to get in on it. I came across this startling statistic that web usage was growing at 2,300 a year. So, i decided i would try and find a Business Plan that made sense in the ctext of that growth, and i picked books as the first best product to sell online because books are incredibly unusual in one respect, andat s that there are more items inhe book category than there are items inny other category by far. So, when you have that many items, you can literally build a estore online that couldnst any other way. Arrator the store he wa imagining didnt exist, so he decided to build it himself. The reaction to jeffs idea to start selling books on the internet was pretty incredulous, you know, from a lot of the people close to him. His mom tried to convince him to just do it at night or over the weends. She didnt want to see him give up his job. Jeff called, and he told me that he and mackenzi quitting their jobs, and they were moving to seattle and starti a company. We i said, great, what are you going to do . He said, were going to sell books. I said, nice. Said, on the internet. I said, oh. Jeff, why will anybody buy anything from you . And he said, well, were going to have moreooks than anybody else. Narrator one of the first names bezos considered for his newebsite was relentless. Com. Why relentless . Relentless meant, we move on no matter what. Bv he ultimately,usly, decided that relentless wasnt quite the right fit. , amazrths largest river, amazon means gigan in terms of relentlessness, stopping at nothing, thats, is that an apt descriptn of jeff . Its not that jeff at nothing, its that when jeff sets his mind on a goal that he thinks he can achie, he wont stop until hes proven wrong or until he achieves it. Jeff and mackenzie had rented a house in bellevue. And then we moved to a small, secondfloor office in thepa sout of seattle. Narrator shel kaphan was amazon employee number one, e of nine former amazon insiders who agreed to talk on camera. What the company is now was nowhere in my wildest imagination. Nowhere, so, the fact that it could have thethe kind of position in the world that it has now, i had no clue. Narrator in july 1995, amazon. Com went live. It was an incredible novelty, it was tiny and obscure, and its very hard to imagine, but the entire universe that amazon now dominates did not exist. Amazon. Com, this virtual shop claims to be the Worlds Largest bookstore. Loarrator it didnt take for bezoss vision to prove prescient. What kes us different is vast selection, convenience we deliver right to the desktop. If our catalog were printed on i pat would be the size of sen new yorkity phonebooks. Narrator the Company Quickly outgrew the garage and soon had0 more thamployees. In 1996, james marcus applied to be number 55. There was a very palpable exciment in the air at this point jeff bezos w firstthis person to interview ever prospective employee. As so ishered into his office. He wanted to see how fast you were on your feet. He also always wanted to know your s. A. T. Scores. E wanted to know your s. A. T. Scores . Every time, yes. How old were you at the time . I was 36 or 37. This is the original sign that i made for amazon. C. Blue spray paint on white poster board. Folklore at that point, he was not thethe wealthiest man in the world. Pu heres my cter, amazon. Com up on the screen. Hello, jeff bezos. He was a small, nondescript,m ndyhaired sitting at a desk with quite a large anti er laugh. laughing in multiple scenes but he wasnt threatening, hg was a normaluy to a sort of azing extent. Hal 9000 hat, very important. Hal and i shara birthday, were both born on january 12. It belied, you know, an enormous, napoleonic ambition. One of the people i really like, thomas edison, heres a model of his original ght bulb. Hes famous for saying, onesp percent ation, 99 percent perspiration. laughs it turns out ideas are the easy part, execution is everything. Domination was on jeffs mind from the beginning. One of his sort of secondincommand people said to me, you have to undetand that jeff wants to sell many more things than books. Is and jeffs idehat in the neardistant future, you could buy a kayak from amazon. And if, and after you brout the kayak, you cou figure out good places to kayak and buy trel services from amazon. So, those ambitions were very clear, and this was very early on. But he was clearly thinking in those tes from the getgo. How did that ring to you at the time . A little bit citing and a little bit nutty. Amazon. Com, very good website. You should really try it. bezos laughs if you signed on to work ata kind of futuristic bookstore, and the guy who w owned suddenly talking about selling, you know, every object in the universe, you just werent sure how seriously to take it. bezos laughing