Amazon Earnings, Amazon’s Cloud War

Amazon’s earnings were even better than reported: it looks like the retail business is gaining real economies of scale, and AWS was even stronger than it appeared.

Prince, Bowie, and Beyoncé; Google’s Margin Squeeze; Microsoft’s Miss

Prince and David Bowie both understood the Internet, but took drastically different approaches. Then, Google’s business is fine, but it has almost certainly peaked, and the company could learn something from Microsoft about managing expectations.

Snapchat’s Ladder

Snapchat is on the verge of conquering the toughest messaging market in the world: the United States. The way they did it is by laddering-up.

Zenefits and Regulation

Zenefits fired its CEO after violating a number of regulations, and many people are drawing a connection to Uber. In fact, I think the situations are quite different; understanding why gives a framework for thinking about regulation.

Why I Stand by Peak Google, Amazon is Fine, More Amazon Stores?

Google had great earnings again, and was briefly the most valuable company in the world. That doesn’t change my opinions in Peak Google. Then, Amazon lost the expectations game, but the underlying business continues to look great. Plus, a theory about those rumored Amazon stores.