贝佐斯传记揭示亚马逊CEO的另一面

    我想我能理解为什么亚马逊（Amazon）的老板娘麦肯齐•贝佐斯那么讨厌布拉德•斯通为她老公及其公司撰写的那本传记了。原因并不是她所说的书中的那些“数不清的事实性错误”——实际上麦肯齐只指出了一处时间上的错误，也就是在传记开头，斯通写道，杰夫•贝佐斯读了一本对他很有影响的小说，事实上贝佐斯读那本小说的时间与传记里记载的不一致。麦肯齐给斯通的这本出色的传记《万有商店》（The Everything Store）只打了一星的评分，因为不管你是一个多喜欢亚马逊的用户，不管你多喜欢在亚马逊上买东西，读了这本书之后都会觉得很不舒服。

    差不多就在两年前，我也出版了一本关于苹果公司（Apple）的书。当时正是乔布斯的传记风靡一时的时候，那本著作也是我们这个时代出成功的纪实作品之一。斯通这本写贝佐斯和亚马逊的传记做到了一切我那本书想做到的事，也做到了沃尔特•艾萨克森在《乔布斯传》中想做到的事。当时我几乎没有得到来自苹果公司（Apple）的任何合作，而艾萨克森的那本著作几乎得到了苹果的倾力合作。斯通的经历恰好介于我与艾萨克森之间。虽然杰夫•贝佐斯本人没有接受斯通的采访，但是贝佐斯却允许他周围的很多人接受了斯通的访问，其中包括亚马逊公司的好几个核心高管。因此这本书权威、深入、细致、均衡地记述了亚马逊的创业故事，丝毫没有留后手。

    这又让我想到了亚马逊的用户读到这本书后的不适感——面对现实吧，现在还有谁不是亚马逊的用户？斯通把杰夫•贝佐斯刻画成了一个冷酷狡诈、不爱惜下属的“周扒皮”，只要是以为顾客提供更低价格的名义，任何只要不违法的行为都可以被容忍。贝佐斯在电视上给人的印象总是一副和蔼可亲的商人形象，有着精力充沛的爽朗笑声。但是由于他经常发脾气，他的高管们却给他起了一个“怪人”的外号。在斯通的书中，亚马逊的企业文化也很可怕，合作伙伴是可以牺牲的；如果哪个企业愚蠢到接受了亚马逊的投资，迟早会因为被亚马逊攫取了控制权而后悔；而且竞争对手无论大小，都是贝佐斯精心策划的棋局中的一颗棋子。

    如果你想知道为什么我们会这么喜欢在亚马逊购物，答案也能在书中找到。亚马逊在早期就构建了一种软件，能够在网上搜索竞争对手的价格信息，并且自动匹配最低的价格。多年来亚马逊一直避免征收营业税，为了合法避税，亚马逊一直避免在美国的一些州开设实体，因此使顾客可以获得更低的价格。（贝佐斯说，亚马逊并没有在那些他不想征收营业税的州里获得好处——说得好像亚马逊的红火生意是从天上掉下来的，亚马逊没有从中获得好处一样。）亚马逊经常把零售业关于最低定价的传统视若无物，经常与那些喜欢亚马逊的庞大用户群但是讨厌亚马逊公司本身的生产商玩猫抓老鼠的游戏。

    I think I know why MacKenzie Bezos hated Brad Stone's book about her husband and his company. It's not because of the "numerous factual inaccuracies" she says are in the book, though she names only one, a mistiming of when Jeff Bezos read a certain influential novel, and shame on Stone for giving her that opening. No -- Mrs. Bezos gave a one-star review to Stone's outstanding book, The Everything Store, because it will make anyone who reads it, regardless of how much they love being an Amazon (AMZN) customer, feel icky about themselves for just how much they enjoy buying things at Amazon.

    I published a book about Apple almost exactly two years ago, when one of the most successful non-fiction books of our time, a biography of Steve Jobs, was topping the charts. Stone's book on Amazon and Bezos accomplishes everything I tried to do with my book as well as what Walter Isaacson did with his biography. I had next to no cooperation from Apple; Isaacson had near total cooperation from his subject. Stone's experience falls squarely in between, and it shows. Though Bezos wouldn't give Stone an interview, the Amazon CEO allowed numerous people in his world, including multiple key Amazon executives, to talk to Stone. The result is an authoritative, deeply reported, scoopalicious, nuanced, and balanced take that pulls absolutely no punches.

    That brings me back to the ickiness that Amazon's customers -- and let's face it, who isn't an Amazon customer? -- will experience reading this book. The portrait that Stone paints of Amazon's founder and his company is of a ruthless, disingenuous, slave-driving mentality, where pretty much any kind of legal behavior is tolerated in the name offering customers lower prices. Stone portrays Bezos, known to viewers of Charlie Rose or Jimmy Fallon as the amiable businessman with the exuberant honk of a laugh, as an ogre given to "nutters," the name his executives give to his frequent temper tantrums. Stone describes a business culture where partners are expendable, where companies foolish enough to take investments from Amazon come to regret the control they handed over to the retail monolith, and where competitors big and small are mere pawns on Bezos's elaborate chessboard.

    If you've ever wondered why you love shopping at Amazon so much, the answers are all here. Amazon figured out early on how to create software that scours the web for price information from the competition and to automatically match the lowest available price. For years it avoided collecting sales taxes, deploying preposterous legal denials of its physical presence in multiple states in order to justify its actions, which resulted in customers paying lower prices. (Bezos said his company didn't benefit from local services in states where he didn't want to collect sales tax -- as if the roads leading into his warehouses appeared magically and didn't benefit Amazon.) It routinely disregarded retail-industry conventions on minimum pricing, provoking games of cat and mouse with manufacturers who loved access to Amazon's customer base but hated Amazon.