bezos screaming playfully narrator though his public image was often unseriou. That was awesome narrator iide the company, bezos was a hardcharging manager relentlessly focused on the principle that would make amazon one of the most trusted brands in the world he customer always comes first. This culture of customer obsession. Obsessive focus on customer. O obsessr our customers. Totally obsessing over the custer experience. T we uscall it customer ecstasy. It means building, delivering, focusing on your customer. And we did it, you know, in the very, very early days at every stage. Narrato jennifer cast was there in the early days and is one of six top amazon executives the company put forward to speak to us. Customer obsession was ourh noar. And so, you know, it was a place where we knew we were a pa of something that was new, the internet. There was an excitement that we were doing something that hadnt been done before. It was exhilarating. We were all aligned around building for customers. Hey, you guys. Hey. bezos laughs ive ard there was an empty chair that would often be put at meetings. Yeah. Ho as in the pty chair . Yeah, so that empty chair was there to remind us all to understand the customer, have empathy for the customer, understand the details of the customer experience. Have to bring forward the voice of the customer. phone ringing thank you for calling amazon. Com. Narrator and bezos quickly learned that in this new onlinel world, he understand exactly how customers were behaving. All orders do need to be aced online. It was made clear from the beginning th Data Collectionf was also oneazons businesses. All Customer Behavior that flowed tough the site was recorded and tracked. And that itself was a valuable commodity. Have you visited our website . We could track how a custome navigarough the site. So we could see what you looked at, weould also see what you paused at, we could see what you put in your basket but didnt order, we could see what you put in your basket and der. So thats when we started realizing, man, this is rich. This is rich, richrich. And so weve used it for everything. What do you do with that infoation . Thats the data that allowsed us to prict, or try to predict, what books that you would like that you havent discovered yet. Nrator bezos treated the site as a laboratory, where he studied Customer Behavior along with his chief scientist andreas weigend. I was shocked to see how predictable people are. E if you take the time of y into account, if you take maybe when they we last on the site, how long they re on the site the site today, you know what theyre falling for. Whoever owns, collects, the ta, if you have access to it and rights to data, then you are king. Its all about the data. Everything. One of the most fascinating kind of tools we have at our sposal is the ability to do its, you know, its kind of this huge laboratory. We did not think about it as exploing, we thought about helping people make better i was starting to feel that that was less respectful toward the consumer, who was, after all, supposed to be our god, the person whose ecstasy was our and it was closer to getting aco into a milking stall andac exng as many pails as possible during each visit. And that felt a little moreun vory. But that was the business of amazon. Ma n has added 880,000 new customers. Narrator while bezos was using these insights to bringmo re and more customers into amazon. The number of customers who use the website has increased fourfold. Narrator thereas one thing he hadnt done yet. The companys never made a profit. Thats right. Now, why. How does that. Why. How does that. . It seems like a new math, doesnt it . It does. Pe narrator bezos would years losing money trying to beat his competition, and he convinced investors to go ong with it. One of jeffezos greatest accomplishments has been his abity to get wall street t accept the fact the fi 20some years, amazon wasnt going to be very profitable. O and thatskay because theyre building infrastructe that will cate huge opportunities for them to gain scale and gainr custand gain business. Narrator he spelled it out in a letter to shareholders after thcompany first went blic its all about the long term, herote, rather than shortterm profits or wall street reactions. He essentially says, we e going to forego profit in order to take market share. That our strategy is to lose money, which enables us then to put other companies out of siness who cant afford to lose money. Narrator that strategy wouldnt sitell with critics like stacy mitchell, who advocates for small businesses. In essence, at the very beginning, hes signaling to shareholders, i have a strategy to monopolize the market, and thats going to reward you, but its going to be far down the