Jeff Bezos' Bad Timing?

Say That Again

from the must-have-written-that-speech-early dept

theodp writes “Had Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos read Techdirt before his Monday luncheon keynote, he might have known better than to cite the soon-to-be-reexamined 1-Click technology as the poster child for Amazon innovation. And claiming it wasn’t important to be afraid of competitors like Barnes & Noble on the same day as the eBay Supreme Court ruling was similarly ill-timed, since the ruling was likely to remind folks how Amazon got a leg up on BN by slapping them with an injunction over 1-Click.” All of theodp’s joking aside, Bezos’ talk is getting plenty of attention thanks to the AP writeup that focuses on how the company needs to keep innovating to stay ahead of competitors — which fits with exactly what we were just saying last week about how innovation is an ongoing process. Of course, that doesn’t fit with the action against Barnesandnoble.com from a few years ago — but, for the most part, Amazon has mostly kept its patents for defensive purposes, rather than to take out competitors. At the very least, it’s good to see Bezos admit that the way you keep customers happy is by continually innovating, rather than trying to rest on your laurels and blocking others from innovating.