road, and will you come ong s. Th me . And they said ye narrator investors also recognized bezos essential orvantage over physical st, which had charge their customers sales tax, unlike online businesses. N so, collecting sales tax gave amazon a big leg up over bricks and mortar retailers. Anthat was central to thei early strategy of gaining market share as quickly as they can. What booksellers were saying to me is that, this is driving my ctomers to amazon. Theyll come into the store, theyll browse, they find what they want, but then theyll go buy it on amazon, because they so it was a very irksome, bearly, big issue for theook y vendors, first of all, tre kind of the canaries in the mine, so to speak, and then lots of other retailers. Amazon has added thousands of warehouse workers and three million square feet of space. Narrator amazons sastax advantage would be central tocc its suess as it expandedyo be books, into other products. And we have a fantastic nselection of things you look at. Electronics and then of course toys. Yeah, thank you, here is, weve got have the friendly pokemon. This is more than ten times then a typical, physical World Software store. Narrator but bezos was still a long way from his goal of amazon being the place where you could buy everything online. drills whirring and he saw a way to achieve it. Amazon could soon become the waart of the internet. Narrator there were thousands of businesses eager to sell online. It. Os offered them a way to do amazon is transforming itself from an online bookstore to an online mall. D narrator he transfor amazon into a retail platform ere anyone could sell their goods to his customers and vited thousands of other businesses to be a part of it. R its the easiest place anybody, small olarge, who wants to set up shop online to sell online, because they can access our 12 millionplus customers. Ll anybody,omers. Were talking about hundrs of thousands ocompanies with oliterally tens of millio products. Narrator namebrand stores stted selling bezoss platform, and so did tens of thousands of smalltr reneurs. Everyone knew amazon. Com. The only people that knewpe uperhoops. Com were the ones that were searching to buy a basketball hoop and saw our name on an advertisement. To us it was really a nobrainer. We knew that we would, you knowe incrur sales. First year we did 100,000, next year we did a million, we did two million, four million, we were doubling evy year in the early days. Narrator it was great for the companies and even greater for jeff bezos. Amazon has become the most recognizable name ecommerce. Narrator not only d he take a cut of everything other s businessesd, hed also keep his own store on the platform, competing against everyone else in the marketplace howned and controlled. He owns the main street. He hashe main street real estate. Not just one building on the corner, the entire main street. Narrator how amazon would wield s power over the online marketplace would eventually become a question for vernment regulators, but early on, there were indications. The first to see them were Book Publishers a zon took over a large market share of the Publishing Industry very, very fast. They were very quickly in a position to demand concessions. You know, i think that was a moment where publishers started to realize, oh, wait a minute like, we. Theyre our partner, but they now have the beginnings of a boot on our windpipe. Narrator inside the company, they had launched a strategy that some call the gazelle project, because theyd heard bezos wanted them to pursue publishers the way a cheetah pursues a sickly gazelle. Strongest. Ou dont go after the its like the cheetah. The cheetah looks for the weak, s for for the sick, lo the small, thats what you go for. So dont start with, you know,er nune publisher. Start with number seven publisher and then number six b publisher, athe time you get to number three, two, and one, the noise has gone, gotten back to them. Theyre going to know this is coming, and chanceare you may be able to settle that without a fullon war. We were just this little publishingoetry books andmpany, translated fiction. Narrator in the early 2000s, the number obooks Dennis Johnson was selling on amazon had been rising steadily. O th day, he got a phone call. Our distributor called us up to talk about our amazon contract. And he said, i went o ounner last night with amazon, it was like gointo dinner with the godfather. They want a kiback. Thats the word he used, kickback. And he said they wanted four percent more of our sales. As that unusual . It was. In our experience,t as totally unprecedented, yes. Narrator randy miller ran the european book team and says he saw nothing wrong wit amazons tough tactics to challenge publishers on prices and pr